Holy Family

Entry

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the production of small-scale sculptures carved in boxwood and ivory flourished in the Northern and Southern Netherlands. In its early stages, this production primarily centred on finely executed pieces with themes that were purely religious and devotional in nature. In the seventeenth century, however, a growing demand for sculptures more suitable for display in prestigious art cabinets gradually brought about a shift. The interest of these collectors lay not so much on the religious aspect of these works but rather the artistic virtuosity they displayed. Among sculptors in the Dutch Republic, this evolution can be observed in works by Albert Vinckenbrinck (1605-1664) in Amsterdam and Ambrosius van Swol (active c. 1643-c.1679) in Utrecht. An appreciation for the artistry of carved works also had an increasing influence on Southern Netherlandish sculpture, despite the strong demand for devotional sculpture that had persisted there during the Counter-Reformation.¹ Confirming this shift is the present group of the Holy Family – the infant Jesus accompanied by his parents, Mary and Joseph – by the Mechelen woodcarver Jan van Doorne III (1616-1663). Here the depiction of this Roman Catholic theme has been stripped of all its religious connotations: what we see is a domestic scene of two parents playing with her child. Van Doorne succeeded in this endeavour by taking what was typically a static composition – three figures lined up in a row – and instilling it with a far greater liveliness and movement. He achieves this by introducing minute details in the figures’ clothing, but also imbuing the Christ Child’s robes with an elegant, billowing effect. To underscore the level of craftsmanship, he introduced a seemingly insignificant detail visible only to the art-lover’s keen eye: the use of dark-coloured glass beads for the eyes to induce the subtlest reflection of light, bestowing an even greater liveliness on his figures.

As early as the fifteenth century, the Wandering of the Holy Family, an apocryphal episode during the holy family’s return journey out of Egypt (based on Matthew 2:19-21), was a commonly depicted theme.² With the onset of the Counter-Reformation and Jesuit propaganda highlighting the devotion of Christ, however, it would experience an even greater popularity throughout the Roman Catholic world in the seventeenth century. In essence, Jesus, Mary and Joseph were seen as the earthly equivalent of the heavenly Holy Trinity.³ In north-western Europe, Jesuit devotees in Antwerp played a key role in the dissemination of the ‘Holy Wandering’ devotion, as did the art that they commissioned. Particularly influential in this respect were Hieronymus Wierix’s ninth print in the series Admodum Reverendo in Christo Patri (Antwerp, c. 1600), Rubens’s painted altarpiece for the altar of St Joseph in the Sint-Carolus-Borromeuskerk in Antwerp, and the engraving of the same work by the Antwerp artist Schelte à Bolswert.⁴ On two occasions, Stadholder Frederick Henry commissioned the Antwerp painter Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert (1614-1654) to create a work centring on this theme, thus highlighting its association with the more general aspects of domestic life and familial intimacy versus ties to a strictly Roman Catholic or Jesuit doctrine.⁵

Jan van Doorne’s group was clearly influenced by Schelte à Bolswert’s engraving after Rubens’s painting (RP-P-BI-2472), as is particularly noticeable in the arrangement of the three figures and their respective poses. Where the later work clearly diverges from its predecessor, however, is in the more contemporary clothing worn by the figure of Joseph. While Rubens chose to portray Christ’s father barefoot and dressed in antique-style attire, Van Doorne’s boxwood Joseph appears in the customary garb of the seventeenth century: jerkin and breeches worn beneath a sweeping cape, with a wide-brimmed hat and strapping boots. It was precisely this contemporary adaptation that enhanced the theme’s tangibility for the seventeenth-century beholder.

Jan van Doorne III came from a family of woodcarvers and sculptors in the city Mechelen. Together with his stepfather, Frans van Loo (1581-1658), Van Doorne specialized in small religious sculptures carved in boxwood.⁶ Nevertheless, the sculptor’s surviving oeuvre remains exceedingly small: in addition to the present monogrammed group, only two other signed carvings are known. The first is a boxwood Virgin and Child, signed VDOORNE, measuring 28 centimetres in height and currently preserved at the Art and History Museum in Brussels.⁷ Compared to the drapery folds on the present Holy Family, the folds on this piece are rendered more summarily. It also has the inset glass eyes, as does a second signed work that surfaced on the London art market in 2001: a boxwood-carved Virgin and Child, circa 20 centimetres in height and bearing the inscription on the reverse VDOORNE F[ecit], with Mary supporting the standing figure of the Christ Child on her arm.⁸ The stylistic agreement with the Holy Family is highly evident in this group, not only in the livelier execution of the drapery folds but especially in Mary’s facial features. Two additional statuettes carved in boxwood can be added to this small group of signed pieces on stylistic grounds: a standing Virgin and Child in Cologne, cradling a recumbent Christ Child in her arms, and a Virgin and Child – also cradling the recumbent Child, but with arms concealed beneath the train of her cloak – in the collection of the Rijksmuseum (BK-1974-5).⁹ The Cologne statuette displays a more reserved classicism, with a vertical, static arrangement of the drapery folds. On the unsigned Amsterdam figure, by contrast, one finds the same baroque treatment of the draperies as with the Virgin of the present Holy Family. Both works share the same ostensibly classical facial features of the Mary and the theme of the playful Christ Child lying recumbent in Mary’s arms.

A more static variant of the Holy Family, though uncontrovertibly based directly on the Rijksmuseum group, was sold in 2005. Here the same figures are depicted wearing the same contemporaneous clothing, but without the dynamic movement of the drapery folds and the walking motif shared by the Christ Child and his father.¹⁰ While no doubt exists concerning the Mechelen origin of this piece, nowhere do we observe the refinement of Van Doorne’s figures. An echo of this Mechelen visual tradition can nevertheless be discerned in the oeuvre of the Antwerp sculptor Walter Pompe (1703-1777), whose boxwood-carved Holy Family – in this case additionally flanked by Mary’s parents, Anne and Joachim – dates from 1754-55. Particularly reminiscent of Van Doorne is the lively pose of the Christ Child.¹¹

Frits Scholten, 2025