Like so many other artists, he belonged to an Anabaptist family that fled north from the Spanish-occupied Southern Netherlands when Roelant was about 4 years old and settled in Haarlem around 1585. After his schooling, Savery traveled to Prague around 1604, where he became court painter of the Emperors Rudolf II (1552–1612) and Mathias (1557–1619), who had made their court a center of mannerist art Between 1606-1608 he traveled to Tyrol to study plants.
Gillis d"Hondecoeter became his pupil.
Before 1616 Savery moved back to Amsterdam, and lived in the Sint Antoniesbreestraat. In 1618 he settled in Utrecht, where he joined the artist"s guild a year later.
In 1621 Savery bought a large house on the Boterstraat in Utrecht. The house had a large garden with flowers and plants, where a number of fellow painters, like Adam Willaerts were frequent visitors.
Savery had kept his house in Amsterdam, and had one child baptized in Nieuwe Kerk (Amsterdam).
In the 1620s he was one of the most successful painters in Utrecht, but later his life got troubled, perhaps because of heavy drinking. Though he would have pupils until the late 1630s, amongst which Allaert van Everdingen and Roelant Roghman, he went bankrupt in 1638 and died in Utrecht half a year later. Savery is famous for being the most prolific and influential illustrator of the extinct dodo, having made at least ten depictions, often showing it in the lower corners.
A famous painting of his from 1626, now called Edwards" Dodo as it was once owned by the ornithologist George Edwards, has since become the standard image of a dodo.
lieutenant is housed in the Natural History Museum, London. This and his other images are the source for many other dodo illustrations.