 His pure neoclassical works, apart from some of the works mentioned above, include the marble busts of Marcus Aurelius, Cicero, Isis, and Gaius or Lucius Caesar (all 1817-19), "The genius of Art" (1820–23), "Bacchus" (1823–24), "Woman weeping over an urn" (1825) and "Venus" (1826–29).In the late 1820s Kessels renounced some of the pure classicism of Thorvaldsen in favour of the more seductive style of Canova, mixed with the pathos of Italian Baroque.This is the case with his marble monument to the Countess of Celles (Rome, Chiesa di San Giuliano dei Fiamminghi, 1828).