Modelled and fired. Finished with a yellowish-brown final coat.

The right hand of the child on the right is missing. A crack runs across its shoulders.

…; sale collection Emanuël Sandoz (1758-1818), burgomaster of Delft, The Hague (Scheurleer), 20-30 December 1819, nos. 145-147 (BK-NM-9278 to -9280), to the Royal Library, The Hague; transferred to the museum, 1890

Object number: BK-NM-9280

The sculptor Willem Hendrik van der Wall (1716-1790) trained in his native city of Utrecht with Jacob Cressant (1685-after 1759/before 1766) and later in The Hague with Jan Baptist Xavery (1697-1742).¹¹For Van der Wall, see L. Helmus, ‘Petrus en Paulus: Willem Hendrik van der Wall (Utrecht 1716-Utrecht 1790)’, Bulletin van de Vereniging Rembrandt 14 (2004), pp. 9-12 and D. de Kool, ‘Willem Hendrik van der Wall (1716-1790): Een verdienstelijk beeldhouwer uit Utrecht’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 2014, pp. 162-75. He adopted the style of his teachers: a Flemish-French orientated baroque, which, particularly in his religious work, was still firmly based on seventeenth-century Roman models of followers of Bernini. With Van der Wall that Roman influence is evident in his preference for lavishly draped garments and a pronounced contrapposto in his figures’ poses, reflected in his terracotta Neptune of 1757 (BK-1953-22). However, the fact that the sculptor was not a slavish imitator of tried and tested formulas is evidenced by the five panels depicting Christ and the Evangelists that he made in 1765 for the pulpit of the Sint-Catharinakerk in Utrecht, now to be found in Museum Catharijneconvent.²²Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, inv. nos. ABM bh424 to -428. In that work Van der Wall combined the baroque style of figures with a contrasting flat background and fashionable rococo framework. In his later years, the baroque would increasingly make way for a calmer style, which can be seen as heralding neo-Classicism. The three figures featured here were made quite late in Van der Wall’s career. However, these personifications of the three Christian virtues: Faith (BK-NM-9278), Hope (BK-NM-9279), and Love (shown here), display little evidence of that restraint. The contrapposto of the women’s bodies and heads, the limbs twisting in opposing directions and the lavish drapery are typical for Van der Wall’s baroque style of the 1750s and 1760s. These are probably replicas of older sculptures by the artist – that does at least apply for the Caritas (Charity or Love), which is a variant of a somewhat smaller piece in the Centraal Museum dating from 1755.³³Utrecht, Centraal Museum, inv. no. 12272. J. Klinckaert, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, vol. 3, Beeldhouwkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1997, no. 378. The composition of the first Caritas is in fact based fairly literally on a terracotta with the same subject by Jacob Cressant in the Hessische Landesmuseum in Kassel.⁴⁴See Bildindex, object no. 1048365. J. Klinckaert, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, vol. 3, Beeldhouwkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1997, p. 608; A.E. Brinckmann, Barock-Bozzetti, vol. 3, Niederlandische und franzosische Bildhauer/Netherlandish & French Sculptors, Frankfurt am Main 1925, pp. 76-77, pls. 40 and 41. Van der Wall could have acquired the statuette from his teacher’s workshop when Cressant left for Paris in 1750. The fact that he modelled the same Caritas twenty years later, with only a few alterations, reflects the conservative taste in religious sculpture rather than Van der Wall’s lack of innovation.

Intentionally or not, the terracottas give the impression of preliminary designs or scale models for larger works, but in this case they are autonomous cabinet sculptures – a genre that was very popular in the eighteenth century. Van der Wall was specifically famed for his ‘attractive groups in marble, and some Statuettes, as well as sculpted work which attest to the man’s uncommon artistic talent’.⁵⁵fraaije groepjes van marmer, en enkele Beeldjes, alsmede boetseersels, die van ‘smans meer dan gewone kunsttalent getuigen, see R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw, vol. 2, Haarlem 1817, p. 140. The fact that in the early nineteenth century the three small figures belonged in the collection of Emanuël Sandoz, burgomaster of Delft, again confirms that they were intended as cabinet sculptures. The allegorical subject of the three Christian virtues was accepted in both Protestant and Roman Catholic circles.

Frits Scholten (updated by Bieke van der Mark in 2025)
This entry was originally published in R. Baarsen et al., Netherlandish Art in the Rijksmuseum 1700-1800, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2006, no. 76

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 421c; L. Helmus, ‘Petrus en Paulus: Willem Hendrik van der Wall (Utrecht 1716-Utrecht 1790)’, Bulletin van de Vereniging Rembrandt 14 (2004), pp. 9-12, esp. p. 11; F. Grijzenhout and C. van Tuyll van Serooskerken (eds.), Edele eenvoud: Neo-classicisme in Nederland 1765-1800, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum/Teylers Museum) 1989, no. 93; Scholten in R. Baarsen et al., Netherlandish Art in the Rijksmuseum 1700-1800, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2006, no. 76c; J. Klinckaert, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, vol. 3, Beeldhouwkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1997, p. 607; D. de Kool, ‘Willem Hendrik van der Wall (1716-1790): Een verdienstelijk beeldhouwer uit Utrecht’, Jaarboek Oud-Utrecht 2014, pp. 162-75, esp. pp. 164-65

F. Scholten, 2025, 'Willem Hendrik van der Wall, Love, One of the Three Christian Virtues, Utrecht, 1775', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035863