Mars

Entry

Around 1680 – but certainly no later than 1682 – the Flemish ivory-carver Francis van Bossuit (1635-1692) arrived in Amsterdam, where he would remain working until his death in 1692.¹² Prior to this time, Van Bossuit had lived in Italy – Rome and Venice – for approximately twenty-five years, a period of critical importance for the future course of his career.¹³ He was a member of the Bentvueghels, a company of Netherlandish artists residing in Rome, in which he adopted the moniker Waernemer (Observer). It was a name that conveyed Van Bossuit’s keen power of observation in terms of beauty: ‘one who observed the exceptionally beautiful parts and made them his own’, in the words of his later biographer, Mattys Pool.¹⁴ In Rome, he would also presumably have moved in the same circles as Balthasar Permoser (1651-1632), an Austrian-born sculptor more than fifteen years his junior. He also maintained contact with the Florentine academy, where sculptors like Foggini and Marcellini were working in a similar late-baroque style.¹⁵ According to Pool, Van Bossuit journeyed to Amsterdam in the company of the draughtsman and engraver Bonaventura van Overbeek (1660-1705).¹⁶ Almost immediately upon his arrival in the Dutch Republic, Van Bossuit’s sculptures drew the attention of Dutch art lovers. Greatly fostered by Barent Graat and Mattys Pool’s Beeld-snyders Kunst-kabinet door den vermaarden Beeldsnyder Francis van Bossuit in yvoor gesneeden en geboetseert […] (Sculptor’s Art-Cabinet by the Esteemed Sculptor Francis van Bossuit Carved and Modelled in Ivory), published in Amsterdam in 1727, Van Bossuit’s reputation endured long after his death, lasting well into the eighteenth century.¹⁷ This exceptional book – an early example of an illustrated artist’s monograph – includes a significant portion of the sculptor’s Amsterdam oeuvre, conveyed in the form of engravings. Serving as Graat and Pool’s primary source was the Amsterdam art collection of Petronella de la Court (1624-1707). Together with her husband, the brewer Adam Oortmans, Petronella was among the first to purchase Van Bossuit’s work. In the end, she managed to acquire ten of his ivory carvings,¹⁸ with the couple’s fondness apparently so great, the husband took ivory-carving lessons given by ‘mr. Francis’.

Among the eight other works on display in Petronella de la Court’s art cabinet, the present ivory Mars – together with a Venus – was bestowed a special place of honour. In the inventory of her estate, the two figures are in fact described as pendants: An ivory Mars by Francis accompanied by A ditto Venus, both with ebony pedestals.¹⁹ The Mars also appears in Van Pool’s Beeld-snyders Kunst-kabinet in the form of two engravings: a frontal view (fig. a) and a view from below (fig. b).²⁰ The latter engraving’s function was to facilitate ceiling painters eager to copy such a work rendered in an exceptionally shortened perspective. Today, the Venus is likely held in a private collection in Switzerland.²¹ As described in the sale catalogue of Petronella’s collection,²² the goddess of love appears standing. Kneeling at her feet is her son Anteros, who breaks the archer’s bow of his little brother, Amor. In all probability, this is the same group featured in a drawing by Willem van Mieris.²³ In the Beeld-snyders Kunst-kabinet, Venus and Anteros are portrayed in two individual engravings, separated for practical reasons.²⁴ As pendants, Mars’s act of withdrawing his sword forms an amusing, classical contraposition to Venus and the bow-breaking Anteros.

For quite some time after the sale of Petronella’s cabinet, the ivory Mars appears to have been passed from one Amsterdam collection to another. It is very likely the ‘ivory Mars’ to which the philosopher Frans Hemsterhuis was referring in his Lettre sur la Sculpture (Amsterdam 1769, but written in 1765) addressed to the Amsterdam banker and collector Theodorus de Smeth: ‘Should you ultimately desire a perfect example, with respect to all of this last contradiction, You simply need to consider Your statue of Mars in ivory, which perfectly clarifies my idea to you.’ (i.e. that with good sculpture, the subject and the expression of the befitting emotions correspond. Hemsterhuis likely believed the work in De Smeth’s possession lacked the desired level of martiality generally associated with the classical god of warfare).²⁵ An indirect confirmation that the work described here is indeed Van Bossuit’s Mars comes from an engraving by Reinier Vinkeles (1764 design, 1768 publication) of a drawing class at the Amsterdamse Stadstekenacademie (Amsterdam Municipal Drawing Academy) in the Leidse Poort (RP-P-OB-84.654).²⁶ The engraving shows a number of men – among them one of the academy’s directors, Cornelis Ploos van Amstel – drawing a male nude whose pose almost exactly matches that of the ivory Mars. Ploos van Amstel was friends with both De Smeth and Hemsterhuis and undoubtedly would have been familiar with the figure in De Smeth’s collection. He was also likely involved in the organization of the drawing session in question.

Mars is carved from a single large segment of elephant’s tusk. By its size alone, it was undoubtedly an eye-catching, costly piece, inevitably displayed in the middle of Petronella’s ‘white hall’. It most certainly drew the attention of the Leiden painter Willem van Mieris, who incorporated the sculpture numerous times in his paintings, such as the figure’s clothed rendering as Odysseus.²⁷ Van Mieris had likely come into contact with Van Bossuit’s work via the Leiden branch of the De la Court family. Petronella’s grandnephew, the textile merchant and thinker Pieter de la Court (1664-1739)²⁸ – and later his son, Allard – is known to have possessed twelve casts of various Van Bossuit ivories, executed in bronze by the founder Pieter van der Mij. Six were cast from works previously in Petronella’s possession, including the two high points of her collection, the Mars and the Venus with Anteros: ‘1 Venus with 1 Cupid who breaks his bow, very beautifully cast from the original by Francies that was very skilfully made from ivory, there being only 3 casts thereof in the world and 1 Mars as 1 counterpart [to the latter], very beautifully cast from the original by francies that was very skilfully made from ivory, there being only 3 casts thereof in the world’.²⁹ Upon viewing sculptures in the cabinet of King Louis XIV in Paris in 1700, Pieter de la Court was immediately reminded of Van Bossuit’s Mars and a Hercules and Pallas: ‘the Hercules by Francis, others also on the same scale of the modelled Mars and Pallas’.³⁰ One may deduce from this, that in addition to the bronze casts, there were also modelled versions of the Mars and other compositions by Van Bossuit: quite conceivably original wax modelli made for the ivories. In a painted self-portrait by Christoffel Wüst (1801-1853) from 1847, in which this Dordrecht painter appears together with his wife and son, a probable plaster cast of Van Bossuit’s ivory can be seen in the background, standing on a shelf in the artist’s workshop.³¹

The ivory Mars was not derived from classical models, despite its unabashed nakedness and the highly rendered musculature. The sole classical echo comes from the famed marble Mars and Venus in the Louvre (in Van Bossuit’s day held in the Borghese collection in Rome).³² A more probable inspiration is the work of Artus Quellinus, which Van Bossuit encountered in Amsterdam, ³³ or Michel Anguier’s bronze Mars Giving up his Arms.³⁴

Frits Scholten, 2025