Seated boy playing a flute

From a group of four small bronze figures in the Collection, all of which show infant boys or putti playing a variety of musical instruments (the others, S202, S203 and S205, blowing into a double conch shell, holding up a shell, and playing the triangle respectively).

The models for the figures seem to have originated in Rome, in the circle of sculptors such as Alessandro Algardi (1595 – 1654) and François Duquesnoy (1597 – 1643), but these casts were almost certainly made, and mounted on their bases, in France around the middle of the eighteenth century.

As there are substantial differences in the body-type of the figures between the two pairs and since S202 and S203 lack the drapery acting as cache-sexe, present in S204 and S205, it is possible that models of different origin were brought together.

Cast as pairs or quartets and often also incorporated into designs for candelabras, examples of these bronzes began to appear in sale catalogues in Paris from 1767.