The cast is thin in areas, with several holes in the arms. The right leg was cast separately and attached with a mortise-and-tenon joint. A fairly thick, flat rectangular core support enters the figure from below via the lion's skin, extending up into the chest. A thinner, iron armature runs via the right arm through the club. The lion's skin has been worked with a flat punch, the club with a relief punch.¹¹This type of relief punchmark, comprising dots enclosed within a rectangular grid, is found more commonly on metal artillery and brasswork than on sculptural works. My thanks to Arie Pappot, RMA. Similarly, the details of the eyes, mouth and fingernails appear to be slightly accentuated. Remnants of a thick, black patina can be discerned in the hair.
The chief trace elements in the alloy – antimony (1%) and arsenic (0.5%) – indicate the use of a mediocre quality of copper made from fahlore. Throughout Europe, this type of copper was commonly used for mortars and cast brasswork, especially between c. 1500 and 1675. The casting technique and the kinds of repairs correspond with those of bronzes produced in the Netherlands and France, circa 1700.²²My thanks to Arie Pappot, RMA.
Alloy main quaternary alloy with tin, zinc and lead; copper with high impurities (Cu 81.08%; Zn 5.42%; Sn 4.99%; Pb 6.00%; Sb 1.00%; As 0.45%; Fe 0.36%; Ni 0.34%; Ag 0.14%)
Alloy right leg quaternary alloy with tin, zinc and lead; copper with high impurities (Cu 80.35%; Zn 4.96%; Sn 5.04%; Pb 7.01%; Sb 0.91%; As 0.60%; Fe 0.41%; Ni 0.35%; Ag 0.13%)

The statuette was likely originally mounted on an integrally cast base, from which it was detached with a saw.

…; from the dealer David Peel, London, £80, to the museum, with support of the Fonds J.W. Edwin vom Rath; on loan to the Nationaal Beiaardmuseum, Asten, 1975-2022

Object number: BK-1959-49

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the J.W. Edwin Vom Rath Fonds/Rijksmuseum Fonds

In classical mythology, Hercules was the slave and lover of Omphale, the queen of Lydia, for a period of three years (Apollodorus 2.6:3). In her service, he assumed effeminate mannerisms, dressed in women's clothing and spun yarn. In her turn, Omphale adopted a number of Hercules’s most masculine attributes, resulting in a rather comical inversion of gender roles. On the present statuette, Omphale wears the Nemean lion skin, while leaning on Hercules’s club.

Leeuwenberg believed the present bronze was likely the work of a Dutch sculptor active in Italy, based on what he perceived as northern traits reminiscent of sculptures by the Flemish sculptor Jérôme du Quesnoy II (1602-1654).³³Leeuwenberg in Verslagen der Rijksverzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst, 1959, p. 17. While some similarity to this artist’s work can indeed be observed in the statuette, the agreement is superficial. A more plausible candidate for the model’s authorship is the Anglo-French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur (c. 1580-c. 1660), deducible from close stylistic parallels to his Venus Pudica, a bronze formerly held in the collection of Louis XIV and today preserved in New York (fig. a).⁴⁴S. Castelluccio et al., Les bronzes de la Couronne, exh. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre) 1999, no. 182; M. Leithe-Jasper and P. Wengraf, European Bronzes from the Quentin Collection, New York/Milan 2004, p. 241; P. Wengraf et al., Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Hill Collection, exh. cat. New York (The Frick Collection) 2014, no. 30. Omphale and Venus Pudica are very similar in a number of ways, sharing a somewhat rotund corporeal type with an elongated upper torso, short legs with one knee acutely bent, round shoulders, long neck, relatively small head characterized by a prominent, straight nose, sharply formed eyes and sparsely detailed, wavy hair with one strand falling over the shoulders. Such details also occur on some of the female figures in Le Sueurs' documented monumental works, e.g. his Buckingham Tomb (Westminster Abbey, London), the tomb of the Duke and Duchess of Richmond and Lennox (ditto)⁵⁵Cf. C. Avery, Studies in European Sculpture, vol. 2, London 1988, figs. 46d, 51d, 52c-d, 53a, b-d. and his Diana Fountain (Bushy Park, Middlesex).

Hubert Le Sueur’s career as a sculptor began in France (1614-1625), followed by an extended period in England (1625-c. 1641) working for the royal crown, before once again returning to France, where he spent his final years. Le Sueur is chiefly known for his monumental bronzes and royal portraits, including the equestrian statue of Charles I on Trafalgar Square in London.⁶⁶See C. Avery, Studies in European Sculpture, vol. 1, London 1981, pp. 189-204 and ibidem, vol. 2, London 1988, pp. 145-235. Up to now, only a very limited number of small-scale statuettes centring on mythological themes have been linked to the sculptor. New attributions are perhaps complicated by the lack of documented models in this genre, which might serve as a starting point. Besides the Venus Pudica, a bronze Venus and Cupid in the Victoria and Albert Museum is also currently attributed to Le Sueur. ⁷⁷London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. A.155-1910. And lastly, in 2004, a Hercules and Telephus was convincingly added to the sculptor’s oeuvre of small bronzes.⁸⁸M. Leithe-Jasper and P. Wengraf, European Bronzes from the Quentin Collection, New York/Milan 2004, no. 25. Like the present work, this statuette had also previously been linked to Jérôme du Quesnoy II.

Le Sueur was by no means a sculptor recognized for the originality of his inventions. The same appears to be true of his small-scale bronzes. Le Sueur’s inspiration for the Venus Pudica was Francesco Fanelli’s popular Venus-statuette, also once attributed to Jérôme du Quesnoy II.⁹⁹A monogrammed cast of this model surfaced the art market in 2010, bearing ‘F.F.F.’ for Franciscus Fanellius Florentinus, see sale, New York (Sotheby’s), 29 January 2010, p. 66. Fanelli and Le Sueur both worked at the royal court of King Charles I in the 1630s. While the direct model for the Omphale has not yet been identified, the possibility exists, as has been shown with Le Sueur’s Hercules and Telephus and Venus Pudica, that it too was ultimately derived from an antique prototype.¹⁰¹⁰M. Leithe-Jasper and P. Wengraf, European Bronzes from the Quentin Collection, New York/Milan 2004, p. 242. Cf. also Paris 1999, no. 124.

The Amsterdam bronze was acquired on the London art market in 1959. The only other documented cast of the same model surfaced at a sale in the same city in 1976.¹¹¹¹Sale London (Sotheby’s), 9 December 1976, no. 69. While nothing is known about the early provenance of these statuettes, their shared English pedigree may indicate that Le Sueur devised the model during his years at the royal court. The influence of Dutch Mannerism discerned by several authors in the present figure and other works by Le Sueur may have indirectly come from his English contemporary Nicholas Stone (1586-1647), who in his early years had worked in the Amsterdam workshop of his father-in-law, the famous Dutch sculptor Hendrick de Keyser I (1565-1621).¹²¹²C. Avery, Studies in European Sculpture, vol. 2, London 1988, pp. 155-57.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 244, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'attributed to Hubert Le Sueur, Omphale, London, c. 1625 - c. 1641', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20017574