Roelandt Savery

ROELANT SAVERY Kortrijk 1576 - 1639 Utrecht Roelant Savery was born in Kortrijk (Courtrai) in 1576 and probably trained with his brother, Jacob Savery I (c.1565-1603) in Amsterdam. Around 1600 he produced delicate, miniaturist landscapes which combine decorative elements of Flemish Mannerism, such as feathery trees, with realistic peasant staffage taken from Jacob’s life studies. In 1600 Roelant painted two identical Flowers in a niche (Centraal Museum, Utrecht and private collection, New York) which are among the earliest surviving dated independent flower pieces made in the Netherlands. In 1604 Savery was invited by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) to his court in Prague, joining a select group of protégés including Bartholomeus Spranger, Hans von Aachen, the silversmith Paulus van Vianen, the sculptor Adriaen de Vries and a number of important composers and scientists. Rudolf, who was fascinated by alchemy and the secrets of the natural world, owned the most important Kunst- und Wunderkammer in Europe. Around 1606-7 he sent Savery into the Tyrol to draw ‘wonders’. His chalk drawings and paintings of cascades and mountains are among the earliest interpretations of this dramatic scenery. Many of Savery’s smaller compositions were drawn for prints published by Aegidius Sadeler. Savery made detailed drawings of peasants in the Prague markets, inscribing them naer het leven (from life). The Emperor Rudolf’s menageries and hunting grounds provided animal studies for The boar hunt (Alte Pinakothek) and other such scenes, as well as the material for later paintings like Orpheus charming the animals, 1610 (Städelsches Kunstinstitut and Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main). Savery continued to paint flowerpieces until the mid-1620s. Roelant Savery was in Amsterdam from 1613 until 1619, when he moved to Utrecht with his nephew and pupil Hans Savery II (1589-1654). Wilderness with the Temptation of St Anthony, 1617 (private collection, England) caters to Dutchmen’s taste for mountainous landscape beyond the realm of their everyday experience. He also produced assemblies of animals and birds with a Biblical or mythological element, such as Exotic birds with the abduction of Ganymede, c.1618 (Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna). Savery died in poverty in 1639. He was widely influential, helping to inspire the flowerpieces of Jacob Marrel, the animal paintings of Gillis d’Hondecoeter and the Scandinavian landscapes of Allaert van Everdingen. The work of Roelant Savery is represented in the National Gallery, London; the Hermitage, St Petersburg; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the Louvre, Paris; the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.