h. 73 and 59 cm.

Provenance: private Dutch collection. This pair of sculptures belong to a small corpus of published examples that can be assigned to one carver/artist. The first piece by this hand was published by Scanzi (1993: ill. 234). As all the pieces in this book were acquired between 1950 and 1970, we surmise that the artist was active between 1940 and 1980. What all these sculptures have in common are the squat, bulbous torso set on flexed legs with pointed knees, hands touching the flanks of the thighs and a special treatment of the fingers, i.e. the thumb is always rendered by a diagonal incision. The facial features are characterised by chamelion-like eyes, heavy eyelids below a bulbous forehead and rectangular pouting lips. Until now some 17 figures have been identified bearing the signature of this accomplished carver. The present items are large compared to the corpus known.