Johannes Cardon (1614-1656) Putti playing with a goat Terracotta bas-relief Signed Johannes Cardon fecit Dim. 30.6 x 51 cm (Damage and restoration) Our model is probably a preparatory sketch for a marble. This marble was itself used as a model for a grisaille painting by the Flemish artist Piat Joseph Sauvage (1744-1818), which was sold in Paris in 1989. Although very similar, there are significant differences between our terracotta and Sauvage's trompe l'oeil. Johannes Cardon himself therefore made certain variations when transcribing the scene into marble. Johannes Cardon has taken up the codes of representations of bacchanals of young intrepid lovers, used, among others, by Gerard van Opstal (1594-1668), François Duquesnoy (1597-1643), and later in France by Claude Michel, known as Clodion (1738-1814). Son and pupil of Forci Cardon, a sculptor born in Arras, and brother of the Antwerp sculptor Servais or Servaes Cardon, Johannes or Jean Cardon was born in Antwerp at the very beginning of the 17th century. A master of both wood and terracotta, Johannes created the choir stalls at the Benedictine Abbey in Afflighem-lez-Bruxelles and the tabernacle for the altar at Saint-Rombaut Cathedral in Mechelen. In 1643, the sculptor became a Freemason of the Guild of Saint-Luc. A forerunner at the time, the artist adopted a refined style, characteristic of the late Baroque that spread widely in the Southern Netherlands around 1670. We know of very few works by this artist, who is sometimes mistaken for a namesake, born in Douai in 1605 or 1612 and the son of Jacques Cardon. His most famous works are two terracotta Virgins with Child dating from 1643, one in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp (inv. 55 - CVH11B), the other in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels (inv. 11463).