Three Horsemen from a Calvary

Utrecht, c. 1470 - c. 1473

Object data

oak with traces of polychromy and gilding

height 58.5 cm × width 43.5 cm × depth 11.5 cm × height 78.8 cm × width 90.2 cm
depth 19.0 cm (incl. modern additions)

Technical notes

Carved in relief and originally polychromed. According to dendrochronological analysis carried out by P. Klein in 1980 the last annual ring measured corresponds with the year 1450 and the earliest felling date for the tree is 1465. He also observed that the growth characteristics of the wood (Baltic oak) is very similar to those in two other groups by Van Wesel: The Visitation (BK-NM-11394) and The Last Supper in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (inv. no. 1054/St 20) with an earliest possible felling date of 1459. However, dendrochronology analysis carried out by M. Domínguez Delmás of the present group in 2023 delivered a tree-ring series with only 96 rings, which did not produce a reliable dating result when cross dated with reference chronologies from central, eastern and northern Europe.

Scientific examination and reports

conservation report: W.J. Mares, 30 January 1979
dendrochronology: P. Klein, University of Hamburg, 1980
dendrochronology: M. Domínguez Delmás (DendroReseach), RMA, DR_R2023123, 13 November 2023

Literature scientific examination and reports

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. 45-50, esp. p. 49 and fig. 8

Condition

The hats of all the horsemen and the sleeve of the rider at the back on the right have suffered woodworm damage. There is a crack through the horse and rider. Various recent additions were noted when the group was acquired; these have largely been removed during conservation: the left side of the base, the foremost horseman’s nose and chin, and the tail, rein and tip of his horse’s ear. The forearm of the rider back right and his horse’s right ear were replaced; the bridge of the rider back left’s nose and his forearm were renewed; however, the point of the hat was broken off at the reverse. His horse’s left ear and the tip of the right were replaced. Splines have been inserted in the foremost horse’s neck and right foreleg. The polychromy was removed with a caustic, and this has caused some minor cracks all over the piece. Traces of the original polychromy and gilding survive here and there.

Conservation

W.J. Mares, 1978: non-original layer of stain and parts removed (with the exception of the foremost horse’s rein and the bridge of the rider back left’s nose); the nose and chin and the right brim of the rider’s hat were restored.

Provenance

? Commissioned by the church wardens for the high altar of the Mariakerk, Utrecht, December 1471;¹ ? installed in the Mariakerk, Utrecht, c. 1473; ? removed after the iconoclast revolt, 1566 or 1580;² …; collection Colonel Frederick Walpole, Norfolk, or his brother Lord Orford, Norfolk, c. 1930;³ …; private collection, Norfolk, c. 1930-78;⁴ …; anonymous sale, London (Sotheby’s), 12 July 1979, no. 74, as ‘Brabant, c. 1500’, £ 7,480 (fl. 32,110), to the museum

Object number: BK-1979-94

The artist

Adriaen van Wesel (Utrecht c. 1417 - Utrecht in or after 1490)

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.⁵ 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.⁶ An additional seven have tenably been linked to these works, including a seated Virgin from an Annunciation in Bruges.⁷ 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).⁸

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.⁹

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 1489.¹⁰

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

Entry

This group of three horsemen was once part of a Crucifixion scene in a large Passion altarpiece. The horsemen stood on Christ’s left side beneath the Cross, as a pendant to a group of grief-stricken women and disciples to his right. The trio probably represent a Jewish high priest at the front (the foremost rider, identified by his mitre-shaped headgear), a Roman centurion (with a long, plaited beard) and a Roman soldier, all responsible for Christ’s execution. The Roman centurion is known as the ‘good centurion’, because he repented after Christ’s death and cried out under the Cross: Vere Filius Dei erat iste (Truly, this man was the Son of God), pointing to the crucified Christ.¹¹ The sorrowful expression on his face reflects his realisation that his conversion had come too late. The high priest in the foreground places his right hand on his heart in a gesture of humility and awe, apparently echoing the feelings of the centurion. Both are characteristic of the naturalism and, one could say, the psychology with which Van Wesel, the sculptor to whom this group should be attributed, depicted his figures and involved them in the scene.

Halsema-Kubes’s attribution to Adriaen van Wesel is completely convincing.¹² His hand is manifest in the men’s heads, the treatment of the centurion’s hair and the sophisticated organisation of the three horses into a compact, vivid tableau. Dendrochronological analysis established that the earliest possible felling date for the oak tree from which this work was carved is 1465, while the last annual ring measured is 1450.¹³ Given an average storage and seasoning time for the wood of three to five years, a date from around 1470 on for the creation of the group would seem likely. It was also determined that the wood used for these Three Horsemen had an annual ring pattern that was very like that of two other groups by Van Wesel: The Visitation in the Rijksmuseum (BK-NM-11394) and The Last Supper in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.¹⁴ On dendrochronological grounds, these two could be dated slightly earlier than the Three Horsemen, with an earliest possible felling date of 1459. Nevertheless, the great similarity indicates that the oak trees grew in the same place and a degree of kinship between the three groups.¹⁵ This could well mean that the three pieces were made for the same altar. On the grounds of provenance and style, it is suggested that The Visitation comes from the Marian Altar of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in Den Bosch, and it has been observed that The Last Supper bears a strong resemblance to The Death of the Virgin which is likewise thought to come from the altar in Den Bosch (BK-NM-11859).¹⁶

Halsema-Kubes believed, however, that the absence of signs of rushed work, carelessness and incompleteness in the Three Horsemen – characteristics frequently found in the Den Bosch fragments – tends to point rather to a slightly earlier creation date, in other words around 1470. If this is correct, it would make sense to assume that the group comes from the high altar in the Mariakerk in Utrecht, for which Van Wesel received the commission in December 1471 and would have completed some two years later.¹⁷ It appears that Van Wesel received four hundred Rhineland guilders for this altar, his earliest documented work. This sum was comparable to the fee he was paid for the altar for the Den Bosch brotherhood some years later. The two altars must therefore also have been similar in dimensions and possibly in iconography.¹⁸ The Mariakerk altar was probably smashed and demolished during the third Iconoclasm that struck Utrecht in March 1580.

Frits Scholten, 2024

Literature

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, pp. 16, 46 (fig. 4b), 47 and no. 14; E. den Hartog, ‘“Van ons slag zijn er nog veel in de wereld gebleven”’, in P.C. van der Eerden and M.C. van der Eerden-Vonk (eds.), De Wijkse toren. Geschiedenis van de toren van de Grote Kerk in Wijk bij Duurstede (1486-2008), Hilversum 2008, pp. 116-17, fig. 4.11

Citation

F. Scholten, 2024, 'Adriaen van Wesel, Three Horsemen from a Calvary, Utrecht, c. 1470 - c. 1473', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.178915

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Three Horsemen from a Calvary