Jan Baptist Xavery
1697–1742 · Spanish Netherlands, Dutch Republic · Baroque, Rococo
The story
Jan Baptist Xavery arrived in The Hague from Antwerp around 1721, a sculptor in his mid-twenties who had already worked in Vienna and travelled in Italy. He had learned the trade first from his father, a sculptor, and then in the Antwerp workshop of Michiel van der Voort. In The Hague he paid his guild dues, became a citizen in 1725 and married Maria Christina Robart the same year.
He worked in every size and material his patrons asked for. There were allegorical figures of Prudence and Justice for the old town hall of The Hague, garden statues, chimney pieces and tombs, and small figures in ivory and boxwood. In Haarlem the marble relief beneath the great organ of the Grote Kerk is his. His most important client was William IV, Prince of Orange, for whom he carved at the palace of Huis ten Bosch and made a statue of Mars for the courtyard of Breda Castle.
Two of his sons, Frans and Jacob, became painters, and his daughters are said to have painted too. Xavery died in July 1742, at the age of 45.
