Stingy woman in wealth

The cathedral vicar Kaspar Bernhard Hardy (1726-1819) enjoyed high reputation in his hometown Cologne, mainly because of his artistic waxwork. His repertoire as an embosser included character figures such as "The stingy woman in wealth" and a "Joyful old man in poverty" (see below), but also idyllic representations and portrait reliefs of well-known personalities. Goethe praised Hardy's waxworks in "On Art and Antiquity" and visited the "strange eighty-year-old cheerful old man" during his trip to the Rhine in July 1815.