Jacob SAVERY (Courtrai, circa 1565 - Amsterdam, 1603) Orpheus charming the animals Oil on oak panel, one board, reinforced Signed and dated 'IAQVES / SAVERIJ FE / 1601' lower right Orpheus charming the animals, oil on oak panel, signed and dated, by J. Savery 18.50 x 36.61 in. 47 x 93 cm Provenance: Anonymous sale; Amsterdam, P. Brandt, 27 November 1979, no. 5 ; Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam, in 1980; Collection J. F. van Santen, Vancouver, 1985; Johnny Van Haeften, London, 2001; Robert Noortman, 2005; Acquired from the latter by the current owner; European private collection Exhibitions: Exhibited at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 1980, according to a label on the reverse; Roelant Savery in seiner Zeit (1576-1639), Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, 28 September - 24 November 1985, Utrecht, Centraal Museum, 21 December 1985 - 16 February 1986, p.182-183, no. 93, repr. p. 195 Fables of the Flemish Landscape, Lille, Palais des beaux-arts, 6 October 2012-14 January 2013, p. 288-289, no. 83 The Empire of Imagination and Science of Rudolf II, The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Fukuoka City Museum, Fukuoka, 3 November 2017-24 December 2017, The Bunkamura City of Art, Tokyo, 6 January 2018-11 March 2018, Sagawa Art Museum, Moriyama, 21 March 2018-27 May 2018, p. 91, n° 49 Bibliography: Charles Roelofsz, "Orpheus en de dieren" van Jacob Savery", Tableau 2, no. 6, summer 1980, pp. 312-316 Jan Briels, Peintres flamands au cerceau du Siècle d'Or hollandais 1585-1630 avec biographies en annexe, Anvers, 1997, p. 146, p. 376, n° 216 Olga Kotkova, "Roelandt Savery aan het keizerlijke hof in Praag", in cat. exp. Roelandt Savery 1576-1639, Prague and Kortrijk, 2010-2011, p. 47, repr. There is something magical about this spellbinding image by Jacob Savery: the deep shadows, the landscape that stretches as far as the eye can see, the strange animals... As we follow the ray of light coming from the left of the painting, our eyes come to the figure of Orpheus. His story is taken from one of the legends recounted by the Roman poet Ovid in his book The Metamorphoses. Endowed with a marvellous voice that he accompanied with a melody played on his lyre, Orpheus' singing attracted animals and birds who came to listen to him. The gods themselves were charmed by his music, and the poet Ovid recounts how the trees left the forests to come and hear him and offer him shade. In this remarkable large-format panel, Jacob Savery tells us this story and seduces us with his multitude of animals set in an idyllic landscape. All live in harmony to the sound of Orpheus' lyre. Ducks, geese and swans splash about in a small stream. Ostriches, camels, peacocks and a magnificent grey horse turn towards Orpheus, seduced and bewitched. Above, the birds gather: a flock of geese, a brightly coloured parrot and long-legged storks. Orpheus' music is not the only sound emanating from the painting: the animals, the flowing stream and the wind in the trees are all melodies accompanying the hero. This subject shows Jacob Savery's skill at painting animals. Within his body of work, two other iconographies give the artist the opportunity to reveal his talent as an animal painter: Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden1. In order to offer a universal approach encompassing both local and exotic species, Jacob Savery had to draw on illustrations from naturalist works published in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, such as Conrad Gessner's Historiae animalium liber, published in Frankfurt in 1585, and Ulisse Aldrovandi's Ornithologia, hoc est de avibus historiae libri XII, printed in Bologna in 1599. Exotic species such as elephants, dromedaries, monkeys, ostriches and macaws could be seen in the Southern Netherlands. It was in Antwerp, a city with a first-rate port, that wild animals arrived from faraway lands to supply the city's menageries. As early as the 1570s, these exotic species were accurately depicted in the works of Maarten de Vos and Hans Bol, which bear witness to studies carried out from life. According to the Dutch art historian Karel van Mander, Jacob Savery trained with Hans Bol in Antwerp around 1580-1584. Like Bol, he was forced to migrate to the United Provinces because of the religious persecution in Flanders in the early 1580s, and moved to Haarlem in 1584. He ended his life in Amsterdam, where he settled in 1589. Our painting, signed and dated '1601', dates from this last period of his life. Following in Jacob's footsteps, his younger brother Roelandt, whose work was recently highlighted by an exhibition at the Musée du Louvre on the arts under the reign of Rudolf II in Prague, continued his elder brother's work, painting earthly paradises teeming with various animals, as in his painting of animals with ruins, now in the Oslo museum2. The subject of Orpheus charming the animals was a milestone in his body of work, since he devoted at least twenty-three paintings to it between 1603 and 1628. 1. We refer, for example, to the Garden of Eden (Kettwig, Girardet collection, fig. 1), Noah's Ark (attributed to Jacob Savery, private collection, 75.5 x 123.5 cm), or another version of Orpheus charming the animals (Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum, inv. GK 178, fig. 2). 2. Inv. no. NG.M.00019 Jacob SAVERY (Courtrai, circa 1565 - Amsterdam, 1603) 47 x 93 cm