Female Figure Representing Europe

Entry

Dressed in classical raiment, this female figure personifying the continent Europe holds a large cornucopia that flanks the left side of her body. The statuette was acquired in 1894, together with a second ivory statuette personifying Africa (BK-NM-9785). When accompanied by corresponding figures of Asia and America, these ivories would originally have formed an ensemble representing the Four Continents, a common theme in sculpture but seldom encountered in ivory. An ivory allegorical figure representing America is preserved in Vermont.¹ While stylistically comparable to the Rijksmuseum duo, its larger dimensions (h. 17 cm) excludes the possibility it belongs to the same series.

Presumably based on the style and design, Leeuwenberg localized the present pair in the Northern Netherlands and dated them to circa 1660. Evident stylistic parallels with baroque ivory carvings from the Low Countries are nevertheless lacking. Far more convincing are parallels with the work of the north-German ivorycarver Joachim Henne (active 1663-1707), a court artist in the traditional sense. Henne’s precise biographical dates are unknown, but his earliest documented activity occurs in the years 1663 to 1665 in Hamburg, followed by employment at the ducal court of Schleswig-Holstein at Gottorf. From 1671 to 1676, he worked in Copenhagen at the court of the Danish king Frederick III and his successor, Christian V. In the early 1690s, his name again (or still) appears in that same city, albeit in the capacity of miniaturist painter and stamp-cutter. The last court Henne is known to have attended, in the first decade of the eighteenth century, is that of King Frederick I of Prussia in Berlin.² Art historians have ventured a possible sojourn in the Northern Netherlands during the early phase of Henne’s career on stylistic grounds, though this cannot be substantiated by documentary evidence.³

Striking similarities between the present ivories and Henne’s work can be observed in the faces, hair and ample physical form of the figures in a number of his ivory reliefs. Suitable examples for comparison include the angels in an Adoration of the Shepherds from 1675 that bears Henne’s monogram,⁴ and various female nudes, such as those he produced in Denmark, today found in the collection of Rosenborg Castle (Copenhagen) and elsewhere.⁵

Bieke van der Mark, 2025