Satyr

Entry

The Antwerp-born sculptor Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742), who was active in The Hague, was particularly celebrated for his funerary monuments, portraits, garden ornaments and architectural decoration. It is a less known fact that he also carved small-scale sculptures in boxwood and ivory. This ivory Satyr (shown here) and Bacchante (BK-NM-1969) are splendid examples of such work. The satyr (or faun) has some of the usual characteristic of a he-goat: a short tail on its lower back, pointed ears, small horns, a wattled beard and goat-like face.¹ He holds a shepherd’s flute in both hands. The pendant, smiling bacchante (or maenad) holds a tambourine. These instruments were used to accompany the song and dance of bacchanalia. Both statuettes are signed by the artist and dated 1729, the year Xavery entered the service of stadholder Willem IV.

In that period Xavery made more of such small-scale mythological figures, some of them only known through descriptions. For instance, there is mention in the sale catalogue of the eighteenth-century Amsterdam collector, Pieter Locquet of two boxwood bosch saters (woodland satyrs) by Xavery each measuring 9.5 inches.² And an invoice from 1727 states Xavery was commissioned by Baron Johan Hendrik van Wassenaer Obdam to carve a ‘figure in palm [box] wood of a satyr’, for 60 Carolus guilders.³ At an auction in Paris in 2004 a signed boxwood Pan, with the inscription J:B:X: 1729, was offered for sale, together with a Bacchus of the same material.⁴ A mirror image variant of the Bacchus in question, but in polychromed lime wood, can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum, also bearing the inscription J:B:X: 1729.⁵ Two ivories signed by Xavery depicting Hercules and a nymph (present whereabouts unknown), and dating from the same year are mentioned in a sale catalogue of the nineteenth-century collector, David Teixeira, Jr.⁶ Lastly, there are another two boxwood pairs of gods, dated and signed by Xavery, with the same type of plinth (square with beveled corners) as the ivories featured here. One pair, with Meleager and Amphitrite, dates from 1728 and is in The Hague.⁷ The figures of the other pair, with Pluto and Prosperina, are dated 1731 and 1733 respectively. They can be found in Huis de Wiersse in Vorden.⁸

The stance of all these figures is loosely inspired by ancient prototypes, examples of which Xavery could have seen during his (supposed) study trip to Italy. Xavery gave the satyr the same stylized body with human legs, as found in Classical antiquity, rather than the goat’s legs with which satyrs were usually depicted in the preceding century. Unlike the classicist, somewhat expressionless faces of most of Xavery’s figures of gods, these capricious woodland creatures have wayward expressions and, thanks to their lively, smiling faces, appear decidedly frivolous.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025