Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan (Patacon?)

Entry

The subject of this convex, positive impression and its corresponding, concave, negative mould (BK-2010-9-1) is the Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan. Christ, dressed in a loincloth, hands folded in prayer, stands in the water. St John, wearing garments made of camel’s hair, pours water from a bowl over Christ’s head. He holds a staff in his left hand. The two figures stand beneath a double-arched gothic structure, supported left and right by a slender column with a nodus in the middle. In the centre of the double arch is a pendant keystone crowned with a pinnacle, and acanthus leaves sprout from the arches. Above it there is brickwork. The background to the scene is finely hatched. The detailing, particularly the finely hatched background, suggests that the composition is based on a print example such as an etching or engraving. There is, moreover, a stylistic affinity with late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century ivory reliefs attributed to the Low Countries. Two ivory paxes, in the Rijksmuseum (BK-2013-6) and in the British Museum in London, are actually identical to this mould and its impression down to the smallest detail;³ the only difference is the presence of an escutcheon with an unidentified family coat of arms on the ivory. The connection between the ivories, particularly the one in London, and this mould with its impression is of considerable art historical significance: not only does it illustrate the fact that elite art in expensive materials like ivory was copied directly in cheap reproductive art, it is also a further indication that the group of ivories to which this pax belongs originates in the Low Countries.⁴ The characteristics of these ivories include a hatched background, the depressed gothic arch that spans the scene and the brickwork above.⁵

The emergence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of an industry mass-producing popular devotional works that could be reproduced easily and relatively cheaply, of which this relief is one, is a north-western European phenomenon.⁶ In the urbanized Low Countries the demand for cheap, mass-produced religious manufactures like this was particularly high among the laity in the towns and cities, pilgrims and members of religious orders. As well as simple woodcuts and engravings, lead pilgrim badges and pipeclay figurines and reliefs, devotional objects were also made of pewter, wax, stucco, papier-mâché and even edible materials.⁷ The designs are usually fairly schematic and were often derived from woodcuts.⁸ In the case of the Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan the double gothic arch calls to mind the design of prints in the _Biblia Pauperum _and similar illustrations. One striking feature, for instance, is the schematic rendition of St John’s camel-hair garment with separate strands of hair. In the same way, in other reliefs the low vegetation in a landscape is indicated with individual tufts of grass.⁹

Their fragility, the intensive use to which they were subjected and the coming of the Reformation mean that very few intact examples of this wide-ranging industrial output have survived, most of them in Germany. Some tondi, moulds and impressions from the Middle Rhine region that are similar in size and material are held in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.¹⁰ The combination of an intact mould and corresponding contemporaneous impression dating from the sixteenth century is therefore quite exceptional.

Although the design of this mould and impression is entirely late gothic, these pieces probably have to be dated to well into the sixteenth century. This is indicated by the fact that pieces were found in the same Leiden excavation with obviously later decoration, probably from the same pottery, such as a star-shaped mould and impression of the Flight into Egypt (BK-2010-10-1 and -2). The occurrence of these styles side by side suggests a latest date of around 1540-50. This Leiden pottery on Galgenveld may even have been in business for as long as a hundred to a hundred and fifty years, because among other pieces in the same find were a mould and impression dated 1645 with an image of the World Turned Upside Down (titled Lustig Ordt).¹¹ To what extent this pottery was a continuation of an earlier Leiden pottery that produced devotional figurines in pipeclay in the fifteenth and probably early sixteenth centuries in the nearby Varkenmarkt cannot yet be established.¹² In 1986 the firing waste from this medieval production – a great many fragments of statuettes, reliefs and moulds – was found opposite Oude Varkenmarkt 13 in Leiden.¹³ These fragments, which are similar in terms of subjects to pipeclay finds in other towns and cities, bear no clear iconographic or physical resemblance to the material found in Galgenveld.¹⁴

Aside from the diversity in style and shape, another noteworthy aspect of the Galgenveld find is the fact that religious and secular subjects occur in the same place. This raises the question as to the function of the reliefs that were found. The different shapes – here a slightly curved model, elsewhere a round or star-shaped flat relief – make their use as decorative wall reliefs, for example by a fireplace, unlikely, although the technical and stylistic likeness to sixteenth-century hearthstones is considerable.¹⁵ Their use for private devotions at home, for instance standing on a shelf, in a small niche or on a simple house altar, is conceivable, but there are no other known Netherlandish examples. There is, though, a record in Nuremberg, dated 4 May 1563, of the patrician Paulus Behaim’s purchasing 13 posierte mendle und frayle, auch pferdle von schwarz laimen gemacht, auf die gesimbs zu setzen… (13 modelled men and women, also horses, made of black clay to put on the shelf...).¹⁶ The fact that the Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan was not a common devotional subject argues against this use.

The most plausible explanation is that reliefs like this were used as what are known as patacons.¹⁷ These small clay tablets were made for use as decorations on festive loaves and cakes at the end of the year. The designs in the clay were usually painted. Their use was most common in the Southern Netherlands from the sixteenth century onwards. The patacons were often made in pipeclay, although there were also cheaper variants in local types of clay.¹⁸ Most of them are relatively small, but larger examples similar to the relief of the Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan also occur. Larger patacons of this kind are often curved, as is the case here, so that they fitted the shape of the loaf.¹⁹ Although patacons were chiefly used in Christmas and New Year loaves, it is not impossible that they were also used on the bread for other religious and secular feast days in the last months of the year.

Frits Scholten, 2024