Ambrosius Gallé (actif de 1713/14 à 1755)

Antony Embden, Paris;

Acquired from the above, 26 October 1998;

Thence by descent in the same Belgian noble family.

This group shares a taste for precious details and for depicting young children as deities or allegories, characteristic of Ambrosius Gallé's elegant style. It can be compared to a statuette of Juno, depicted as a young girl accompanied by a peacock, in the Victoria & Albert Museum, signed in a similar manner, AMBROSIUS GALLE INVENTIT FECIT (inv. A.1-1967). The chubby anatomy of this smiling child contrasts strangely with the sumptuous jewellery with which she is adorned. This discrepancy, which seems surprising today, was in vogue among Flemish Baroque sculptors such as Jan Claudius de Cock and Jan Pieter van Baurscheit, with whom Gallé collaborated in the latter phase of his career, after

returning to Antwerp.

Gallé began his training as a sculptor with Pieter de Pre, then with Joannes Bernardus Cousijns and Michiel van der Voort the Elder (1667–1737), with whom he learned to model in wax. Documented in Rome in 1726, he was then in Munich in 1729, where he worked alongside Guilielmus de Grof (1676–1742). Back in Antwerp between 1741 and 1743, he collaborated with Jan Pieter van Baurscheit (1699–1768). Alongside the monumental sculpture projectshe was involved in, notably at Antwerp Cathedral, Gallé also distinguished himself in the production of ivory statuettes of exquisite refinement and extraordinary precision of execution.

RELATED LITERATURE

M. Trusted, Baroque & later ivories, Victoria & Albert, Museum, London, 2013, pp. 136-37, n° 111;

P. Volk, Guillielmus de Grof (1676-1742), Studien zur Plastik am Kurbayrischen Hof im 18. Juhrhundert, Frankfurt,1966, p.

117.