Modelled in the round and fired. Coated with a finishing layer.

A crack runs through the left foot and base, the cavity of which has been filled with plaster.

…; acquired from S. Sarluis, The Hague, by the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1881, through the mediation of Victor de Stuers; transferred to the museum, 1885

Object number: BK-NM-5350

This terracotta River God is signed and dated 1720 by the sculptor Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742). It is the earliest work of his that has been handed down. The sculpture was probably a model for a fountain (or part thereof) that was never made, or is now unknown. It shows a naked river god, seated on a rock on a river bank with some vegetation covering his genitals. His upper body is bended forward, as he leans with his right hand against an overturned vase. The intention would probably have been for the River God to support on his shoulders and raised left arm a basin or jar out of which actual water would pour.

The marble fountain dating from 1732 in the White Dining Hall at Huis ten Bosch Palace, is the only one to have been made by Jan Baptist Xavery, as far as is known.¹¹M. Loonstra, Het húijs int bosch: Het Koninklijk Paleis Huis ten Bosch historisch gezien, Zutphen 1985, fig. 34. In a bozzetto of this object in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the sculptor concentrated solely on the figures – as is the case with this Amsterdam terracotta. He did not feature the vase which was included in the definitive version of the fountain.²²London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. A 214-1946. Cf. Theuerkauff in E. Rümmler, C. Theuerkauff et al., Europäische Barockplastik am Niederrhein: Grupello und seine Zeit, exh. cat. Düsseldorf (Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf) 1971, no. 289.

According to the late-eighteenth-century manuscript of the art-historiographer Jacob van der Sanden, Jan Baptist Xavery travelled via Vienna to Rome in 1719 where he was to remain for two years.³³D. Ozinga, Daniel Marot: De schepper van den Hollandschen Lodewijk XIV-stijl, Amsterdam 1938, p. 168. If that is correct, the terracotta would have been made during that study tour. However, since Van der Sanden’s manuscript is not always entirely accurate, we should consider the possibility that Xavery had already modelled it in The Hague, the city where he had certainly been living prior to June 1721.⁴⁴L.J. van der Klooster, ‘Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742): Documentatie over enkele van zijn werken’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 21 (1970), pp. 99-138, esp. p. 100.

In view of the dating, the terracotta model might conceivably be connected to Rosenburg House in Voorschoten, built between 1721 and 1723 – to which we know, thanks to an invoice of 22 May 1723, Xavery had contributed something unspecified.⁵⁵L.J. van der Klooster, ‘Ontwerpen van Daniel Marot voor het huis Rosenburg te Voorschoten’, Bulletin van de Koninklijke Nederlandsche Oudheidkundige Bond, 15 (1962), cols. 269-74, esp. col. 272. However, it is not known whether a fountain was ever planned or realised for this ‘extraordinarily splendid pleasure house’, because Rosenburg was demolished in 1729 and no old descriptions or drawings of the property have been passed down.

The estate of the Amsterdam painter Tibout Regters (1710-1768) contained ‘A river God by Xavery’ in plaster.⁶⁶Sale collection Tibout Regters, Amsterdam, 18 April 1768, no. 14. It could have been a cast of the present model. An as yet unpublished terracotta of a standing river god in private Dutch hands has also been tentatively attributed to Xavery (fig. a).⁷⁷See Object File RMA. However, the shaping of the musculature and hair diverge too markedly from his known works to support such an attribution.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 373, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'Jan Baptist Xavery and , River God, RomeThe Hague, 1720', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035812