Two Raving Madmen

Entry

This terracotta group of two raving madmen is signed by the sculptor Pieter Xaveri (c. 1647-1673) and inscribed with the year 1673 (see BK-1980-19 for additional biographical information). The legs of the foremost figure are clasped to large chains anchored to the tree trunk on which he sits. A third chain is attached to an overturned bowl containing food. His body is entwined in his robe, which he attempts to tear with his teeth. The second man has thrown himself to the ground and screams out in anguish.

The sitting figure in the present group was previously identified as Orlando Furioso (Raging Roland), the Christian hero from the epic poem of the same name by the Italian poet Ariosto (1474-1533).¹ Given the context of the story, however, the presence of the chains, the bowl of food and the man’s aroused state makes no sense. More likely is that the scene’s theme centres on two anonymous psychiatric patients committed to a so-called Dolhuys (madhouse). From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, these institutions for krankzinnigen (the mentally ill) were established in the larger cities of the Northern Netherlands, where patients were often chained in the same manner as the present figures. In exchange for a donation, members of the local population were permitted to enter these asylums in order to observe what was happening inside.

On the basis of his sexual arousal and aggressive behaviour, Murken and Schmidt described the condition of the seated male figure as manic and that of his distraught counterpart on the ground as melancholic. In art, these psychological afflictions were more commonly chosen as opposites. One known example of such a pairing are the two large, recumbent statues carved in Portland stone by Caius Gabriel Cibber for the entry gate of Bethlem Hospital in London in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, which bear the names Raving and Melancholy Madness.² Here too, it is the manic patient whose limbs are chained.

Only two other sculpted representations of mentally ill figures are known in the Northern Netherlands dating from the seventeenth century: the Madhouse Woman (Frenzy) from the inner courtyard of the Amsterdam Dolhuys (BK-AM-38) and the stone facade tablet of the former Krankzinnigen Gasthuis, a mental asylum in Den Bosch.³ Pieter Xaveri’s terracotta group was perhaps similarly made for a mental institution, where it might have functioned as a table centrepiece or furniture ornament, for example, in the regents’ chamber.⁴

With respect to the seated male figure, Xaveri may have been (indirectly) inspired by the figure of Laocoön from the famous Hellenistic group of the same name in the Vatican, who attempts to escape from the snake’s deadly embrace. By depicting the figure in the nude and in a comparably perilous situation, Xaveri was able to freely explore the muscled anatomy of the male body. The emphasis on the figure’s musculature can perhaps best be compared to two other works in the sculptor’s oeuvre: the terracotta Neptune with Seahorse in the collection of the Rijksmuseum (BK-1980-19) and his Apollo Flays Marsyas in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, a work singularly carved in red limestone.⁵ Xaveri’s interest in depicting marginal figures in society is confirmed by other works such as his Hurdy-Gurdy Player (BK-1978-36) and Two Laughing Jesters (BK-NM-5667), both preserved in the Rijksmuseum, but also his terracotta of an old beggar man depicted as an allegory of Winter, preserved at the Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden.⁶

Bieke van der Mark, 2025