Object data
oak with traces of polychromy
height 76.5 cm × width 91 cm × depth c. 20 cm
Adriaen van Wesel
Utrecht, c. 1475 - c. 1477
oak with traces of polychromy
height 76.5 cm × width 91 cm × depth c. 20 cm
Carved and originally polychromed. The group is composed of five separate parts. Dendrochronological analysis has established that the latest measured annual ring corresponds with the year 1456. The earliest felling date of the oak tree is 1465. The wood has very similar growth characteristics to that in other parts of the Marian altar that Van Wesel made for the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in Den Bosch between 1475 and 1477.
P. Klein, ‘Hout en kunst. Houtanalytisch onderzoek van beeldhouwwerken’, in W. Halsema-Kubes et al., Adriaen van Wesel. Een Utrechtse beeldhouwer uit de late middeleeuwen (ca. 1417/ ca. 1490), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1980-81, pp. 45-53, esp. pp. 47-49 and figs. 4a, 5-6.
Some woodworm damage. The head of the man on the horse lower right and the left and centre horses’ heads have been replaced. Among other things, two parts of the rocks behind the shepherd, the tail of the right-hand horse, the foreleg of the horse upper right, the arm of the man on the horse upper right and the dromedary’s tail are missing. Twenty pieces have been broken off at some time and reattached. The polychromy has been removed with a caustic, which caused some cracks. In 2014 a fall resulted in various breaks, chiefly at old glued joints and between connecting pieces.
? Commissioned by the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady [Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap], Den Bosch, 1475;1 installed in the Sint-Janskathedraal, Den Bosch, 1477;2 ? dismantled during the iconoclastic revolt and transferred to a safer, unknown location, 1566;3 ? reinstalled in the Sint-Janskathedraal, Den Bosch, 1567;4 ? transferred to the Confraternity House, Hinthamerstraat, Den Bosch, 1629;5...; collection Evelyn John Shirley (1788-1856), c. 1825, possibly for the chapel of Lough Fea House, Carrickmacross, Monaghan County, Isle of Man, recorded 1825-42;6 his son, the historian and Member of Parliament of Monaghan, Evelyn Phillip Shirley (1812-1882), 1856; his son, the MP of Monaghan, Sewallis Evelyn Shirley (1844-1904), 1882; his son, Lieutenant Colonel Evelyn Charles Shirley (1889-1956), 1904; by descent to Major John Shirley (1922-2009), 1956; his sale, London (Christie’s), 31 May 1977, no. 204 (‘Flemish [...] late 15th century’); purchased for the museum by the Commissie voor Fotoverkoop, 1977
Object number: BK-1977-134-A
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum
Copyright: Public domain
Adriaen van Wesel (Utrecht c. 1417 - in or after 1490 Utrecht)
Adriaen van Wesel was the leading sculptor of the Northern Netherlands during the second half of the fifteenth century. The majority of his surviving oeuvre is held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. Van Wesel’s name and city of origin were discovered by Swillens in 1948 in the city archives of Den Bosch while researching two pieces from an altarpiece by Van Wesel formerly in the chapel of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in the Sint-Janskathedraal of that city.7 Before his identification he was known as the ‘Master of the Singing Angels’ and the ‘Master of the Death of Mary’, names of convenience derived from two altar groups in the Rijksmuseum.
Van Wesel is certain to have been born in Utrecht, as his name appears nowhere in the listings of new citizens after 1400. He is first mentioned in 1447, when elected alderman of the saddler’s guild, to which painters and sculptors also belonged. Since this important position could only be attained by men of at least thirty years of age, he was probably born in or slightly prior to 1417. Van Wesel was elected to this post nine times: four times serving as a member of the city council while holding several other public offices, thus affirming his status as an influential and highly respected figure.
A document from 1468 involving a life annuity indicates that Adriaen van Wesel had a wife named Margriet and a daughter named Belyen. Both probably died before 1491, as their names no longer appear in the life annuity records from this year. Adriaen himself must have died in or shortly after 1490, as this is the last time he appears in any documents. The year of Van Wesel’s death has been subject to some confusion stemming from the existence of a second ‘Adriaen van Wesel’ residing in Utrecht whose death is documented in 1500. This individual, though perhaps a family member, was a butter merchant not known to have held any public position.
Van Wesel’s first documented work is the aforementioned altarpiece for the Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in Den Bosch commissioned in 1475. By this time, however, he was already a sculptor of renown. Unfortunately, this altarpiece was dismantled and dispersed in the nineteenth century. Only two groups from this altarpiece have remained in Den Bosch, together with their original caisses. Another five groups from this altarpiece are today preserved in the Rijksmuseum.8 An additional seven have tenably been linked to these works, including a seated Virgin from an Annunciation in Bruges.9 On a final note, several hypothetical reconstructions of the original retable have also been devised (for the most recent, see fig. c in the entry BK-NM-11647).10
Adriaen van Wesel produced two other Marian altars: the first in 1470 for the Mariakerk in Utrecht, a work that fell victim to one of the city’s iconoclastic outbreaks in 1584; the second for the high altar of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, probably destroyed in a fire in 1528 (with BK-1979-94 possibly a fragment). Another altar, commissioned in 1487 for the monastery Sint-Agnietenberg in Zwolle, is likewise lost. Several surviving sculptures may originate from these altarpieces, e.g. a Descent from the Cross in Berlin, and a Holy Family in Utrecht.11
Van Wesel’s last documented works were made for churches in his hometown of Utrecht: three sculptures for the high altar of the Buurkerk in 1487 and seven groups for the predella of the high altar of Utrecht Cathedral in 1489.12
Marie Mundigler, 2024
References
W. Halsema-Kubes, G. Lemmens and G. de Werd, Adriaen van Wesel: Een Utrechtse beeldhouwer uit de late middeleeuwen, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1980-81; M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, pp. 227-31; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, pp. 48-54; Scholten and Van der Mark in F. Scholten (ed.), 1100-1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2015, no. 30 (and fig. 30a); P.T.A. Swillens, ‘De Utrechtse beeldhouwer Adriaen van Wesel, ca. 1420-(na) 1489’, Oud Holland 63 (1948), pp. 149-64; P.T.A. Swillens, ‘De Utrechtse beeldhouwer Adriaen van Wesel. Enige aanvullende mededelingen’, Oud Holland 66 (1951), pp. 228-33; W. Vogelsang in F.W.S. van Thienen (ed.), Algemene Kunstgeschiedenis, vol. 4, Utrecht/Antwerp 1949, p. 28
When this exceptionally wide and varied group was recognised in 1977 as a work by the Utrecht woodcarver Adriaen van Wesel (c. 1417-in or after 1490) it was immediately suspected that it was one of the widely scattered elements of the large Marian altar that the sculptor made around 1475 and 1477 for the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in Den Bosch. This proved correct, since the work ties in very well iconographically and stylistically with other parts of the altarpiece. Dendrochronological analysis has moreover established that the date of the oak used fits perfectly with the history of the making of the altar. It was also possible to establish that the wood has very similar growth characteristics to that in other parts of the same altar.13
The history of this Marian altar is in a sense typical of the fate that befell many altarpieces in the Low Countries, which were destroyed during the sixteenth-century iconoclastic riots, fell into disuse during the Reformation and the components were scattered. The altar was commissioned in 1475 for the Confraternity’s chapel in the Sint-Janskathedraal in Den Bosch. Adriaen van Wesel, one of the most important woodcarvers of his day in the Netherlands, supplied the work unpainted in 1477. The Confraternity did not raise the money for the expensive polychromy until 1508 to 1510, but the altar was given two shutters with exteriors painted by Jheronimus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) in 1488.14
The altar escaped the riots in 1566 unscathed thanks to the far-sightedness of one of the members of the Confraternity, who got soldiers to guard the chapel against the destructive mob for six days and nights. The altar was then moved to a safer place. It was reassembled in the chapel in 1567 and probably remained there until 1629. In that year Den Bosch passed into Protestant hands. It appears that the Marian altar was stored in the Confraternity House and sold off in pieces in the course of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century; the building of the new Confraternity House in 1846 may have been a factor in this. In 1896 the Confraternity had only two carved groups with their original caisses left from the original altar.15
To date a total of thirteen figures and figure groups from the Marian altar have come to light. On the basis of these elements it is possible to make a rough reconstruction of the shape, size and iconography of the altar, which must have been a good seven metres wide when it was open (fig. a).16 In the centre was The Nativity with The Adoration. This was also the position of the group of Joseph with Three Musician Angels (BK-NM-11647) and The Kneeling Virgin (BK-NM-11713). The Meeting of the Magi discussed here was placed above them. Scenes from the life of the Virgin were depicted in the lower flanking sides of the altar, in various compartments. The scope of this Marian cycle is unknown, but in any event it included the fragments of The Annunciation, The Visitation (BK-NM-11394) and The Death of the Virgin (BK-NM-11859). The two small hinged caisses that are still held by the Confraternity contain Emperor Augustus with the Tiburtine Sibyl (fig. b) and St John on Patmos (fig. c).17
In the late Middle Ages the meeting of the magi on their journey to Bethlehem was frequently used as a background scene in an Adoration of the Magi, which would be positioned above the central Nativity stable in altarpieces. The curiously stacked composition of the figures, which indicates a relatively high position in the ensemble, makes it likely that this group was placed in this way in the Den Bosch Marian altar. A similar arrangement is found in a late fifteenth-century Brussels Marian altar in the Stedelijk Museum Het Broodhuis in Brussels.18
Van Wesel chose not to depict the subject in the conventional way. His inventiveness is evident, for instance, in the disposition of the heads of the magi’s three horses, which come together in the centre of the group to give formal symbolic substance to the meeting. From the left comes an old king with two followers, in the centre, coming out of the background is the ‘black king’ with his squire, while on the right the third wise man is assisted to dismount by his page. This young man, on the extreme right at the edge of the scene, most clearly betrays Van Wesel’s hand and is one of the stylistic keys to the attribution of the group to Van Wesel’s Marian altar: we find virtually identical figures with the very characteristic ‘spaghetti’ hair in, among other places, the group of Joseph with Three Musician Angels and in St John in The Death of the Virgin, both from the same altar.19
Below him another rider from the left-hand king’s retinue and a servant with a dromedary have begun to descend to the stable. In the background there are five more followers on horseback, and there are some shepherds with their flock in the rocky landscape on the left. The woodcarver created a dynamic composition in which the finishing of the individual figures was subordinated to a degree of theatricality and to the overall impression: a certain carelessness and sloppiness are evident here and there in the finish, an aspect that can be found elsewhere in Van Wesel’s oeuvre.20
Frits Scholten, 2024
Jaarverslag Nederlandse Rijksmusea 1977, p. 18; W. Halsema-Kubes, ‘Twee onbekende retabelfragmenten van Adriaen van Wesel’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 28 (1980), pp. 155-66, esp. pp. 162-63, figs. 13, 16; W. Halsema-Kubes et al., Adriaen van Wesel. Een Utrechtse beeldhouwer uit de late middeleeuwen (ca. 1417/ ca. 1490), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1980-81, no. 5, pp. 16, 18-9, 37, 40, 42, 46, 86-87, pl. 3; W. Halsema-Kubes, ‘Der Altar Adriaen van Wesels aus ’s-Hertogenbosch – Rekonstruktion und kunstgeschichtliche Bedeutung’, in H. Krohm and E. Oellermann (eds.), Flügelaltäre des Späten Mittelalters, Berlin 1992, pp. 144-56, esp. pp. 150-51, fig. 9; H. van Os et al., Nederlandish Art in the Rijksmuseum 1400-1600, Amsterdam/Zwolle 2000, p. 60, fig. 6c; M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, p. 227; Scholten and Van der Mark in F. Scholten (ed.), 1100-1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2015, no. 30b, p. 100; B. Tóth and Á. Varga (eds.), Between Hell and Paradise: The Enigmatic World of Hieronymus Bosch, exh. cat. Budapest (Museum of Fine Arts) 2022, no. 2
F. Scholten, 2024, 'Adriaen van Wesel, The Meeting of the Magi, Utrecht, c. 1475 - c. 1477', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.25726
(accessed 8 November 2024 23:10:30).