Allegories of the Four Seasons
by SCHARDT, Johann Gregor van der, Bronze, fire gilding, heigh 71 cm (each)
The four statues depict the Four Seasons in the form of the deities Flora (Spring), Ceres (Summer), Bacchus (Autumn) and Vulcan (Winter). They were probably made from a design by Wenzel Jamnitzer and are all that remains of a three-metre-high, mechanical silver fountain which the Nuremberg goldsmith Jamnitzer worked on from around 1568 by appointment of Emperor Maximilian II, and which was delivered in Prague in 1578 to Rudolf II, Maximilian’s son. The fountain was melted down between 1547 and 1750 in Vienna. The only remaining pieces of the famous fountain are the four statues of gods, which were made of bronze and therefore not suitable to be melted down.