Piggyback group, back to back
Depicting a young boy carrying another smaller boy on his back. Fully cast bronze with fine golden brown patina. H with plinth 12.2 cm.
After Leonhard Kern (1588 - 1662), 17th C. or later.
According to Johannes Zahlten, all twelve of Leonhard Kern's surviving small bronzes were created around 1635/40 (Bemerkungen zu Kunstproduktion und Sammlungswesen im 17. Jahrhundert, angeregt durch die Kleinplastiken Leonhard Kerns, in: Siebenmorgen, op. cit., p. 41). Where the bronzes were cast can only be speculated. His adventurous life as a sculptor led Leonhard Kern, who was born in Forchtenberg in Hohenlohe, via Würzburg to Rome, from there via Austria to the Palatine court in Heidelberg, to Nuremberg and Schwäbisch Hall, where he finally settled with his studio and obviously felt relatively safe - in the midst of the Thirty Years' War.
Provenance
Belgian private collection.
Literature
Cf. Grünenwald, Leonhard Kern. Ein Bildhauer des Barock, Schwäbisch Hall 1969, cat. 43, for the specimen from the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg.
Cf. Grünenwald, Leonhard Kern. Ein Bericht über neue Forschungen zu seinem Werk, in: Jahrbuch des Historischen Vereins für Württembergisch-Franken, 70/1987, no. 4, 33.
Cf. Siebenmorgen (ed.), Leonhard Kern (1588 - 1662) Meisterwerke der Bildhauerei für die Kunstkammern Europas, Sigmaringen 1988, cat. no. 117, for the identical group in the Hällisch-Fränkisches Museum Schwäbisch-Hall.
See also Leonhard Kern und Europa. Die Kaiserliche Schatzkammer Wien im Dialog mit der Sammlung Würth (exhibition in Schwäbisch Hall), Künzelsau 2021, p. 206, cat. no. 67.
An identical group auctioned by Sotheby's New York on 27th November 1981, lot 6.