Two Peasants Dancing

On acquisition the group was called Neapolitan, but it seems more likely to be South German. In style it prefigures the work of the Munich sculptor Simon Troger, whose ivory and wood figures became popular in South Germany and elsewhere in the mid-eighteenth century. The present subjects are also reminiscent of commedia dell'arte groups. Similar figures are to be seen in Dresden, Munich, and Nuremberg, as noted by Longhurst. A series of wood and ivory groups associated with the Passion now in the Museo degli Argenti in Florence are closely analogous. These were brought to Florence by Ferdinand III de' Medici from Würzburg in 1814, and are thought to date from the early eighteenth century (Aschengreen Piacenti 2011).