Christmas Crib

Entry

In the Netherlands and the German-speaking countries, it was the custom in the weeks after Christmas to rock a small figure of the Christ Child in a crib made especially for that purpose. Lasting up until the Reformation, the practice of rocking the cradle occurred in the home setting, around a tresoor (dresser) which then temporarily functioned as a house altar. Yet the same ritual was carried out by monks and nuns in the monastic setting and by priests when such cribs were placed on church altars. In anticipation of the Christ Child’s arrival on Christmas day, the cribs were furnished with small bells and miniature bedclothes. During the actual rocking of the cradle, hymns were sung by the priest, the worshippers and often even children.⁸ In a mocking commentary written in 1604 recounting this practice, which by this time had fallen entirely out of use, the Calvinist elder and antipapist Walich Sieuwertsz stated: ‘They know how on Christmas Day it was a custom to place a small crib on the high altar with a figure therein, in the form of a lying baby wearing a diaper; and that the parents took their children to the church, with a small crib and bell; and when during the mass the priest began to rock the child on the altar and began to sing Eia, Eia, Eia etc., then the children joined in, with each rocking their own little [Christ] child and singing Eia, while in doing so they made much noise and ringing, so that accompanied by the organ the entire church played along in a special way adding lustre to the music. and is that now not a splendid form of religious practice, to commemorate the birth of our Saviour in such a childish and ridiculous way?’⁹ Although likely originating in the twelfth century, in the Netherlands this unusual form of Christmas devotion is certain to have reached its high point in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The large numbers of small pipeclay rocking cribs, serially produced in Utrecht and elsewhere in the Low Countries, indicate the wide dissemination of the practice by this time, with the possession of such cribs by no means restricted to the elite.¹⁰ The regular mention of Christmas cribs in people’s wills in the Southern Netherlands during the same period further corroborates the popularity of this devotion.¹¹

The use of Christmas cribs was limited to the period between Christmas and Candlemas (fourteen days later). The rocking of the Christ Child, accompanied by special hymns and the ringing of bells attached to the crib, was a devotional practice with a strong symbolic character. Insight into the use of these Christmas objects of devotion can be obtained from a small book of collected sermons from 1565 in the possession of one Sister Weyncken, a nun in the Amsterdam monastery of the Clarisses.¹² These sermons were written by the sister’s confessor, a certain Father Bartholomaeus van Middelburg. She writes that he presented her with a Christmas crib ‘because we have seen how the children use a crib during this venerable period of Christmas, during which they rock Jesus, that dear little child, with sweet hymns of praise and great joy; and through this I was inspired to go seek out children and to have a crib of my own, so that all of us can together rock Jesus like small, meek children and hold [him] in our hearts, so that he will wish to remain in and near us for all eternity.’¹³ He explained to Sister Weyncken how the crib was a symbol of the soul’s spiritual motherhood, to be seen as an allegory of the meek heart with which the nuns were to receive and care for the Christ Child. The two posts from which the crib hung stood for the Old and New Testaments; the small pillow stood for love and the white sheet for innocence and purity. The crib’s base symbolized unshakable faith. The same symbolism applies to the Amsterdam crib, which has a form comparable to that in Van Middelburg’s description.

Under the influence of the Reformation and the Counterreformation, the practice of rocking the Christ Child in his crib fell completely out of use in the latter half of the sixteenth century. With the disappearance of this devotional practice, most of these cribs were subsequently discarded. Today only a few dozen survive, with a majority being the simple, standing format.¹⁴ Approximately ten are of the monumental type, which Keller described as ‘Gestellhängewiege’: a base supporting an open, portal- or baldachin-shaped frame from which a small cradle is suspended, thus enabling it to be physically rocked. ¹⁵ The Amsterdam Christmas crib is one of the largest and most complete of its sort, together with a virtually identical example in the Musée Cluny (fig. a)¹⁶ and a version in Antwerp of lesser height. Noteworthy is that a majority of these hanging cribs – to the extent their original provenance has been ascertained – can be situated in West Flanders (Bruges) or Brabant (Brussels, Leuven, Tienen).

The construction of the Amsterdam crib consists of an oblong, block-shaped base with in-curved corners. Resting on four recumbent lion figures, the base itself is decorated in the round with metselrie, i.e. gothic openwork tracery. A rising gothic, arched frame, surmounted by pinnacles and spiraling colonettes, adorns the base; the upper section is decorated with ‘broken’ gothic tracery. The rocking cradle is suspended within this arch, and swings on two small pegs made of bone. The cradle itself is ornately decorated with open gothic tracery in the form of interweaving, heart-shaped trefoils, with each of the four corner posts surmounted by a small pinnacle. Its design and construction were clearly modelled after actual cradles built for newborn infants at this time, such as that of Philip the Fair from circa 1478 (fig. b).¹⁷

The style of the design and the tracery – highly akin to the metselrie work encountered on altarpieces produced in Brussels, Mechelen and Antwerp during this same period – points to the early sixteenth century as a date of origin.¹⁸ Brussels is the most likely place of production, as the strong agreement with metselrie patterns in altarpieces bearing the mark of that city leaves little doubt in this respect. Relevant examples are a Passion altar in the Art and History Museum in Brussels (c. 1490-1500),¹⁹ and the Marian altar at Boussu-lez-Mons (c. 1515-20)²⁰ and the altar of St Reineldis at Saintes (1490-1500).²¹ This finding is further substantiated by the presence of the bell-shaped tracery pattern, a motif relatively seldom encountered in Southern Netherlandish tracery. This motif occurs only a number of times, with some variation, exclusively on several Brussels altarpieces produced in the last decade of the fifteenth century. Outside of Brussels, the motif is non-existent during this period.²² The bell-shaped tracery pattern appears, for instance, on the aforementioned Passion altarpiece in the Art and History Museum in Brussels (c. 1490-1500) and the altarpiece from Gestel-Meerhout in the same collection.²³ The most significant agreement, however, is the tracery on the large St George Altar (1493) in the same museum, the principal, signed work of the Brussels sculptor Jan Borman II (c. 1460-c. 1520). In both cases, we find a vertical tripartite articulation demarcated by pinnacles, with the arches in each segment essentially forming a semicircle. The crowning element of each segment is the ‘bell’ motif, from which gothic fleurons spring. In the case of the Christmas crib, it appears, the same motif is applied in a more advanced and slender form. Here the fleurons have been transformed into small curls. At both the head and the foot of the cradle, the same motif is repeated in a more compact and elementary form. An additional similarity to the St George Altar can be observed in the form and composition of the pilasters and the pinnacles. This similarity is additionally supported by the fact that both the crib and this large retable were executed in non-polychromed oak.²⁴ The same style of metselrie – but then without the bell-shaped tracery pattern – appears in the Mary and Joseph retable from Saluzzo, which is certain to have been commissioned in Brussels around 1500 by the Pensi di Mondovi e Marsaglia family of Saluzzo for the family chapel in the cathedral of Mondovi (Piemonte).²⁵ This altarpiece has been attributed on stylistic grounds to the Borman workshop.²⁶

Assuming the metselrie on the St George Altar was designed and executed in the Borman workshop – not by a separate, specialized metselrie-carver, as was the custom in Antwerp²⁷ – then the Christmas crib’s attribution to the same atelier/studio seems evident. Around 1500, it was the most important woodcarving workshop in Brussels. Stemming from the aforementioned altarpiece, Jan Borman II was even described in no uncertain terms as the beste meester beeldsnijdere (best master carver) in a document of 1493.²⁸ In such a case, small-scale products such as the Rijksmuseum crib would have been a secondary specialization, occurring alongside the production of large retables. The possibility that these major workshops also made small-scale objects is a theory that has remained heretofore unaddressed, as art historical inquiry has focused almost exclusively on the production of monumental altarpieces. Lastly, the exceptional high quality of the woodcarving suggests that – just as with the large Borman retables in Brussels and Herenthals – polychromy was never involved nor intended.²⁹ The existence of the aforementioned, almost identical crib in the Musée Cluny and a cradle without its frame preserved in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow confirms that the production of these objects involved a certain element of standardization.³⁰ The Glasgow cradle is somewhat more ornate in its execution, with gilding and the presence of small figures adorning the corner posts. Despite these minor differences, this work is closely related to the Amsterdam and Paris cribs and can therefore be considered as a product of the same workshop.

Particularly noteworthy is the close agreement between the Amsterdam Christmas crib and the crib preserved in the Musée Cluny (fig. a).³¹ The overall form, dimensions³² and style are precisely the same, with the only discernible variation being the pattern of the tracery of the arched frame and the sides of the cradle. This difference is negligible, however, as these sections of the Paris crib were recently shown to be relatively modern reconstructions from shortly before 1914.³³ The same applies to its four supporting lions, which are rendered less convincingly than the original ones of the Amsterdam crib.³⁴ Nevertheless, the Paris crib still has three of its original six bells. The striking similarities between the two cribs can only mean that both were made in the same Brussels workshop (most likely that of Jan Borman II). Moreover, the Parisian crib is accompanied by its original chest in which it could be stored when not in use. The doors of the chest are painted with the coats of arms of two prominent Brussels families, the Cockaerts and Van Cattenbroecks.³⁵ Ippel links these arms to the Brussels silk merchant Gérard Cockaert (d. 1546) and his second wife, Marguerite-Madeleine van Cattenbroeck (d. 1540), who were married shortly after the death of Gérard’s first wife in 1509.³⁶ A potentially significant factor is that another member of the Van Cattenbroek family – Jan Baptist – is mentioned as being a member of the Brussels Confraternity of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, which had its seat in the city’s Sint-Gorikskerk.³⁷ One of this elite group’s earliest members was none other than the sculptor Jan Borman II.³⁸

A close examination of the photo featured in the 1914 auction catalogue reveals that some kind of switch is certain to have occurred around this time. Although the construction of the Christmas crib appearing in the photo is identical to the crib in the Musée Cluny, the swinging cradle is in fact the one from the Rijksmuseum crib. In other words, both objects appear to have been in the possession of the same individual, who at some point exchanged the two cradles, together with the small silver bells along the lower edge.³⁹ The aim of this switch was perhaps to procure one complete crib with hanging bells – versus two incomplete objects – to be sold together with the wooden storage chest. The exchange of the two cradles is therefore certain to have taken place (shortly) after the auction sale of the Sambon collection, in all probability switched by Sambon himself, perhaps at the sale in consultation with the buyer.

Frits Scholten, 2024