# Bust of Flora
> Attributed to Richard Cockle Lucas - After 1700 on radiocarbon evidence; reported by the maker's son to have been modelled in 1846. Bought and exhibited as about 1500.
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> Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-17
## Tombstone
- **Artist:** Attributed to Richard Cockle Lucas
- **Date:** After 1700 on radiocarbon evidence; reported by the maker's son to have been modelled in 1846. Bought and exhibited as about 1500.
- **Medium:** Wax, principally spermaceti with minor beeswax and probably stearin or tallow, partly painted; hollow cast in at least three layers by lost-wax moulding
- **Dimensions:** About 70 cm high; weight approximately 28 kg
- **Object type:** Sculpture
- **Period:** Nineteenth century, in the manner of the Italian Renaissance
- **Current location:** Skulpturensammlung und Museum fuer Byzantinische Kunst, Bode-Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz
- **Attribution:** disputed
## Summary
A painted wax bust of a young woman as Flora, about seventy centimetres high and weighing some twenty-eight kilograms, bought in London in 1909 by Wilhelm von Bode, director general of the Prussian collections, as a work by Leonardo da Vinci. Within two years more than seven hundred and thirty articles had been published about it in Germany, England, France, Italy, Austria and Denmark. The English press said it had been made in 1846 by a Southampton sculptor named Richard Cockle Lucas, and Lucas's son swore that he had helped his father build it out of candle ends.The case ran for a century because the material fought back. The bust is made of spermaceti, the wax from the head cavity of the sperm whale, and a whale's carbon is not in equilibrium with the atmosphere. Radiocarbon measurements on it come out several centuries too old unless they are corrected for the marine reservoir effect, and no reservoir age for sperm whale material had ever been published.Ina Reiche, Lucile Beck and Ingrid Caffy solved that in 2021 by calibrating against a wax relief Lucas made in 1850, of nearly identical composition, whose date is known. Every analysed constituent of the Flora bust dates after 1700. It cannot be by Leonardo. Who made it is still not proved.
## Provenance
Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it.
- **1846-unknown** Richard Cockle Lucas, Southampton (claimed) `[disputed]` (origin)
Albert Lucas made a statutory declaration that his father Richard Cockle Lucas made the Flora bust in 1846, that he assisted him, and that the wax was built up in layers from candle ends. A watercolour of the bust by Lucas's son also survives, and The Times published the claim in 1910. Graded disputed because it is testimony by an interested party more than sixty years after the event, and because the radiocarbon evidence, while compatible with it, cannot confirm a specific year.
- **unknown-1909** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap)
Nothing is recorded of the bust between its making and its appearance on the London market in 1909. This gap is the reason the 1846 claim cannot be corroborated by ownership evidence.
- **1909** London art market `[disputed]` (sale)
The mechanism of the 1909 sale is described in two incompatible ways in the modern literature. Reiche, Beck and Caffy state that Wilhelm Bode bought the bust at an auction in London for a high price, 185,000 gold marks. The German account of the case names the London art dealer Murray Marks as the seller, acting through an intermediary, Willy Gretor, and notes a second reported price of 160,000 marks. Both are recorded here and neither is preferred.
- **1909-present** Staatliche Museen zu Berlin `[documented]` (acquisition)
Acquired in 1909 by Wilhelm von Bode, director general of the Berlin royal museums, and attributed by him to Leonardo da Vinci on the resemblance of the face to figures in known Leonardo paintings; published by Bode in the Jahrbuch der Koeniglich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen in 1909 and in Kunst und Kuenstler in 1910. More than 730 articles for and against appeared within two years across Germany, England, France, Italy, Austria and Denmark, and the argument continued into the 1930s. Now inventory 5951 in the Skulpturensammlung und Museum fuer Byzantinische Kunst, shown in the Bode-Museum, with the authorship recorded as not entirely clarified.
## Auction results
Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so.
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- The reported price of the 1909 acquisition is 185,000 gold marks, with a second figure of 160,000 marks reported elsewhere. It cannot be classified as a hammer price or as a negotiated price, because the sources disagree on whether the transaction was an auction in London or a private sale through the dealer Murray Marks acting via an intermediary. No auction house, sale date or lot number is given in any source consulted, and there is therefore no premium to separate from the reported sum. No modern currency equivalent is offered, because conversion methods for the 1909 gold mark differ by an order of magnitude.
## Open questions
- Who made the bust? The 2021 study excludes the Renaissance and Leonardo and names nobody. Albert Lucas's sworn declaration that his father made it in 1846 remains testimony rather than proof.
- Was the 1909 acquisition an auction purchase or a private sale? The 2021 study says Bode bought it at an auction in London; the German account of the case says the seller was the dealer Murray Marks acting through the intermediary Willy Gretor.
- What was actually paid? 185,000 gold marks is the figure given in the scientific literature; a second figure of 160,000 marks is reported in the German account.
- Where was the bust between 1846, the date claimed by the maker's son, and 1909?
- Which interval does the 2021 paper intend for the combined wax dates, 1712 to 1950 as printed in its text or 1707 to 1950 as printed in its figure caption?
- Could the bust be earlier than Lucas? The calibrated range begins in the first decade of the eighteenth century, and the radiocarbon evidence alone cannot exclude a maker working a century before him.
- Would a larger sample of the wooden spar permit dendrochronology? The 2021 study reports that there was not enough material.
- What is the exact current wording of the museum's label and catalogue entry? The accounts consulted here give England, nineteenth century, with a question mark, and state that the authorship is not entirely clarified.
## Sources
- [1] Ina Reiche, Lucile Beck and Ingrid Caffy, 'New results with regard to the Flora bust controversy: radiocarbon dating suggests nineteenth century origin', Scientific Reports 11, article 8249, 15 April 2021, doi 10.1038/s41598-021-85505-x. Open access under CC BY 4.0; full text read. Affiliations: PCMTH team, IRCP and C2RMF, CNRS and PSL University, Paris; Rathgen-Forschungslabor, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; LMC14-LSCE, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Universite Paris-Saclay. Source for the composition, the construction, the sampling, all radiocarbon measurements, the marine reservoir discussion, the calibration against the 1850 Leda relief, and the conclusion.
- [2] Europe PMC bibliographic record for the same paper, PMID 33859211, PMCID PMC8050239, giving the abstract in full: that the bust is made primarily of spermaceti extracted from sperm whales, that radiocarbon dating must therefore consider the marine reservoir effect, that a new calibration method was generated, and that the bust is dated to the nineteenth century and cannot be attributed to Leonardo.
- [3] Wikipedia (German), 'Wachsbueste der Flora'. Tertiary source, used for the inventory number 5951, the Murray Marks and Willy Gretor account of the 1909 sale and the alternative price of 160,000 marks, the statement that the authorship is still not entirely clarified, the claim that the bust was the first sculpture examined by X-ray in 1910, and the bibliography: Bode 1909 and 1910, Friedrich Rathgen 1910, G. Pinkus 1910, Hans Ost 1984 and 2008, R. Rottlaender 1988, Ulrike Wolff-Thomsen 2006. Flagged for replacement by those primary items.
- [4] Wikipedia, 'Flora (sculpture)'. Tertiary source, used for the 1910 article in The Times stating that Lucas made the work from a painting, Albert Lucas's sworn testimony that he assisted his father and the candle-ends technique, the discovery of debris including a letter dated in the 1840s when the base was removed, and the museum labelling reported as England, nineteenth century, with a question mark.
- [5] Wikimedia Commons, category and file pages for Richard Cockle Lucas and for the Bode-Museum photograph of the bust, read as wikitext for licence and identification. Includes the albumen carte-de-visite self-portrait of about 1858 sourced from the National Portrait Gallery, London, and painted and sculpted portraits in Southampton City Museums.
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