FLEMISH, SECOND HALF 17TH CENTURY/EARLY 18TH CENTURY

For every European country during the 17th and 18th centuries war was an inescapable fact of life. For the Low Countries, in particular, it was impossible to ignore as the Spanish occupation lasted from the late 16th century until 1714 with brutal and lengthy eruptions such as the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War. Therefore, no one in Northern Europe was inured from, or immune to, the horrors of these conflicts. However, perhaps since war was so present in everyday life, in order to make sense of and treat this dreadful subject somewhat humorously, sculptures such as the present one were commissioned. A similar example by the well-known Flemish sculptor Jan de Cock (1667-1735) was exhibited in La sculpture au siècle de Rubens dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et la principauté de Liège, Brussels, 5 July-2 October 1977, no. 6. The de Cock group, representing two children who are allegories for War Crowning Peace and dated 1710, is therefore the same date and stylistically very close to the present example.