Object data
oil on panel
support: height 46 cm × width 69.1 cm
depth 7.8 cm
Roelant Savery
Landscape with Ruins, Cattle and Deer
c. 1614 - c. 1620
Inscriptions
- signature, bottom left: .ROELANDT / SAVERY. EE [FE]
Technical notes
The oak support consists of two planks with a horizontal grain, joined with tongue and groove. The support is bevelled on the left and right sides. At the back is a carved mark, presumably a panel maker’s mark. The panel may have been cut down slightly at the top and right. The missing part of the drinking fountain in the right foreground of the painting confirms that the panel was cut at the right side, but only slightly, because part of the bevel remains. The white ground layer is visible at the lower edge. The paint layers were smoothly applied with glazes used in the foliage and deftly placed white highlights.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: K. Schreuder, RMA, 13 May 2002
Condition
Good. The varnish is discoloured.
Provenance
...; from the dealer, C.L.C. Voskuil, Nieuwer Amstel, fl. 250, to the museum, 1889;1 on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, since 2002
Object number: SK-A-1488
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Roelant Savery (Kortrijk c. 1578 - Utrecht 1639)
Roelant Savery was born in Kortrijk around 1578, going by the statements of his age in two attestations of 1618 and 1629. When the town fell to the Spanish in 1580 the family moved to Bruges, and then to Haarlem around 1585. According to Van Mander, Roelant was trained by his elder brother Jacob, who settled in Amsterdam in 1591. Roelant was living with him when the two brothers drew up their wills in 1602. After Jacob’s death in 1603, Roelant moved to Prague to work for Emperor Rudolf, and is first documented there in 1604. Between 1606 and 1608 he travelled to Tirol to make drawings of the landscapes there for the emperor. After Rudolf’s death in 1612, Savery carried on working for his successor, Matthias. In 1613 he was paid for a trip to Amsterdam, where in 1614 he made arrangements for the disposal of his brother’s estate after his widow’s death. He travelled back to Prague in 1615, but returned to Amsterdam in 1616 for the marriage of his nephew Salomon. The following year he is recorded as being a landscape painter in Amsterdam, and in 1618 he may have spent some time in Haarlem. He is also documented that same year in Utrecht, where he joined the Guild of St Luke in 1619. In 1621 he bought a house in Boterstraat that he shared with several members of his family, among them his nephew Hans II (1589-1664). It can be assumed that the latter, a landscape painter, who was also in Prague in 1615, was trained by his uncle, and that he worked closely with him, beginning in the 1620s. Roelant made another will in 1624 in which he left all his paintings and related drawings to Hans II.
Documents show that Roelant made good money with his brush. In 1626, the States of Utrecht paid 700 guilders for a painting that was presented to Amalia van Solms on the occasion of her marriage to Frederik Hendrik. In 1628 or 1629 he received 400 Reichsthalers for two paintings for the collection of the Elector of Liechtenstein. Nevertheless, he was declared bankrupt in 1638. Financially ruined and in a state of mental confusion in his closing years, he was buried in the Buurkerk in Utrecht on 23 February 1639.
Roelant Savery left a large oeuvre. From his early Amsterdam period came landscapes, animal, flower and genre pieces influenced by his brother Jacob, Hans Bol, Gillis van Coninxloo and Pieter Brueghel. In Prague he found himself in a very artistic milieu, and made countless drawings of such subjects as the landscape in the Tirol, peasants, and views of Prague. After his return to the Dutch Republic he concentrated mainly on such successful subjects as landscapes with exotic animals. His output became less balanced from the 1620s on as a result of his collaboration with Hans II. His followers included Gillis de Hondecoeter, Jacob Marel and Allaert van Everdingen.
Yvette Bruijnen, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 260v; De Bie 1661, pp. 125-26; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 132, 175-76, 242, 250; Campo Weyerman I, 1729, pp. 248-51; Erasmus 1908, pp. 3-13; Briels 1976, pp. 281-301; Spicer-Durham 1979, pp. 11-42; Dudok van Heel/Bok 1990; Bok in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 315-16; Briels 1997, pp. 377-79
Entry
This painting is related to two signed ones with similar subjects of pack mules at a feeding place and cattle by a water trough in a landscape with ruins. The earliest dated version is from 1614, the other from 1618.2 The painting in the Rijksmuseum is larger than those two, and is the only one to include deer and goats. Erasmus dated it c. 1618 on the evidence of its relationship to the Dessau version.3 Müllenmeister placed it a few years later, around 1621, and regarded it as the best of the three.4 Taking all this into account, a date between 1614 and 1621 seems likely.
The painting was long regarded as a depiction of one of Aesop’s fables as handed down by the Roman poet Phaedrus.5 In the story, a stag hides in an ox-stall to escape from hunters. The oxen tolerate it, and it is not even noticed by the negligent farm-hands or the bailiff. It is only the farmer who spots the intruder and has it slaughtered after all. Although this iconographic interpretation has generally been accepted,6 the scene differs from that sketched in the fable in several respects. In the first place it is not set in an ox-stall, and there is not just a stag but a doe as well, and the goats and pack mules are not mentioned in the tale. This makes it very doubtful that Savery intended this to be a depiction of Aesop’s fable. In addition, he painted more such scenes with deer and cattle that contain no demonstrable reference to a specific story.7
Yvette Bruijnen, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 266.
Literature
Erasmus 1908, pp. 62-63, no. 9; Müllenmeister 1988, pp. 117-19, 281, no. 179
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 240, no. 2138; 1934, p. 258, no. 2138; 1960, p. 278, no. 2138; 1976, p. 500, no. A 1488 (as Aesop’s fable of the stag among the cows); 2007, no. 266
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Roelant Savery, Landscape with Ruins, Cattle and Deer, c. 1614 - c. 1620', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5385
(accessed 22 November 2024 14:57:17).