A young boy (putto) mourning
Flemish School
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1600 - 1650
Materials
Bronze
Measurements
559 mm (Length)
Order this imageCollection
Kingston Lacy Estate, Dorset
NT 1255189
Summary
Sculpture, bronze; a mourning child; probably Flemish; c. 1600-1650. A bronze figure of a baby boy, who is shown mourning or weeping. The figure, which was probably made to form part of a funerary monument, would originally have been positioned seated rather than lying.
Full description
A large bronze figure of a naked baby boy, his legs crossed, right arm and hand crossed over his chest, left hand covering one eye, indicating grief or mourning. The boy is as if seated, although there is no fixing hole or any other evidence to indicate how the bronze was originally displayed. A very heavy bronze, with fragments of core material loose inside. The surfaces carefully worked, the hair gently matted. It is not known how or when this impressive bronze figure arrived at Kingston Lacy. It was recorded in the Front Hall in the inventory of the contents of the house drawn up in 1856, following the death of William Bankes’s brother George (1787-1856), as a ‘Bronze figure of crying boy’ (Dorset History Centre, Bankes Archive, D-BKL/G/B/29, fol. 55). The figure has traditionally been displayed in a lying position, in front of the large fireplace in the Entrance Hall to the house. It was however very probably originally conceived as a seated figure, almost certainly as part of some larger ensemble, presumably a tomb or monument. Putti of this general type are frequently found mounted on larger commemorative monuments from an early date, and were popular during the seventeenth century in northern Europe. Among outstanding examples are the energetic bronze putti that top the monument to William of Orange (William the Silent, 1533-84) in the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, made by the sculptor Hendrik de Keyser (1565-1621) and his son Peter and completed in 1621. In Britain, the French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur (c. 1580-1658) used bronze figures of small boys on some of his monuments, including two putti who form part of the partly dismantled monument to Sir Richard Leveson (d. 1604) in St. Peter’s Church , Wolverhampton (Avery 1982, pp. 160-61, 186, cat. 39, Pls. 62b, 42c), and who are now displayed lying on their backs, but were certainly made to be seated. A figure of a naked child who stands behind the bronze figure of the Virtue Charity on Le Sueur’s tomb for the Duke and Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, in Westminster Abbey, holds one hand to his face in the same way as the Kingston Lacy putto (Avery 1982, Pl. 53d). This is a classic gesture of grief and mourning, so strengthens the supposition that the Kingston Lacy boy was made to form part of some funerary monument. It is though puzzling that the figure has no holes or brackets that might have indicated how it would have been fixed onto a putative monument. In terms of its conception, modelling and finishing, the putto is superior to the work of Hubert Le Sueur. It is most likely to have been made in the Northern or Southern Netherlands in the first half of the seventeenth century. Jeremy Warren January 2024
Provenance
Recorded at Kingston Lacy in 1856; by descent to Ralph Bankes (1902-1981), by whom bequeathed in 1981.
Makers and roles
Flemish School, sculptor
References
Avery 1982: Charles Avery, 'Hubert Le Sueur, the 'unworthy Praxiteles' of King Charles I', The Walpole Society, Vol. 48 (1980-82), pp. 135-209