Winged Putto Personifying Spring (Flora)

Entry

The winged figure of a girl is in contrapposto stance on a square plinth and forms the mirror image of that of her pendant Winged Putto Personifying Autumn (Bacchus) (BK-1959-32-B). She leans against a pedestal, the base of which projects over the plinth. On her head, which is tilted upwards, she wears a wreath of flowers. Her left arm is placed around a vase of flowers standing on the pedestal, while her right hand, holding a small bouquet of flowers, rests on the other side of the vase. A cloth draped over her left arm hangs behind the vase and pedestal, and flutters down her back and right hip.

Statues of putti, kinderkens (little children) as they were called, were exceedingly popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Their small size also made them eminently suited for smaller city gardens, where they were generally arranged in groups of four or five, having traditional allegorical themes like the Four Seasons, the Four Elements or the Five Senses. This small Flora and her pendant Bacchus may have been part of a series of four seasons, but if so they must have been separated from the set before 1744. In that year the two pieces were described in the sale catalogue of the estate of the painter-architect Isaac de Moucheron (1667-1744) with no mention of an accompanying Summer and/or Winter.² Also, in the Teegelaar sale catalogue (1785) only Spring and Autumn were listed.³ So it would appear that the figures featured as a pendant pair of Flora and Bacchus from the start.

Jan van Logteren (1709-1745) was a son and pupil of Ignatius van Logteren (1685-1732), one of the most productive Dutch sculptors from the early eighteenth century.⁴ After his father’s death, Jan carried on the flourishing workshop. The Van Logterens’ activities developed in a period when demand for decorative sculpture to enhance the house and garden burgeoned. They did so with an impressive production of façade decorations, garden statuary and ornaments, lavish plasterwork, attractively modelled mantelpieces and all manner of decorative carving for townhouses and country residences for their clientele, who were primarily from Amsterdam. Playful putti formed a recurring motif in this versatile oeuvre that the Van Logterens deployed with great panache.

The signature on Flora’s pendant Bacchus and the strong stylistic similarities between the work of father and son account for the fact that for many years Flora was assumed to be a work by Ignatius. Moreover, the two pieces were described as such in the sale catalogue of the Teegeler collection.⁵ However, the catalogue of Isaac de Moucheron’s effects dating from over forty years earlier, states specifically that Flora was not made by Ignatius, but by Jan.⁶ That information can be assumed to be correct, as De Moucheron and the Van Logterens were friends and the sale of De Moucheron’s effects took place during Jan’s life. Slight differences support this assumption. For instance, the plinth on which Bacchus stands shows chisel marks and higher than Flora’s smoothly polished plinth. Also, Flora, with her dancing pose, half-spread wings and fluttering loincloth, is less static than the little Bacchus. Fischer suggested that Isaac de Moucheron had perhaps purchased the Bacchus from Ignatius himself, or else from his estate, after which he commissioned Jan to produce a Flora to form a pendant.⁷

The surface of the marble is in remarkably good condition. So the figure has not spent much time – if any – unprotected in the open air, but stood in a hall, garden room or loggia, for example. That can also be deduced from the fact that the concomitant base mentioned in the Teegeler catalogue, was not made of stone but of wood (‘on its wooden Termé’).

Titia de Haseth Möller, 2025