Figure

This figure is one of a set of four in the V&A (A.158 to 161-1910) which may have been originally mounted on a piece of furniture. Two almost identical figures in bronze from a similar set of four are in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.The Ashmolean statuettes correspond to V&A A.160 and 161-1910. Another bronze version, similar to V&A A.160-1910, is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. See Penny (1992), vol.II, p.179. The significance of these surviving silver and bronze figures for our understanding of the working practices of goldsmiths is summed up by Penny: 'It is often assumed that goldsmiths in this period worked in silver and in bronze but it is exceedingly unusual for examples to exist in both materials which are so similar that they are likely to have been finished by the same hand as is the case here'.