雅格·薩維里 I

Sold: Sotheby's, London, December 13, 1973, lot 88
Sir John Ropner, Bart.
Sold: Sotheby’s, New York, January 13, 1989, lot 54
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

An Zwollo, 'Jacob Savery, Nachfolger von Pieter Bruegel und Hans Bol,' in Pieter Bruegel und Seine Welt, Berlin 1979, pp. 204-5, reproduced, plate 79, fig. 2

This gouache ‘cabinet miniature’ is one of a small number of extremely fine works of this type made by Jacob Savery during the middle years of his short but distinguished career.  These small-scale gouaches, generally executed on vellum that was then laid down on panel, enjoyed considerable popularity in the southern Netherlands during the second half of the 16^th century, and also at the Prague court of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, where Jacob Savery’s younger brother, Roelandt, was to enjoy considerable success as a court painter.

One of the most brilliant Flemish exponents of this art form was Hans Bol, with whom Jacob Savery is thought to have studied during the early 1580s, and works such as Bol’s superb, luminous gouache of Meleager hunting the boar, signed and dated 1580, now in Dresden, must surely have had a powerful influence on his pupil.¹  In gouaches such as Savery’s Landscape with the story of Jephthah's daughter, in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (fig. 1), there is a great deal of Bol’s style to be seen, both in the gouache technique and in the overall approach to the composition.²  That drawing is dated in the 1580s, but unfortunately the last digit of the date is now illegible, as are the last two in the date that Savery seems to have inscribed towards the lower left of the present work.  When the latter last appeared at auction, however, An Zwollo plausibly proposed a dating of around 1590. 

Zwollo also identified the Biblical subject represented.  According to Exodus, Joshua and the Israelites were sent into battle against Amalek by Moses. Moses watched the battle from a nearby hill with Aaron and Hur, and for as long as he held his hands up, the Israelites prevailed. When Moses grew tired, Aaron and Hur held his hands up for him ‘and Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of his sword’ (Exodus XVII; 13).

Though Jacob Savery’s style was unquestionably influenced by that of his teacher Hans Bol, Savery had his own very personal technique and artistic vision, and in his drawings he also looked carefully at somewhat earlier Flemish sources, notably Pieter Bruegel the Elder.  Indeed, a whole group of exceptionally fine pen and ink landscape drawings by Savery were until relatively recently thought to be by Bruegel himself.³  Those highly distinctive drawings are characterised by the use of small dots and repeated, rhythmic strokes to create foliage, an approach that is paralleled in the rendering of foliage through dots of gouache that we see here.  The compositional motif of the imposing central tree is also something that originates in the art of Bruegel, and taken as a whole, this accomplished gouache represents a fascinating synthesis of the key influences that contributed to Jacob Savery’s style, and also a definitive statement of his own artistic ability and individuality.

1. Zwollo, op. cit., pl.88, fig. 17
2. Inv. SK-A-2117
3. See N. Orenstein (ed.), Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Drawings and Prints, exhibition catalogue, Rotterdam and New York 2001, nos. 126-129