34. Delft earthenware statuette of the Thorn Tapper, Netherlands, circa 1740-60 A Dutch Delft polychrome figure of the "Spinario," circa 1740 - 1760 modelled after the Antique, the young man seated on a squared wooden base, pulling a nail from his foot, rendered in polychrome colours, set on a heightened base, 22cm high, (some restoration) Provenance: With Aronson Antiquairs, Amsterdam, where purchased by the present owner Based on the Greco-Roman Hellenistic bronze sculpture of a boy withdrawing a thorn from the sole of his foot, now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome. There is a Roman marble version of this subject from the Medici collections in a corridor of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Prints of this figure were in wider circulation in Europe from the Renaissance onwards. See H.P. Fourest, Delftware, p. 169, for a similar figure in the Evenepoel Collection, Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels; an example of a Dutch Delft Spinario was sold at Christie's Amsterdam, 10 December 1997, lot 414. Another polychrome example was sold at Sotheby's Amsterdam, 17 September 2007, lot 365. There is a blue and white figure of the thorn drawer in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.