Panther

Entry

This pair of marble reliefs depicting a Panther (shown here) and a Lion (BK-1983-18-A) purportedly once belonged to an altarpiece in the Sint-Janskathedraal in Den Bosch. Equal in size and in mirror image, the two reliefs were purchased by the Rijksmuseum in 1983 as pendant works formerly preserved at Heeswijk Castle, together with a pair of marble angel’s heads (BK-1983-19 and -20). In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, A.J.L. Baron Van den Bogaerde van Terbrugge, who then resided in the castle, had a large number of sculptural fragments embedded in the masonry walls of the castle’s entrance hall, stairwell and scullery.² Many of the pieces had been acquired by the baron in 1869 from what was once the high altar of the Sint-Janskathedraal in Den Bosch. Only recently, however, was it determined that this could not have been the case with the four Rijksmuseum marbles. Prior to this time, however, there was no doubt regarding this provenance, with the Lion and Panther even attributed to Hans van Mildert (c. 1588-1638), the Antwerp sculptor responsible for the altarpiece, completed in 1620.³ The cathedral council’s financial accounts state that Van Mildert had produced sculpture not only for the high altar, but also for other altars in the cathedral. It was therefore presumed that the two reliefs had come from one of these unknown altars.⁴

Information regarding the contents of the Sint-Janskathedraal’s interior prior to 1629, at which time the church entered Protestant hands, unfortunately provides insufficient grounds to support the attribution of the lion and panther marble reliefs to Van Mildert. Besides the high altar, other furnishings included an alabaster tabernacle, the monumental rood loft and two smaller altars beneath it.⁵ This Roman Catholic interior also included various wood and stone altarpieces, mainly built by the city’s guilds. Starting in 1629, all of these elements – with the exception of the rood loft – were removed from the church on a systematic basis, with most of the contents subsequently lost.⁶ Exceptions are the crossbow militia guild’s altar of St George, likewise attributed to Van Mildert, and an anonymous altarpiece dedicated to St Sebastian belonging to the longbow militia of Den Bosch. Shortly after their dismantling (after 1638), both altars were moved and reinstalled in the Sint-Amandskerk in Geel (Belgium).⁷ The rood loft was ultimately sold to the South Kensington Museum in London in 1869.

A dating of the two reliefs after 1630 can be made not only on stylistic grounds, but also on the basis of their execution in the material marble.⁸ As the fragments of the high altar affirm, Hans van Mildert’s figurative work was largely executed in alabaster. Moreover, the Lion and Panther reliefs very unlikely came from the cathedral’s possessions, as no altarpieces were built after the Protestant appropriation of the Sint-Janskathedraal in 1629. More probable is that they originally formed part of a discarded Flemish altarpiece or rood screen – for example, relinquished by a Jesuit church following the order’s dissolution in 1773 – and were subsequently acquired by Baron Van den Bogaerde van Terbrugge in the mid-nineteenth century, possibly together with the two other Heeswijk Castle fragments today held in the museum’s collection.

The maker of the two reliefs must therefore likely be sought among sculptors active in Antwerp in the generation succeeding Van Mildert. Depictions of animals in sculpture are commonly encountered in the oeuvres of Southern Netherlandish sculptors, including Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668), specifically, in his works for the new Amsterdam town hall (today the Royal Palace on Dam Square) and others cited in the inventory of his estate. In comparison with the marble reliefs of the Lion and Panther, however, Quellinus’s renderings of animals are much truer to life, with more varied poses.⁹ Despite the skilful modelling of the beasts themselves, the landscapes and vegetation in the background are comparatively rigid and static in their execution. Inexperienced with devising such depictions, the sculptor most likely consulted visual models. In the case of the lion, he may have relied on Giambologna’s popular bronze, which regularly appeared in paintings of Antwerp’s art cabinets by Francken and others.¹⁰ The lion on the relief shares the same pose as that of the bronze, even if differences can be observed in the depiction of the head and the positioning of the tail. For his rendering of the panther, the sculptor may have been inspired by an engraved model, such as Michael Snijders’s print after Adriaen Collaert, depicting various wild animals.¹¹

The respectable, though scarcely refined execution of the two reliefs suggests they were not conceived as independent works destined for a collector or functioning as interior decoration – as indeed suggested by the grey marble frames in which these works are now encased. A far more likely scenario is that they originally belonged to a larger ensemble, e.g. an altarpiece: when in a religious context, the two predatory animals may have symbolized the harmonious life in the hereafter, as prophesized by Isaiah.¹² The idyllic depiction of the landscape in the background underscores this reposed aspect of heaven. Nevertheless, the absence of a goat or calf and the beasts’ gaping jaws and piercing gazes contradict this biblical interpretation.

Frits Scholten, 2025