Charity

Entry

This pair of reclining female figures, probably personifications of the theological virtues Charity (Caritas, shown here) – with two children – and Faith (Fides, BK-1957-8-B), – with the books of the Old and New Testaments and possibly originally with a cross in her open right hand – was described in 1973 as work from the circle of Hubert Gerhard (c. 1540/50-before 1621).¹ There are certainly sufficient grounds for this attribution: the two Virtues are similar to Gerhard’s female types from the last decade of the sixteenth century, when working for the Bavarian courts at Munich and Augsburg. The poses, faces, hairstyles and diadems of the Virtues, for example, echo the reclining females on the great Augustus Fountain in Augsburg.² There is also a clear stylistic similarity to Gerhard’s Hebe in Detroit.³ Yet differences can also be discerned, including the more fluid treatment of the drapery folds, the less sharply defined facial features, and above all the figural type of Charity’s children, which in no way correspond to Gerhard’s usual putti and angels. The Virtues also lack the soft, sublime, dance-like qualities of the ideal female idiom that Gerhard and the painter Friedrich Sustris (1540-1599) disseminated at the Bavarian court. In her recent monograph on Gerhard and his assistant Carlo del Palagio (1540-1598), Diemer therefore justifiably rejected the two Amsterdam statuettes as possible works by these sculptors.⁴

For the authorship of the bronzes we should look for a sculptor who was directly influenced by Hubert Gerhard in or shortly after the 1590s. This is quite problematic because there is still insufficient clarity regarding his imitators.⁵ There are too few parallels with the work of his pupil Caspar Gras (1585-1674), as a comparison with the river goddesses on his Leopold Fountain in Innsbruck shows.⁶ The similarities to the work of Hans Krumper (c. 1570-1634), the most important bronze sculptor in Munich after Gerhard’s departure, are likewise not convincing. Leeuwenberg, it is true, pointed to the connection with Krumper’s reclining female figures on the façade of the Residenz in Munich, but aside from the similar pose this comparison does not stand up. The relation in style to a standing bronze Virtue, which must have originated from the Gerhard’s immediate circle in Munich,⁷ is more persuasive. A possible candidate could be Gerhard’s brother Heinrich Gerhard (c. 1550-1608), who worked closely with him in his Munich period and stayed behind as sculptor for the Bavarian duke, Maximilian, after Gerhard went to Mergentheim in 1599.⁸ Heinrich died in 1608, and regrettably we know virtually nothing of what he made as an independent sculptor in Munich in the last eight years of his life. Given his position as Pildpossierer (figure modeller), he must in any case have been capable of developing and executing his own inventions. These, we can assume, bore a close resemblance to the style of his celebrated brother, Hubert.

The original function of the two bronze Virtues is unknown. In view of their size and pose, they most likely served as sculptural decoration on a piece of furniture featuring some kind of architectural facade with a broken pediment at the top, conceivably similar to the Borghese-Windsor Cabinet of circa 1620, a piece likewise surmounted by two recumbent female figures in (partly gilded) bronze.⁹ The Fides and Caritas would have adorned the slanted sides of such a structure, with a standing or seated personification of the missing third theological virtue, Hope (Spes), in the middle. The Borghese-Windsor Cabinet was built in Rome, but furniture with bronze or silver figures was also found in other places, including the court in Munich, as we see from Sustris’s designs for the former high altar of the chapel in the Residenz.¹⁰ In view of the religious iconography of the two Virtues, a placement on the pediment of a tabernacle or small altar is most probable.

Frits Scholten, 2005 (updated by Bieke van der Mark in 2024)
This entry was originally published in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 36