St Ursula and her Virgins

Entry

The woodcarver followed the St Ursula iconography that was standard in the late Middle Ages, derived from the Schutzmantelmadonna: a standing, opulently dressed damsel providing protection for her travelling companions under her cloak. Ursula, the daughter of King Maurus of Britain, was murdered by the Huns in Cologne on the way back from her pilgrimage to Rome, together with the 11,000 virgins in her retinue. An active cult of veneration of the saint and her companions grew up in Cologne; the bones of the murdered women were kept in the Sankt-Ursula Balisika and other churches in Cologne. There are still more than a hundred medieval reliquary busts of Ursula’s companions in the ‘Golden Chamber’ in this basilica. Ursula is dressed according to the most luxurious fashion of the time, with a headdress of woven linen bands and a sheer, finely pleated chemisette or guimpe that shows above the square neckline of her gown. The saint reads a prayer in what is known as a girdle-book. In her right hand she held an arrow, the attribute of her martyrdom, now lost.

Halsema-Kubes and De Werd classify this Ursula under the mature style of the woodcarver Henrik Douverman, who worked in Cleves and Kalkar between 1510⁸ and the year of his death, 1543/44.⁹ The statue would have been made around 1520, when Douverman was working in Kalkar on the Retable of the Seven Sorrows of Mary for the Sankt-Nicolaikirche (1518-22), with which it has many stylistic parallels. Rommé, however, thinks it more likely that it was made prior to 1518, before the carver embarked on the Kalkar altar.¹⁰ Many elements of Douverman’s style around 1520, both in the Kalkar altar and in a number of individual statues of saints, can be found in the Ursula. Closely related, but larger and more detailed, both in pose and the arrangement of the folds, are Douverman’s Mary Magdalene in the same church in Kalkar, and the Virgin Mary at the top of the Seven Sorrows altar.¹¹ Since Rommé dates the Magdalene after 1522 on stylistic grounds, her dating of the Ursula four or five years earlier would seem hard to maintain.¹² She also pointed to the similarity to a small sculpture of St Margaret in Berlin, but this comparison is less convincing.¹³ Ursula’s companions are reminiscent of the Virgin Mary in the Stiftskirche in Cleves and the Virgin in an Annunciation in Birgden (Selfkantkreis Geilenkirchen-Heinsberg).¹⁴ Variants of the female figures can also be found in the Seven Sorrows altar.

The wood used for the statue has many cracks that have been partially filled with splines; this is an indication that the figure was meant to be decorated, so an inferior quality wood could be used. There are far fewer cracks in the Seven Sorrows altar, which was designed to be left unpainted from the outset.¹⁵ In 1996 it was still thought that the statue, like the Mary Magdalene in Kalkar, had never been painted,¹⁶ but some traces of polychromy (possibly not original) that Mares found in the deeper folds of the garments attest to the contrary.¹⁷

The purpose of the figure and the place for which it was made are unknown, but it is likely that the Ursula comes from a convent. Because the saint was murdered defending her virginity, she was a highly suitable role model for nuns. By the late Middle Ages, the veneration of Ursula was no longer confined to Cologne and flourished throughout the Lower Rhine region, so several convents are possible candidates, as De Werd suggested.¹⁸ An important centre of Ursula veneration in the Lower Rhine region was the Cistercian Kamp Abbey, where many relics of Ursula’s companions were kept, and to a lesser degree the Cistercian convent at Gräfenthal near Goch. In 1413 Arnt Snoick founded the Great Beguinage or Augustinian Convent dedicated to St Ursula in Kalkar, and in 1430 Duke Adolph of Cleves granted the beguines permission to establish a chapel with an altar. It goes without saying that the convent’s patron saint would have had a central position on the altar. In 1578 the convent was dissolved by Duke William of Cleves and amalgamated with the Small Beguine Convent, dedicated to St Cecilia. In 1625 that convent was transformed into a monastery and it was secularized in 1802.¹⁹ Lastly, Ursula was venerated in the Augustinian Convent of St Ursula in Niederelten and as the second patron saint in the nunnery of Rees. De Werd suggested that one of these convents may have been the original provenance of the statue.²⁰ Rommé thought that it would have been placed quite high up, for example in the pinnacle of a large altar, by analogy with the Virgin in the Seven Sorrows altar .²¹ The figure of Ursula seems to be too large for this, however, although the fact that the statue is worked in the round does suggest that it was placed where it could be viewed from all sides.

Frits Scholten, 2024