Lot 173: A Near-Lifesize German Sandstone Allegorical Group of Charity, by Balthasar Permoser (1651-1732) and Workshop

circa 1710-1720, Dresden the heavily draped female figure with a crown of wheat and holding a suckling child in her left arm, another child at her back weaping and clutching her drapery.

measurements note height 61 3/4in.; 157cm.

RELATED LITERATURES. Asche, Balthasar Permoser, Berlin 1978, nos. 126-129, 151, 192.

Sold Sotheby's London, July 8, 2003, lot 134

Sigfred Asche in his important study of Balthasar Permoser discusses and illustrates several groups of Charity, in marble and sandstone, by this famous Dresden court sculptor to Augustus the Strong, King of Saxony. The first of those groups, dating from 1711/1712, is from the tomb of Princess Lichtenburg in the Freiberg Cathedral (Asche, op.cit., pl.192) and was commissioned by the king for his mother. The present sculpture is closely related to this group in overall composition, the inclusion of the weaping child at her feet, Permoser's singular facial type and his depiction of drapery. Here, the artist repeats the oval-form face with large eyes, centered by a broad nose with a straight bridge. The drapery is not naturalistic but rather takes on a life of its own: moving, clinging, floating and curling at every angle. The woman's head, in the present group, further echoes one of the sculptor's best known figures, that of Ceres, dating from 1714-15, carved in sandstone and placed on the façade of the Zwinger in Dresden. After an important period in Italy from 1675 to 1690 where he gained a profound knowledge of the Italian baroque, Permoser returned to his native Germany where he worked in a variety of materials. He produced exquisite small-scale carvings in ebony, ivory and other precious materials for the court (now in the Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden). At the same time, he and his workshop were employed on numerous large scale carvings in both marble and stone for the palaces in and around the Saxon capital.