XAVERY, Pieter - b. 1647 Antwerpen, d. ~1680 Leiden - WGA

XAVERY, Pieter

(b. 1647 Antwerpen, d. ~1680 Leiden)

Pieter Xavery (Xaverij), Dutch sculptor. Little is known about this artist, except that he was originally from Antwerp and worked in Leiden.

Modelling in clay was not a genre much practiced in the 17th-century Netherlands. Xavery was an exception, he worked almost exclusively in clay. In the short time he was active in Leiden he made a number of terracotta statues which were intended as true cabinet structures. He generally took ordinary people and images of everyday life, such as work and play, as his themes. However, he also made several mythological and biblical scenes which clearly betrays his Flemish origin. Another part of his oeuvre consists of comic or farcical genre scenes.

Bacchanal

All of Xavery’s known dated works were done between 1670 and 1674. Some of these works serve to ornament building in Leiden, but he really made his name as a modeller of small terracotta groups.

In the Bacchanal the central figure is Silenus, a wise but inevitably drunken old man who was considered to be responsible for the education of Bacchus. The donkey which Silenus traditionally rides has stumbled over a panther, which is also part of Bacchus’s entourage. A satyr holds up the drunken Silenus.

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Bacchus

This statuette, together with a statuette of a faun in the same collection, belonged to the same ensemble of which the group of Bacchanal was part. They have the same late 18th-century wooden bases which would indicate that they were not separated only after this. Additional surviving figures from this ensemble of Bacchants are not known.

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Faun

This statuette, together with a statuette of Bacchus in the same collection, belonged to the same ensemble of which the group of Bacchanal was part. They have the same late 18th-century wooden bases which would indicate that they were not separated only after this. Additional surviving figures from this ensemble of Bacchants are not known.

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