Carved in the round.

According to the sale catalogue of the collection of Jan Jeronimusz de Bosch,¹¹Sale collection Jan Jeronimusz de Bosch, Amsterdam (De Vries et al.), 11 April 1825, p. 35, no. 21. the boxwood pedestal was made by a certain Kampman, possibly the late 18th-century cabinetmaker J. Kampman. The glass domes mentioned in the catalogue are missing.

…; sale collection Jan Jeronimusz de Bosch, Amsterdam (De Vries et al.), 11 April 1825, p. 35, no. 21 (with pendant, BK-1970-37-A), fl. 71, to De Vries;²²Copy RKD.…; Jonkvrouw Anna Louisa Agatha (‘Annewies’) van Loon, née Van Winter (1793-1877), Amsterdam, first documented in 1858;³³Catalogus van voorwerpen uit vroegere tijden…, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Arti et Amiticiae) 1858, no. 2016. ? her grandson Jonkheer Willem Hendrik van Loon (1855-1935), Amsterdam;⁴⁴The Hague, RKD-Netherlands Institute of Art History, archive Adolph Staring, no. NL-HaRKD.0387. …; sale Amsterdam (Mak van Waay), 2 June 1970, no. 1689 (with pendant, BK-1970-37-A), fl. 5,800, to the museum, as a gift from the Commissie voor Fotoverkoop

Object number: BK-1970-37-B

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum

The Antwerp-born sculptor Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742), who was active in The Hague from round 1721, 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. These two ivory busts of Lucretia and Cleopatra are fine examples of that work. The head of Cleopatra (BK-1970-37-A) is signed by the artist and dated 1732. Two years later Xavery completed the present pendant of Lucretia whose head is facing the other way, and which is also signed and dated (1734). Thanks to a number of notations in old sales catalogues and inventories, Xavery is known to have carved more such fine ivory heads of historical, Biblical or mythological figures, including pairs comprising Joseph and Mary,⁵⁵Sale Pieter Locquet, Amsterdam (Van der Schley et al.), 22 September 1783, p. 25, nos. 108 and 109. Socrates and Seneca (1732),⁶⁶J.W. Niemeijer, ‘De kunstverzameling van John Hope (1737-1784)’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981), pp. 127-232, esp. p. 209, no. 377. and Heraclitus and Democritus (1733). ⁷⁷J.W. Niemeijer, ‘De kunstverzameling van John Hope (1737-1784)’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 32 (1981), pp. 127-232, esp. p. 209, no. 376. The present whereabouts of these pairs are unknown.

Theuerkauff noted the similarity in the physiognomy of Lucretia and Cleopatra and that of the François du Quesnoy’s (1597-1643) female figures, of which the monumental Saint Susanna in the Santa Maria di Loreto in Rome, completed in 1633, is the best known example.⁸⁸C. Theuerkauff, ‘Zu Francis van Bossuit (1635-1692): “Beeldsnyder in yvoor”', Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 37 (1975), pp. 119-82, esp. pp. 153-54. During the rest of the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth, classical facial features of this type continued to be popular and an adapted form also occurs in the ivory carvings of Matthieu van Beveren (1630-1690) and Francis van Bossuit (1635-1692). A few reliefs are known by the latter carver, inspired by the painter Guido Reni (1575-1642), with half-length figures of Lucretia and Cleopatra, and were made in various versions by Van Bossuit and followers.⁹⁹D.S. Pepper, Guido Reni: A Complete Catalogue of His Works with an Introductory Text, Oxford 1984, nos. 106 and 176. Examples of The Death of Lucretia and The Death of Cleopatra, both from c. 1680-92 were in the former collection Jonkvrouw Justine Jeannette Gertrude Rutgers van Rozenburg. Engravings of these works are included in the widely distributed, illustrated oeuvre catalogue with the title Beeld-snyders Kunst-kabinet which was published in 1727, only a few years before Xavery carved the present busts.¹⁰¹⁰Mattys Pool, Beeld-snyders Kunst-kabinet door den vermaarden Beeldsnijder Francis van Bossuit, in ivoor gesneden en geboetseerd, Amsterdam 1727, pls. XCV (Lucretia) and XCVII (Cleopatra). As regards the angle of the heads and the facial expressions, the busts in question bear striking similarities with Bossuit’s creations, which no doubt formed examples for Xavery. The only appreciable difference is that the mouth of Van Bossuit’s Lucretia is slightly open, whereas in Xavery’s version it is closed. Terracotta variants of both busts, bearing Xavery’s monogram, still exist.¹¹¹¹Brussels, private collection, height 10 cm. Photos in the Jan Baptist Xavery documentation file, RKD-Netherlands Institute of Art History, The Hague. With thanks to Dennis de Kool. They may have served as models for the ivories, because, according to the inscribed year, he modelled the bust of Cleopatra in 1731 and of Lucretia in 1732, so prior to the ivories.

As individual subjects, Lucretia and Cleopatra occupied only a minor place in Dutch visual art and literature from the sixteenth century onwards. From the second half of the seventeenth century the two tragic heroines do occur, also as a pair, the foremost sculptural example being the set of garden sculptures by Rombout Verhulst (1624-1698) in the Prinsenhof (Delft).¹²¹²P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, fig. 533 (prior to damage). Verhulst portrayed the women as each other’s opposites, with the virtuous spouse, Lucretia, emotionally conducting her act of despair occasioned by her violation by Sextus Tarquinius, and Cleopatra, the unchaste lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony performing her suicide with a degree of equanimity, as she feels everyone has abandoned her. Accordingly, like the laughing and weeping philosophers Heraclitus and Democritus, they represent two contrasting emotional states.¹³¹³P.M. Fischer, Ignatius en Jan van Logteren: Beeldhouwers en stuckunstenaars in het Amsterdam van de 18e eeuw, Alphen aan de Rijn 2005, pp. 514-15.

However, Van Bossuit interchanged the traditional emotional states of the women and represented Cleopatra as the one in despair.¹⁴¹⁴An interesting exception is that engravings XCV and XCVI in Beeld-snyders Kunst-kabinet depict more or less the same woman in the same pose, but one as Lucretia with a dagger and the other as Cleopatra with a serpent. Since Xavery took Van Bossuit’s interpretations as examples, he will have adopted this; assuming he was concerned with a specific identification. So, in that case, it is Lucretia (BK-1970-37-B) who is taking her life with head held high, while Cleopatra is affected by more pathos: head averted, eyes shut and mouth slightly open. Xavery probably gave Lucretia a closed mouth – unlike in Van Bossuit’s example – to heighten the contrast with Cleopatra, who is overcome by emotion.

The earliest known mention of Xavery’s busts is the auction catalogue of the collection of the Amsterdam collector Jan de Bosch which was sold in 1825. The recorded height of 9 p[alm] (hands) 4 d[uim] (inches) must have been an error caused by the introduction of the metric system in the Netherlands five years earlier. In fact, it should probably have been 9.4 centimetres, a measurement corresponding exactly with the heads, including the ivory pin with which they were fixed to the pedestal. The catalogue also notes that the present ‘palmwood [boxwood] pedestals’ were made by a certain Kampman. Perhaps this was the late-eighteenth century cabinetmaker J. Kampman.¹⁵¹⁵For a Louis XV top-bureau by this maker, see sale Amsterdam (Van Nie Antiquairs), 6-15 August 2011, nos. 143-47. The glass domes under which the busts were displayed at that time are missing.

Later in the nineteenth century the heads were in the collection of Anna Louisa Agatha (‘Annewies’) van Loon-van Winter (1793-1877), who probably had inherited them from her father, the famous art collector Pieter van Winter (1745-1807). At a later stage, they might have been inherited by her grandson, Willem Hendrik van Loon (1855-1935), since the art historian Adolph Staring noted that this family member owned a number of ‘ivory figures’ by Xavery.¹⁶¹⁶The Hague, RKD-Netherlands Institute of Art History, archive Adolph Staring, no. NL-HaRKD.0387.

The English firm Wedgwood introduced ceramic relief medallions around 1785 in which Cleopatra forms a pair with her lover Mark Antony.¹⁷¹⁷See sale London (Sotheby’s), 30 November 1971, no. 246 and sale London (Christie’s), 25 September 1978, no. 186. The striking similarities with Xavery’s rendering in Amsterdam with respect to the averted angle of Cleopatra’s head, her facial expression and the way her cloak is draped over her head, suggest that this was based on a design by Xavery.¹⁸¹⁸These may have been (casts of) the few known 17.5 inch-high marble busts of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, known from a sale catalogue, in the collection of the Amsterdam burgomaster Joachim Rendorp (1728-1792), Amsterdam (Van der Schley et al.), 9 July 1794, pp. 74-75, nos. 34 and 35.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 381b, with earlier literature; C. Theuerkauff, ‘Zu Francis van Bossuit (1635-1692): “Beeldsnyder in yvoor”ʼ, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 37 (1975), pp. 119-82, esp. pp. 153-54

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'Jan Baptist Xavery, Bust of Lucretia, The Hague, 1734', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200116068