The Poet Crowned by Two Apes at the Feast of the Animals

1623

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 56.5 cm × width 82 cm
depth 6 cm

Inscriptions

signature and date, bottom right: .ROELAND. / SAVERY [..]16[..]

Technical notes

The original tacking edges of the lined plain-weave canvas support are now part of the paint surface. Hand-applied stitches at the border of the painted surface and the unpainted canvas are visible at the bottom and left sides. Cusping is visible, especially on the right. The ground layer seems to be whitish or greyish. The signature is difficult to read but seems original. The painting technique is difficult to judge, due to the poor condition.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: K. Schreuder, RMA, 13 May 2002

Condition

Poor. The painting is abraded, has discoloured areas of retouching, and was flattened during lining.

Provenance

...; from L. Hamming, fl. 350, as Roelant Savery, dated 1616, to the museum, 1875;¹ on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, since 1999

Object number: SK-A-366

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 is one of the many scenes that tie in with the story of Orpheus that are associated with Roelant Savery and in which exotic animals play an important part.² Despite the signature, the attribution to Savery is uncertain. Not only does the style differ from that of the secure works, so too does the compositional structure. The animals are poorly integrated in the landscape, relatively larger, and considerably less convincing. The central figure in the middleground has also been made more prominent than in Savery’s autograph scenes of Orpheus. Müllenmeister felt that it might have been painted by Hans Savery II, which would be the logical solution were it not for the fact that the obscurity of his oeuvre makes it impossible to back this up with reasoned arguments.³ An unlikely hypothesis was put forward by Wurfbain, who saw the letters SE in the curiously curled snake beneath the white horse and matched them with the first letters of the surnames of Quirijn van Slingelant and Aernout Elsevier, both of them followers of Savery.⁴

The iconography of the scene has also prompted various interpretations. The fact that the figure in the centre middleground is being crowned by two apes indicates that this is a satirical scene. Some authors have identified the figure as Orpheus, given the correspondence with the paintings of Orpheus by the artist,⁵ but Savery usually depicts him making music and dressed in antique garb.⁶ Wurfbain, pursuing his unlikely attribution to Van Slingelant and Elsevier, actually interpreted the figure as a portrait of Savery himself being crowned by his followers, who are ‘aping’ him.⁷ Müllenmeister saw the scene as a parody of Apollo and the Muses, probably because of the nine dancing animals, who are supposedly the Muses, and the laurel wreath, which is also worn by Apollo.⁸ The current title, The Poet Crowned by Two Apes at the Feast of the Animals, which Müllenmeister also retained, incidentally, still fits the scene best, even if no satisfactory interpretation has yet been put forward.

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. 268.

Literature

Erasmus 1908, pp. 61-62, no. 7 (as Roelant Savery, Orpheus); Wurfbain in Leiden 1976, p. 98, no. S41 (as Quirijn van Slingelant and Aernout Elsevier, painted on panel); Müllenmeister 1988, p. 224, no. 67 (as possibly Roelant Savery or Hans Savery II, painted on panel)

Collection catalogues

1880, pp. 278-79, no. 321 (as Roelant Savery, dated 1-8-1623); 1887, p. 152, no. 1287 (as Roelant Savery, The Animals Listening to the Play of Orpheus or The Poet Crowned at the Feast of the Animals ?, dated 1-8-1623); 1903, p. 240, no. 2136 (as Roelant Savery, inscribed: Fe 1623); 1976, p. 500, no. A 366 (as Roelant Savery, inscribed: Fe 1623); 2007, no. 268

Citation

Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'workshop of Roelant Savery, The Poet Crowned by Two Apes at the Feast of the Animals, 1623', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5388

(accessed 22 September 2024 00:46:23).