Garden Vase with Jupiter and Io and Perseus and Andromeda

Entry

This pair of garden vases (for the other vase, see BK-NM-8833) are of a type designed in 1714 by Jan Pieter van Baurscheit I (1669-1728). A design drawing and seven similar vases from that year are known.¹ The design was subsequently often repeated by Baurscheit himself, by his son with the same name, Jan Pieter van Baurscheit II (1699-1768) and by the workers in their atelier, sometimes in a slightly different form. In every case, both the front and the back have a representation of a mythological couple of lovers from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the present case, one vase (shown here) shows Jupiter and Io and Perseus and Andromeda, the other piece depicts Jupiter and Callisto and Apollo and Daphne. The reliefs are flanked on either side by a handle consisting of a bent S-volute bearing the head of a satyr or a nymph. In the other cases a similar head has been applied beneath each mythological relief, but they have been omitted on the Rijksmuseum vases.

This pair of vases is monogrammed on the plinth: IPVB.F, with the ‘P’ combining with the right-hand stroke of the letter ‘V’. As far as we know, that monogram was used only by the elder Baurscheit, whereas his son, who worked in the same style, signed with a monogram with the ‘P’ attached to the left-hand stroke of the ‘V’.² The presence of this monogram, together with the fine quality of execution, indicates that Baurscheit senior probably made the vases himself. A related, but qualitative lesser and unsigned set of six marble vases in the gardens of Waddesdon Manor (Buckinghamshire) was also produced, possibly only after Baurscheit’s death in the family workshop then headed by the son.³ On them, all the depictions on the Rijksmuseum vases are repeated at least once. Moreover, the representation of Apollo and Diana is also found on a marble mantel decoration of 1742.⁴

The present set of vases originally came from the garden of Abtspoel country residence in Oegstgeest, as was a monogrammed and ‘1725’-dated sandstone obelisk, which is also attributed to the senior Baurscheit.⁵ The then owner of the house, the Leiden burgomaster Willem Cornelisz (1665-1740), probably ordered the three garden ornaments from the sculptor at the same time, circa 1725.

After the liquidation of the Abtspoel House effects in 1863, the obelisk went to the gardens of another estate in Oegstgeest: Endegeest Castle. Johannes Hartevelt purchased the garden vases for his country house Groenoord in nearby Leiden. It is likely that they were placed in a flowerbed at the front or the back or the house, or on the perron. At the time the park was already transformed into a garden in English landscape style in which formal, decorative vases of this type did not belong.⁶

Bieke van der Mark, 2025