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Lot Essay
Simon Troger was born in the East Tirol and worked in Meran and Innsbruck in his early years. By 1726 he had moved and was registered in Munich. His most important patron eventually became the Bavarian Kurfürst Maximilian III (1727-1737) and many of his groups are still in the Munich collections. Maximilian III also gave Troger's figures as diplomatic gifts and this probably accounts for significant Troger groups now in Dresden's Green Vaults, in the Romanov collections at the Hermitage, and the Danish royal collections of Rosenborg Palace in Copenhagen. Despite, or perhaps because of, their humble themes they were prized by aristocratic and royal collectors. This was surely an irony appreciated by the 18th-century artist and patron alike, since these raggedly dressed figures, made of a princely material, were assembled in the most celebrated European Kunstkammern.
The condition of the two figures is excellent. They both still retain their original glass eyes which animate the visages to an astonishing degree. Sprenger-Kranz details - and illustrates - the painstaking process whereby Troger drilled through the back of each head to install the glass eyes from the inside of the figures, rather than pasting them on the surface of the ivories, so that the lids overlap the glass eyes to such realistic effect (op. cit., pp. 15-17).
The condition of the two figures is excellent. They both still retain their original glass eyes which animate the visages to an astonishing degree. Sprenger-Kranz details - and illustrates - the painstaking process whereby Troger drilled through the back of each head to install the glass eyes from the inside of the figures, rather than pasting them on the surface of the ivories, so that the lids overlap the glass eyes to such realistic effect (op. cit., pp. 15-17).