Androclus and the Lion

Entry

Jan Pieter van Baurscheit I (1669-1728) came from Wormersdorf near Bonn, Germany. He was part of the retinue of Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria, the new governor of the Spanish Netherlands, coming to the Southern Netherlands in 1692. Baurscheit settled in Antwerp to train as a sculptor in the workshop of Pieter Scheemaekers I (1640-1714).² In 1695 he registered as an independent master in the local guild of St Luke and set up a workshop there which was soon one of the foremost sculpture suppliers in the Netherlands. Baurscheit’s work included funerary monuments, architectural art and sculptural decorations for church interiors. Garden statues and vases (cf. BK-NM-8832), mainly in sandstone, also featured significantly in his production.³

Baurscheit’s private clientele included not only local patrons, but also distinguished gentlemen from the Northern Netherlands, especially from the provinces of Zeeland and Holland. He corresponded with the well-known Rotterdam painter Adriaen van der Werff (1659-1722), who placed an order for four busts and two herms for his own garden with the sculptor and mediated in a number of commissions for various other Dutch patrons.⁴

Baurscheit’s son, with the same name, Jan Pieter van Baurscheit II (1699-1768), worked closely with his father from round 1720. After his father’s death he carried on the sculpture workshop, though he primarily made a name for himself as an architect. Father and son used a similar monogram, IPVB or PVB (ligatured). Generally speaking,⁵ the monogram with the loop of the ‘P’ attached to the first stroke of the ‘V’ would have belonged to the son, and the monogram with the loop attached to the second stroke (as with the garden statue in question) would be the father’s. A statue of Pan in the garden of country house De Wildenborch in Vorden is very akin stylistically to the Androclus statue discussed here and is likewise signed by the elder Baursheit.⁶ These rather static sculptures will have been produced at a late date in Baurscheit’s career, in the course of the 1720s, when he was leaning more towards a classicist style. In the previous decades his figures were more expressive and baroque.

Baurscheit normally produced such large garden statues to order, although he probably also had some existing models or even finished sculptures available for customers to choose from. That would seem to have been the case with the ensemble to which the present sculpture belongs, which consists of four statues: Androclus and the Lion (shown here), Hercules with the Broken Column (BK-NM-13215-A), Hercules and the Hydra (BK-NM-13215-B), and Hercules and Cacus (BK-NM-13215-C). These came from the garden of country house Bos en Hoven (near Heemstede) which was pulled down in 1925. A print from around 1732 (fig. a) shows how the four sculptures were arranged there along the Heerenweg.⁷ At that stage – from 1722 onwards – the house was owned by the Amsterdam merchant Jacob Alewyn Ghyzen (d. 1760). The illogical combination of the present Androclus statue and the series of three Hercules’ groups suggests that the artist had not conceived the works as an ensemble. It is highly likely that the client had made the seemingly random selection, based on what was available in the workshop.⁸ The fact that Baurscheit used some of his models more than once, is apparent from the existence of a second statue of Androclus which is almost identical to the one from this ensemble. It stands in the garden of Singraven House in Denekamp (fig. b).

It is possible that a pre-existing model was also used for the Hercules and Cacus group (BK-NM-13215-C). It is known from letters that Baurscheit made a terracotta model of a Hercules group in 1707 for the Rotterdam collector Adriaen Paets. The description corresponds precisely with the piece discussed here.⁹ It involves a proposal for a terracotta design for a 5.5 Rijnland-foot (1.73 metre) tall garden statue that Paets had ordered from Baurscheit. Evidently the choice of subject had not yet been determined, since the sculptor had also sent a model of a ‘graceful little woman’. The painter Van der Werff, who mediated in the assignment, made extensive comments on the two models in a letter to the sculptor which he sent with the two models on 17 January 1708. He suggested several alterations in the pose of ‘the Hercules’ and proposed that the lower figure (Cacus?) be brought forward a little.¹⁰ It is not known if this design was the one that Paets had made in stone. Be it as it may, Baurscheit could, at any time, have re-used the model, also for replicas for the open market.

The painter Carel Willink (1900-1983) included some of the works from the ensemble in question in his compositions in the early 1940s.¹¹ At the time, this magic realist was living at 15 Ruysdaelkade, a stone’s throw from the Rijksmuseum, where the works had stood in the gardens (at various locations) since 1924.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025