The two eighteenth-century sandstone putti that I recently started to restore are finished. It's become a kind of harvest scene:

one chap with a bunch of grapes and one with a bundle of corn ears. The lad with the ears of corn got a new leg, which I've carved out of a block of sandstone. All the parts of the two putti are bonded, and each fracture received a reinforcement in the form of an invisible stainless steel pen.

One of the foot plates had also broken, and I managed to repair that with the use of epoxy adhesive and mortar as well. Perhaps it would have been better to completely replace it with new stone, but in that case some of its character would have been lost, and this stone base should last for a while now. While working, a few things about the two putti caught my attention. These figurines were carved at the time with great craftsmanship and flair, and their quality is undeniable.

The little fellow with the bunch of grapes had lost his head during his last fall, but that had apparently happened once before with his brother, that held the bundle of grain. I always thought it had a somewhat strange face. When I took a good look at the face in profile, I noticed that it must have looked quite different before. I suspect that the head was put back somewhere in the 20th century, and that was when it was decided to carve the face anew because the nose had broken off during its fall. For that, the sculptor had to recarve the whole face a lot deeper, so the youngster now has a curious short chin and eyes that are not carved as crisp as the rest of the sculpture. Also, the style is more 'fifties’ than eighteenth-century. The statue of Artemis will get a new arm; more on this later.

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