Object data
terracotta
height 46 cm × width 33.5 cm × depth 26 cm
Pieter Xaveri
Two Laughing Jesters
Leiden, 1673
Inscriptions
- signature and date, on the front of the plinth far left, incised in the wet clay: P∙R∙ XAVERI INVE 1673
Technical notes
Modelled in the round and fired. Coated with a finishing layer. On the reverse, six small ventilation holes can be discerned.
Scientific examination and reports
- conservation report: I. Garachon, RMA, 16 February 2007
Condition
A horizontal breakage line at the level of the hands has been repaired with glue, supplemented and retouched. The hands on the right jester, the left arm including the shoulder, sceptre and a section of his jester’s cap are probably replacements. A bell on the knee-band is missing. The nose of the left jester had broken off and been reattached with glue. A crack can be discerned on the sculpture lower left. On the reverse, a vertical crack between the two jesters extends from the plinth upwards. Other old points of damage and a couple of chips near the lower edge can also be observed appear to be of later date. The finishing layer has sustained natural abrasion in various places.
Conservation
- I. Garachon, RMA, 2007: impregnation of the vertical breakage line on the group’s reverse.
Provenance
…; sale collection Leonardus van Heemskerk, Leiden (P. Delfos), 2 November 1771, p. 14, no. 24, fl. 3 (together with nos. 23-25), to Delfos;1 …; from Mr Ouwerkerk, Leiden, with BK-NM-5666, fl. 50 for both, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1882; transferred to the museum 1885
Object number: BK-NM-5667
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
This group of two laughing jesters is signed by the sculptor Pieter Xaveri (c. 1647-1673) and inscribed with the year 1673. For the brief period that this Antwerp-born sculptor appears in the documentary sources – from 1670 up until his premature death in 1673 – he was active as a sculptor in Leiden (see BK-1980-19 for additional biographical information). Despite Xaveri’s weak constitution, by far the greatest majority of his works date from the year of his death. Besides numerous terracottas, he was also responsible for the tympanum adorning the facade of ‘In den Vergulden Turk’, a building on the Breestraat in Leiden.2
Xaveri is one of the few seventeenth-century sculptors in the Northern Netherlands who devoted his efforts almost exclusively to the terracotta medium. His modelled statuettes were precisely intended as independent cabinet sculptures, functioning neither as preliminary studies nor models to be executed as statues in stone or bronze. Striking and innovative were Xaveri’s ensembles comprising three or more independent terracotta figures conceived as a single composition, including the large Vierschaar ensemble preserved at Museum De Lakenhal (Leiden).3
This very lively terracotta rendering of two seated jesters belongs to Xaveri’s comical or farcical genre scenes, clearly aimed to appeal to the observer’s sense of humour. The characteristic attire, jester’s caps, pants legs with bells and a marotte – a sceptre crowned by a miniature jester’s head – slyly tucked away in the sleeve, are elements that betray beyond a doubt their identity as mocking individuals from the topsy-turvy world. In art, jesters appear as unmaskers of the truth. Although they often provide commentary on (morally) reprehensible behaviour, their lax and immoral nature sometimes compels them to turn a blind eye.4
While there is no way of knowing whether a pendant ever existed, more likely is that the present group was originally conceived as an independent work. The jesters’ provocative expressions seem to be aimed directly at the observer. Providing further confirmation of the terracotta’s conception as an autonomous work is a description dating from as early as 1771, which cites the terracotta as an independent piece in the collection of Leonardus van Heemskerk of Leiden.5 Xaveri’s likely intention was to make the viewer the target of the jesters’ jest, leaving him to introspect what thoughts or actions have caused their mockery.
Xaveri perhaps conceived his idea for the subject of the present terracotta in his native city of Antwerp, where Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) was the most important representative of the jester theme in the Southern Netherlands at the time.6 As a type, the jesters are a product of that same artistic tradition. One such example is a pair of sixteenth-century polychromed wooden busts depicting a jester and an old woman,7 which possess grotesque facial expressions similar to those of the grinning jesters by Xaveri and Jordaens. In 1982, a second pair of busts, again depicting a jester and an old woman but executed in bronze, surfaced on the art market with the New York dealer Faber Donoughe (figs. a and b). These works are possibly based on models by Xaveri or his follower Jan Smeltzing I (1656-1693), a sculptor also active in Leiden.
Bieke van der Mark and Frits Scholten, 2025
This entry is an updated version of Scholten in J.P. Filedt-Kok et al., Netherlandish Art in the Rijksmuseum 1600-1700, coll. cat Amsterdam 2001, no. 87
Literature
J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 327, with earlier literature; sale catalogue London (Sotheby’s), 18 March 1976, under no. 184; T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer et al., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, Leiden 1992, vol. 6a, p. 112; I. van der Giesen, Pieter Xavery: Genre in zeventiende-eeuwse beeldhouwkunst, 1997 (unpublished thesis, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam), no. 20; Scholten in J.P. Filedt-Kok et al., Netherlandish Art in the Rijksmuseum 1600-1700, coll. cat Amsterdam 2001, no. 87; E. Bijzet, ‘Waer in den Aert en Stand zijn uitgedrukt heel stout: Pieter van Baurscheits Drinkebroers en de boertige kunst in de Nederlanden’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 56 (2008), pp. 424-45, esp. p. 441; D.H. van Wegen, Pieter Xaveri op Sypesteyn, exh. cat. Loosdrecht (Kasteel-Museum Sypesteyn) 2015, p. 7
Citation
B. van der Mark and F. Scholten, 2025, 'Pieter Xaveri, Two Laughing Jesters, Leiden, 1673', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035769
(accessed 7 December 2025 04:24:48).