St Mary of Victory

Entry

This imposing ivory combines two iconographic types. The Virgin is portrayed as ‘Maria Immaculata’, an apocalyptic woman on the globe and a crescent moon, as well as ‘the new Eve’ who prevails over evil as embodied in a serpent, the creature that seduced Eve in paradise.² The Virgin is crushing this serpent, which probably originally held an apple, the symbol of the Fall, in its wide open mouth. With this, she confirms her immaculate conception and freedom from original sin. This new iconography, known as St Mary of Victory, came about in the Counter-Reformation, and was also interpreted more specifically as the Catholic church triumphing over the heresy of Protestantism. The Virgin is usually aided by the Christ Child, ‘the new Adam’, as is the case here with the Child attacking the serpent with a spear, which is now missing.³

The superbly carved ivory was originally attributed unsatisfactorily to Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668) and then to his cousin of the same name, Artus Quellinus II (1625-1700).⁴ In 1971 Theuerkauff was able convincingly to assign the piece to the oeuvre of Mattheus van Beveren (1630-1690).⁵ More recently it has even been identified as a valuable ivory Madonna figure by that master in the considerable art collection of the eighteenth-century Antwerp burgomaster Peeter Frans van Schorel, Lord of Wilrijk.⁶ The extensive description of that work in the 1774 auction catalogue of his collection in fact corresponds in detail with the Amsterdam ivory and the concomitant pedestal, which is partially inlaid with tortoiseshell and veneered in ebony.⁷, is well designed, well draped, and the naked form can be discerned. She is made from a single piece of ivory & has a height of 21 inches. The pedestal on which she stands is veneered with ebony & tortoiseshell. )] At the auction the work made no less than 400 guilders, a sum on a par with that paid for the best paintings of Rubens and higher than any of Anthony van Dyck’s works in the burgomaster’s collection.

Van Beveren, together with Pieter Scheemaekers I (1652-1714), was one of the most prominent pupils of the Antwerp sculptor Pieter Verbruggen I (1615-1686). In 1649 or 1650 Van Beveren enrolled in the guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp.⁸
As an independent master, he had concentrated mainly on monumental sculpture in wood and stone. The fact that the sculptor was also a gifted ivory carver, who succeeded in accurately portraying life in his ivories, was mentioned by Jacobus van den Sanden, the secretary of the Antwerp art academy, in his unpublished, three-part manuscript Oud Konst-toneel van Antwerpen of 1770-71.⁹ Interestingly, the afore-mentioned Peeter Frans van Schorel was also closely involved in the art academy in question, and was its director in chief from 1749 to 1756. It is highly likely that Van den Sanden was able to base his praise, in part, on the ivory Madonna owned by his colleague.

Mattheus van Beveren worked in a relatively understated, late-baroque style with pronounced classicist tendencies. In his oeuvre, some development towards an increasingly elegant visual form can be detected. He achieved it among other things by giving his figures rather more relaxed stances and more slender proportions, and clothing them in ever more elegantly draped garb. Theuerkauff based his attribution of the Amsterdam ivory on its great similarity to some of the master’s principal works, including the figure of Virtus on the marble funerary monument for Lamoral Claude-François, count of Thurn und Taxis, in the Église Notre-Dame du Sablon in Brussels, dating from 1678 (fig. a) and the sandstone Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows on Gaspar Boest’s sepulchral monument in Sint-Jacobskerk in Antwerp dating from 1665.¹⁰

The extremely elegant, attenuated Amsterdam Madonna unquestionably qualifies as part of Van Beveren’s more mature work. Theuerkauff originally dated the ivory to circa 1680-90, partly because the type of Christ Child bears a great many similarities to the putti around Van Beveren’s oak pulpit in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk in Dendermonde from 1681-84.¹¹ However, he later concluded that the ivory could just as well have come about in the previous decade,¹² emphasizing that dating Van Beveren’s small-scale carvings is a hazardous undertaking. On the one hand, because the dated monumental reference works are not ideal material for comparison on account of their larger size and different materials, on the other hand because Van Beveren often drew on older (print) examples or designs by other masters.¹³

With its 58 centimetres this statuette is Mattheus van Beveren’s largest known ivory. Apart from the size, the monumentality of the piece is further reinforced by the Virgin’s exalted presence and the excellent technical execution. The Amsterdam Madonna, together with a more baroque Maria Immaculata in the Museum Krona in Uden (fig. b) and a small memorial for King James II in Windsor Castle which the master made in the final years of his life,¹⁴ are amongst Van Beveren’s finest works in ivory and belong to the major achievements of Antwerp ivory sculpture.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025