This statuette came from the Wurts Collection (W 211) and forms a pair with the model with the inventory number PV 7555. They depict two small angels, mirroring each other, originally designed to be hung, together with other figures, in the central nave, as was often the case in German churches, or more likely to be inserted in the altar, as the planing of the more protruding parts on the reverse indicates. Their clothes, with many undulating folds, their long hair, held in place by a large diadem, and their outspread wings evoke the sense of movement of flying figures in descent. Their hands are stretched out in front to hold something, probably a crown. Described as ‘wonderful in their movement and expression’ by Hermanin (1948), who considered them executed in the style of Erasmus Grasser, between the last quarter of 1400 and the first of the following century, the two cherubs have been traced to the workshop of Veit Stoss (Horb am Neckar, 1447 – Nuremberg, 1533) by Santangelo (1954). Santangelo correctly considers that they derived from the Angelic Salutation (or the Annunciation) in the church of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg and dates them to around 1520, the period in which his dramatic and tense style was becoming progressively softened.

Grazia Maria Fachechi