Lot Essay
Leonhard Kern was one of the most individual sculptors of the seventeenth century. His favoured media were wood - usually boxwood or pearwood - and ivory, and he generally worked on a small scale. There are instances of him drawing inspiration directly from earlier sculpture, as in Sleeping Woman after Giambologna (Grnewald, op. cit., pl. 5), and a group of Two Women Wrestling, after a model currently attributed to Barthlemy Prieur (Grnewald, op. cit., pl. 25), but even in these instances his versions are unmistakably idiosyncratic. Furthermore, both these works celebrate Kern's preferred subject, the female nude. Like his near-contemporary, Rubens, Kern's female ideal is grandly substantial, although comparison of the present piece with a work such as the Eve in Braunschweig (Grnewald, op. cit., pl. 61) underlines the fact that it is by no means his most extreme achievement.
The present work is not signed, and is given to Kern on stylistic grounds. A close analogy is provided by an ivory figure of Hebe-Temperance in the Berlin Museum (Theuerkauff, loc. cit.). It is clear that Kern had a workshop during his lifetime, and that his practice was carried on after his death by his son, Johan Jakob Kern (1626-1668), and by his nephew, Johan Georg Kern (1622-1698). Recently, careful attempts have been made to differentiate between autograph works by Leonhard Kern and the productions of his workshop and his followers, especially by Christian Theuerkauff in the wake of the Kern exhibition of 1988-1989 (Siebenmorgen, op. cit., pp. 38-74). It remains the case that the outstanding delicacy and virtuosity of the carving of the present statuette support the idea that it is not a schoolpiece, but is rather the work of the master himself.
The present work is not signed, and is given to Kern on stylistic grounds. A close analogy is provided by an ivory figure of Hebe-Temperance in the Berlin Museum (Theuerkauff, loc. cit.). It is clear that Kern had a workshop during his lifetime, and that his practice was carried on after his death by his son, Johan Jakob Kern (1626-1668), and by his nephew, Johan Georg Kern (1622-1698). Recently, careful attempts have been made to differentiate between autograph works by Leonhard Kern and the productions of his workshop and his followers, especially by Christian Theuerkauff in the wake of the Kern exhibition of 1988-1989 (Siebenmorgen, op. cit., pp. 38-74). It remains the case that the outstanding delicacy and virtuosity of the carving of the present statuette support the idea that it is not a schoolpiece, but is rather the work of the master himself.