Hollow, direct cast in one piece, with several flaws and gas porosity visible all over the surface. A number of threaded plugs have been inserted into pre-drilled holes to repair casting flaws. All of the detailing, including the punching of the draperies and cushion, was finished in the wax. Two holes in the lower back section of the figure were also made in the wax, indicating that from the outset it was intended to be fixed on to a piece of furniture. The gilding of the drapery and accessories is applied rather carelessly. There is no gilding on the back of the figure.
Alloy quaternary alloy with tin, some zinc and some lead; copper with impurities (Cu 92.26%; Zn 1.56%; Sn 3.70%; Pb 1.17%; Sb 0.52%; As 0.16%; Fe 0.27%; Ni 0.35%; Ag 0.20%; Au 0.06%).

R. van Langh 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 on p. 166

The gilding of the draperies is partly retouched with modern paint.

…; collection Sir Anthony M.L. Cope; his sale, London (Sotheby’s), 24 April 1956, no. 73, BK-1957-8-A, £ 520 for both; …; from the dealer M.H. Drey, London, with BK-1957-8-A, £ 700 for both, to the museum, 1957

Object number: BK-1957-8-B

This pair of reclining female figures, probably personifications of the theological virtues virtues Faith (Fides, shown here), – with the books of the Old and New Testaments and possibly originally with a cross in her open right hand – and Charity (Caritas, BK-1957-8-A) – with two children – was described in 1973 as work from the circle of Hubert Gerhard (c. 1540/50-before 1621).¹¹J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 204. 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.²²D. Diemer, Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio: Bronzeplastiker der Spätrenaissance, 2 vols., Berlin 2004, vol. 2, no. G 8. There is also a clear stylistic similarity to Gerhard’s Hebe in Detroit.³³Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. no. 59.123, see D. Diemer, Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio: Bronzeplastiker der Spätrenaissance, 2 vols., Berlin 2004, vol. 2, no. G 24. 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.⁴⁴D. Diemer, Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio: Bronzeplastiker der Spätrenaissance, 2 vols., Berlin 2004, vol. 2, p. 180.

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.⁵⁵D. Diemer, Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio: Bronzeplastiker der Spätrenaissance, 2 vols., Berlin 2004, vol. 1, pp. 394-97. 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.⁶⁶G. Ammann et al., Ruhm und Sinnlichkeit, Innsbrucker Bronzeguss 1500-1650: Von Maximilian I. bis Erzherzog Ferdinand Karl, exh. cat. Innsbruck (Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum) 1996, no. 88. 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,⁷⁷V. Krahn (ed.), Von allen Seiten schön: Bronzen der Renaissance und des Barock, exh. cat. Berlin (Staatliche Museen, Skulpturensammlung) 1995, no. 172; D. Diemer, Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio: Bronzeplastiker der Spätrenaissance, 2 vols., Berlin 2004, vol. 2, no. G 27. 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 1599.⁸⁸D. Diemer, Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio: Bronzeplastiker der Spätrenaissance, 2 vols., Berlin 2004, vol. 1, pp. 148-49, 185-87, 375. 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.⁹⁹Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. no. 2016.66. 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.¹⁰¹⁰D. Diemer, Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio: Bronzeplastiker der Spätrenaissance, 2 vols., Berlin 2004, vol. 1, figs. 86, 134; H.R. Weihrauch, Europäische Bronzestatuetten, 15.-18. Jahrhundert, Braunschweig 1967, fig. 555. 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

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 204, with earlier literature; D. Diemer, Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio: Bronzeplastiker der Spätrenaissance, 2 vols., Berlin 2004, vol. 2, p. 180; Scholten 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

F. Scholten, 2024, 'circle of Hubert Gerhard and possibly Heinrich Gerhard, Faith, München, c. 1600 - c. 1610', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200115884