Two Putti Romping

Entry

Over the years, this Amsterdam sculpture has been attributed to various sculptors. In the inventories of the stadholder collection and the Nationale Konst-Gallery, the group was initially recorded as a work by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) and later as by Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742).³ Leeuwenberg rightly linked the sculptor to the artistic sphere of François du Quesnoy (1597-1643).⁴ This Flemish sculptor was active in Rome, where, in the 1620s, he popularized the plumpish putto type from which the two romping lads of the present group are clearly derived.⁵ The rocky base on which they stand is also very similar to that of Du Quesnoy’s renowned statue of Cupid Carving his Bow in the Bode Museum in Berlin (c. 1626).⁶ The visual motif of wrestling putti – dating back to models from antiquity but again revived in the painted repertoires of Guido Reni and others⁷ – also appears in other earlier works by the same sculptor, i.e. in relief form as part of a larger theme, for example, in combination with an obstinate billy goat (BK-2014-28), and possibly also as an independent subject rendered in three dimensions.⁸ For instance, a (plaster cast of a) figure attributed to Du Quesnoy is depicted in a drawing by Jan de Bisschop (RP-T-1913-90). For the present composition, Alessandro Algardi’s famous Eros and Anteros group from 1630 likely formed a direct source of inspiration (fig. a).⁹ The poses of the fighting youths, with Eros pushing his opponent Anteros backwards to the ground, are highly similar. In the Amsterdam version, however, the attributes (blindfold, bow and quiver of arrows) and wings of Algardi’s mythological children are omitted, thus allowing a broader interpretation.

The present group was in the possession of the renowned collector of antiquities, Frederik Count De Thoms (1696-1746).¹⁰ As a diplomat with an international career, De Thoms travelled frequently throughout Europe. During the 1730s, prior to settling in Leiden, he spent a great deal of his time in Italy, where he established the core of his collection. In all probability, De Thoms acquired the present marble group in Italy. An identical group (60 x 47 cm), today preserved at the Palazzo Corsini in Rome (fig. b), was long mistaken as a Roman work from the second century.¹¹ In 2008, a variant of the same composition – differing solely in minor details – was sold in the United Kingdom.¹² All three marble groups were carved in the same, almost mechanical way, most likely in the same workshop and in a certain number of editions. This may quite conceivably have occurred in Rome in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, produced at the request of interested collectors like De Thoms or as a souvenir for travellers making their ‘grand tour’ of Italy.¹³

Bieke van der Mark, 2024