Jan-Pieter I Van Baurscheit -The Spring, Flanders, Early 18th century

Excerpt from the study of the work by Alain Jacobs:

"The statuette represents a little girl with artistically arranged hair. She holds a bouquet of roses in her right hand and in her left a branch of the tree stump against which she is standing. A veil of modesty, held by a belt, goes up along her loins and wraps around her left arm. The physiognomy of the figure as well as the treatment of the sculpture allow an attribution to the Flemish sculptor Jan Pieter I Van Baurscheit We indeed find the chubby body both chubby and with a round belly, but with slender proportions of his representations of child, just like the general shape of the head resting on a thick neck and the face with cheeks full and chubby, the small round chin, the greedy mouth, slightly ajar, the small round and upturned nose, the almond-shaped eyes, without pupils but sparkling, surrounded by finely drawn eyelids, and finally the high forehead (fig.1-3). We also see the same type of chubby hands and the ties of the wrists and calves characteristic of the sculptor (fig.4-6). The same goes for the treatment of the draperies, which look more like crumpled scarves than clothing. Finally, we cannot overlook the skilful arrangement of the delicate hairstyle that can be seen on several other child figures by Van Baurscheit the Elder (fig. 7-9). In the first half of the 18th century, the Antwerp workshop of Van Baurscheit, Jan-Pieter I and Jan-Pieter II (Antwerp 1699–Antwerp 1768), which succeeded his father's death after having collaborated with him, was unquestionably the one of the most important sculpting workshops in the Netherlands. One of their specialties, in particular that of the father, is the invention of allegorical or mythological statues in the guise of children [...]"

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