Sculpted in high relief. Set in a profiled frame of red-veined marble.

The white marble has chipped off in places and has a porous surface.

…; anonymous sale, Amsterdam (Frederik Muller), 26-29 May 1959, no. 747, fl. 644, to the museum

Object number: BK-1959-58-B

The vines in the hair of these men identify them as followers of Bacchus. A budding branch on the right side of the beardless young man (BK-1959-58-A) probably refers to his youth. He could perhaps represent the young god of wine himself. If so, the other man (shown here) might be Bacchus’ tutor and loyal companion, Silenus. In all likelihood, the pair of medallions would have been part of the ornamentation of a country house or garden pavilion. In the somewhat strictly geometrical gardens of the day, woodland creatures like Bacchus, satyrs and nymphs with their capricious traits, were eminently suited as representatives of unspoilt nature.¹¹De Koomen in R. Baarsen et al., Rococo in Nederland, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001-02, p. 61.

Nothing is known of the medallions’ provenance. When the museum purchased them in 1959 at an Amsterdam sale, Leeuwenberg thought they might have come about in the Northern Netherlands, around 1680.²²Verslagen der Rijksverzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1959, p. 18. He found a clue in the first-floor landing of Sonoy almshouses in Alkmaar, where there were two white marble high reliefs of classical heads in similar coloured marble frames which he believed were of a later date.³³Images in Object File RMA. Later Leeuwenberg adjusted his dating to around 1720-30, and associated the medallions with the circle of the Amsterdam sculptor Jan van Logteren (1709-1745).⁴⁴J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no 372. However, as Fischer already indicated, the robust facial type with thick lips, is closer to that sometimes applied by Jan’s father, Ignatius van Logteren (1685-1732),⁵⁵P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, p. 298. but then again the figures in question differ from his usual characters, in that they have a more Mediterranean look. The greatest similarities are found between the head type of the bearded faun (shown here) and that of the river god in Ignatius’ fountain group in the garden at Frankendael House (1714), that of a free-standing Neptune (1720) and of Hercules and the Hydra (c. 1720), also by Ignatius.⁶⁶P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, figs. 113, 148 and 149, resp.

The fact that both father and son Van Logteren dealt with the subject is corroborated by two busts of Bacchus, one of which (whereabouts unknown) is attributed to Ignatius and dates from around 1720, the other (Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon), dated around 1739, to son Jan,⁷⁷P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, fig. 324 and R. Baarsen et al., Rococo in Nederland, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001-02, no. 4. who also carved the busts of a satyr and a faun recently acquired by the Rijksmuseum (BK-2024-8-1 and (-9-1). Although these busts are capricious and ‘faun-like’ too, they in fact have distinctive, somewhat screwed-up eyes and grimacing, slightly open mouths – contrary to the present reliefs. Yet Ignatius van Logteren clearly liked to vary the typology of this theme, as is evident from a terracotta bust of Bacchus bearing his monogram (c. 1715-20).⁸⁸P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, fig. 325. Here the god of wine in fact is portrayed as an aristocratic young man with the feminine traits, gentler facial expression and blissful gaze that characterized most of his oeuvre.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 372, with earlier literature; P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, pp. 298-99

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'possibly Ignatius van Logteren, Oval Medallion with the Head of Silenus (?), Amsterdam, c. 1715 - c. 1730', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035811