Modelled and fired. Finished with a final coat in grey.

The head, both forearms and part of the plinth are missing.

…; donated to the museum, with BK-NM-9353, by the Maatschappij Felix Meritis, Amsterdam, 1891

Object number: BK-NM-9355

Credit line: Gift of the Maatschappij Felix Meritis

This terracotta model was a gift, together with a comparable piece (BK-NM-9354), to the museum in 1891, from Maatschappij Felix Meritis in Amsterdam, a society devoted to the promotion of the arts and science, which had been dissolved two years earlier (see the entry on BK-NM-9191). The works might have belonged in the study collection of this society. The two rather decrepit figures have the same dimensions and the same square base, rounded on one side. The children are seated in more or less mirror-imaged poses, meaning they could have been pendants. In view of the pronounced downward gaze of BK-NM-9354, they would probably have been models to be placed high up – on top of a façade or tall cupboard, for instance. Each child would possibly have depicted a particular allegory and held attributes in its missing hands.

The other child, whose head has survived has large eyes, chubby cheeks, a thin-lipped, smiling mouth and pronounced chin – somewhat akin to the physiognomy of the putti of the sculptor Michiel Emanuel Shee (cf. BK-1963-24) who worked in The Hague and Amsterdam. A comparable head – excavated in Amsterdam – though with thicker lips, belonged until 1998 in the collection of Edwin van Drecht, Amsterdam.¹¹Ex collection Jan van de Waals (1947-2009), Amsterdam, prior to that, until 1998, in the collection of Edwin van Drecht, Amsterdam, photo in Object File RMA. Further research is needed to determine whether it is the missing head of the putto featured here. Two lids covering two eighteenth-century garden urns in the garden of the Stadhouderlijk Hof in Leeuwarden are decorated with reclining putti, which are so similar in style to the two Amsterdam children that they may be ascribed to the same maker.²²Oral communication Frits Scholten, 2013. Photos in Object File RMA. The identity of the sculptor is not known, but in view of the kinship with Shee’s putti and, to a lesser extent, those of Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742), it is likely that the maker was from The Hague or Amsterdam, in the first half of the eighteenth century. Interestingly, the terracotta of the headless child has a greyish final coat and an old inventory number, whereas the other, more intact figure is untreated and unnumbered. Perhaps at some stage the decision had been taken to remove the final coat and the number to improve its appearance.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 390, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'anonymous, Seated Child, The Hague, c. 1700 - c. 1750', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035826