Inkwell in the Form of a Pulpit with a Monk

Entry

The head of a monk with tonsure peers out from a small, pentagonal gothic pulpit that stands on a triad of claw feet. On each of the pulpit’s sides, four moulded bands, consistently 4.5 millimetres in height, separate three horizontal registers. Each register contains a different decorative motif: in the bottom register, a pattern of pointed, four-lobed leaves; in the large middle register, an arcade of intersecting lancet arches with minuscule rosettes in the spandrels; and in the upper register, a quatrefoil motif à orbevoies.¹ A cusped border with fleurons lines the pulpit’s perimeter at the top, with a stepped buttress demarcating each corner where two sides meet from top to bottom. As a whole, each of the sides of the pulpit exemplifies a distinctive gothic arcade composition encountered in all manner of variations in the fourteenth century, ranging from the marginal decoration of illuminated books to furniture, altarpieces and architecture.²

Extending beyond the top edge of the pulpit barrel, the buttresses are crowned by finials in the form of small pitched roofs. Motifs of this nature, though nowhere encountered on pulpits – which for practical reasons are typically flat along the upper edge – are a fairly common solution applied in gothic church architecture.³ In Great Britain and the German-speaking regions, sporadic examples of wood and stone pulpits from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have survived that display a similar form, including the decorative arrangement of quatrefoils and gothic arch patterns on the barrel.⁴ A pulpit in Mellor (Derbyshire), one of the earliest surviving examples in Great Britain, offers an excellent comparison, carved from a single, solid block of oak and originating from circa 1350-60 (fig. a).⁵ The Rijksmuseum’s miniature pulpit dates from more or less the same period: both the style of the carving and a recent radiocarbon test to determine the wood’s age place this object in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century.⁶ This is the Gründerzeit of the production of autonomous miniature and micro-scale boxwood sculptures in Europe, which at this time was primarily concentrated in and around Paris. The surrounding regions of Picardy, Normandy and Brittany were the most important suppliers of this slow-growing, precious wood (Buxus sempervirens). The fine structure and readily polishable surface of this wood species was ideal for small-scale, portable utilitarian and ornamental objects. A French written source from 1360 makes specific mention of boxwood items such as writing tablets and herbal caskets, but also small sculptures (ymages de buix).⁷ In terms of its properties and applications, boxwood is highly comparable to ivory.

The tonsured monk sitting in the barrel of this miniature pulpit has a strikingly naturalistic face, looking up and out at the beholder. Two curious extensions left and right of his head are in fact the up-raised sleeves of his habit. One sees no arms or hands: the sleeves are empty and hollow. The original function of this rather odd and unquestionably amusing woodcarving is in fact betrayed by ink residue on the sleeves’ hollow interior. Few such inkwells have survived to the present day: indeed, this boxwood object is a very rare example of a late medieval inkwell, executed in micro-carving.⁸ Luxury inkwells and complete writing sets executed in precious metal or wood with intarsia and dating from the late Middle Ages, are listed, for example, in the inventories of Jean de France, Duc de Berry of 1401, 1413 and 1416. Two silver-gilt writing sets (escriptoires; escriptouères) presented to the duke as gifts by his secretaries are specifically mentioned, as are a number of separate inkwells (ancrier) held in the duke’s possession.⁹ The inventory of the French king Charles V lists no fewer than seventeen inkwells and/or writing sets, recorded in 1379-1380, with some made of ebony.¹⁰

A miniature inkwell of this specific nature appears nowhere in medieval depictions of writers at their work. In their day-to-day labours, writers and copyists generally resorted to ordinary versus luxury writing tools, entailing fairly simple portable ink-holders often constructed from a sawed-off cow’s horn or a small, sealable cylindrical vessel made of leather, metal, glass or wood.¹¹ Other inkwells in medieval representations entail nothing more than a simple, round jar or bottle made of glass or ceramic, which stood on the writing table, as can be seen in a miniature of the canon/writer Jean Miélot (c. 1410-1472) at work in his scriptorium.¹² A depiction of St Luke in a Spanish psalter of circa 1440 shows the evangelist inspecting his quill after dipping it in a small inkwell clasped in his left hand.¹³ This is a rare image of an inkwell with multiple openings in the top. A larger ceramic variant can be seen at the side of his writing table, as well as a small jar filled with ink.

As documented from the fifteenth century onward, many basic medieval inkwells were serially produced: carved or turned from wood, glass-blown or cast in metal. A fifteenth-century inkwell cast in lead excavated near Egmond Castle (Stedelijk Museum, Alkmaar) –octagonal in form and decorated on the sides with a simple, repeating geometric motif – is perhaps one example of this serial production.¹⁴ Another is illustrated in a miniature portrait in the Hausbuch der Landauer Zwölfbrüderstiftung (1565), which shows the Kalamalmacher Peter Schmid using a file to finish a number of small, round inkwells turned from blocks of wood.¹⁵ The Amsterdam inkwell, however, has nothing to do with serial production or an inkwell-maker’s standard manufacture intended for daily use by a monk or cleric. On the contrary, it stands alone as a tailor-made piece crafted by a talented woodcarver with a specific purpose and/or patron clearly in mind.

The Amsterdam inkwell, including the three claw feet, has been carved from a single block of boxwood.¹⁶ Its basic form recalls tableware pieces from this period, including a hexagonal salt cast in pewter (England, c. 1320).¹⁷ The wood of the inkwell has been hollowed out to create a reservoir for the ink, with a sizeable opening in the bottom that could be sealed off with a cork or an oil-soaked wooden stopper.¹⁸ To draw the ink, the quill was dipped in the monk’s handless sleeves. Although the precise meaning of the inkwell is perhaps not immediately evident, its iconography seems to convey the mild jest or amusement typical of the carved scenes adorning choir stalls and misericordiae, or the small, often subversive images that playfully mock members in the margins and bas-des-pages of illuminated manuscripts.¹⁹ The pulpit’s two front claw feet are positioned as if to resemble the physical extension of the monk’s legs, creating a humorous effect – intentional or not – reminiscent of the grylli, i.e. figures with bodiless human heads and two legs – animal or human – that fill the marginalia of countless manuscripts.²⁰ In this ‘upside-down’ world, depictions are indeed known to exist where figures in pulpits – members of the clergy, but also animals – function as the visual manifestation of specific sayings and expressions in a manner conceptually akin to the Amsterdam inkwell.²¹ One such theme is the preaching fox on misericords of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,²² with a particularly fine example of the late fifteenth century, originating from the abbey of Saint-Lucien de Beauvais in the city of the same name and today preserved in the Musée Cluny.²³ Examples of English origin include misericords from Ripon, Beverley Minster and Bury Saint Edmunds.²⁴ Also comparable is the scene on a choir stall in the Sint-Janskathedraal in Den Bosch, in which a somewhat disproportionately small schoolboy – his head concealed behind the lectern – reads aloud from a missal while two adults look on.²⁵

When in use, however, the substitution of the scribe’s quill for the monk’s hand holds another, perhaps less fanciful significance. Because the pulpit’s function is to proclaim and disseminate God’s word, the scene might also be explained in terms of a more general reference to the labours of the inkwell’s user, who essentially fulfils the same task with his written word: he copies religious texts to be disseminated. The copyist’s writing hand wields his quill, and in doing so, he assumes the role of the preaching monk. Signifying a monk’s work in the literal sense, this then implies the inkwell’s place in a monastic setting, resting on an abbot’s or prior’s writing desk or in a monastery’s scriptorium ¬–where, after all, most of the writing was done in the Middle Ages. References to the writing and pictorial endeavours of those making illuminated manuscripts also commonly appear in the margins of these works, stemming from what comes across as a desire to personalize and manifest oneself in a manner akin to the inkwell’s iconography.²⁶ One marginal decoration on the bas-de-page of a book of hours dating from the second quarter of the fourteenth century shows a monk whose pose – as if sticking his head and arms through the parchment – is strikingly similar to that of the boxwood monk.²⁷ In the personal possession of someone in the secular world, i.e. a wealthy merchant²⁸ or a university cleric,²⁹ the inkwell’s imagery, with its powerful expression and loaded significance, would only have been diminished.³⁰

One interpretation of the inkwell’s scene, related to the rule of the Carthusian Order, nevertheless belies the picture of a monk at work in his scriptorium. In the Middle Ages, the Carthusians played a key role in the copying and dissemination of religious texts. Contrary to most other monastic orders, the Carthusians lived in exile, removed from the civilized world and inhabiting places in isolation. Its members were subject to an explicit speaking ban, with exception granted for no more than a few hours each week.³¹ In the quiet of their monasteries, the Carthusians’ efforts were devoted chiefly to writing. Such activity occurred, however, in the solitary confinement of each monk’s private cell as opposed to the community scriptorium elsewhere.³² In the first codification of the Carthusian monastic rules, entitled the Consuetudines Cartusiae, the fifth prior-general and prior of the Grande-Chartreuse near Grenoble, Guigo, outlined this silent task in the most explicit terms: ‘Through them [= books], we may proclaim God’s word with our hands, where we are unable to do so with our mouth.’³³ Guigo’s words precisely reflect what that the inkwell ostensibly aims to convey: sitting helpless and hunkered down in the barrel of the pulpit – his mouth sealed – the monk is incapable of preaching. Instead, he ‘lends’ his hands to the scribe: perhaps a Carthusian monk writing in the confinement of his own cell, who through his humble labours manages as yet to disseminate God’s word. If indeed this interpretation is correct, then the inkwell is certain to have belonged to a monk from an affluent background, residing in one of the numerous charterhouses established throughout Europe during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.³⁴

Fourteen Carthusian monasteries were founded in the Low Countries alone, eight of which were located in the Southern Netherlands.³⁵ Many of these houses were established under noble patronage with members of the nobility regularly entering this highly regimented order, thus ensuring close ties with the aristocracy.³⁶ This in turn facilitated a monastery’s acquisition of artistic works, despite traditional Carthusian rules of austerity.³⁷

The Chartreuse de Champmol near Dijon, the charterhouse of greatest renown in the late Middle Ages, was founded by Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in the years 1377-1410.³⁸ As the Carthusian order’s most richly furnished and embellished charterhouse in the Middle Ages, Champmol was alone in having monumental sculpture.³⁹ With twenty-four individual monk’s cells, it boasted twice the number of the typical Carthusian monastery. In the monastery’s annual accounts, purchases of writing sets (escriptoires) and inkwells (encriers, cornettes in horn and pewter), together with other miscellaneous writing supplies and objects acquired for the outfitting of the cells and the scriptorium, are recorded from 1384 on. Nothing in these records, however, suggests a direct parallel to the Amsterdam inkwell.⁴⁰ Entries in the monastery’s bookkeeping pertain exclusively to regular purchases associated with its standard upkeep; personal commissions or gifts in the category to be expected of the Rijksmuseum inkwell are non-existent.

Lending additional weight to the theory that the Amsterdam inkwell’s origin is best situated in the context of a Carthusian monastery the likes of Champmol is the style of the carving. Striking stylistic parallels between the inkwell and other more monumental, major works of sculpture from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, particularly evident in the rendering of the monk’s face, narrow the range of its artistic provenance. Despite the small scale, the figure’s face conveys an extraordinary naturalism, with touching, almost portrait-like features. The effect is achieved via specific physiognomic traits: the wide, almond-shaped eyes, a slightly bent nose, the frown of the forehead, the sharp lines around the mouth intended to highlight the cheeks, and the pointed chin. Specifically in the Southern Netherlands and France, realistic depictions of specific people first emerges as a prominent aspect of sculpture during the second half of the fourteenth century. This development culminates in the work of the leading sculptors who were active at the French royal court in Paris, including Jean de Liège, André Beauneveu, Jean de Marville, Jacques de Baerze and Claes Sluter,⁴¹ but also artists commissioned by King Charles V (reign 1364-80) and his successor, Charles VI (reign 1380-1422), as well as other members of the French high nobility belonging to or having ties with the Valois dynasty, such as Jean, Duc de Berry, and Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.⁴² Similar facial features are also encountered on the pleurants adorning the tombs of Philip the Bold and John the Fearless in Dijon (e.g. fig. b),⁴³ and two kneeling Carthusian monks in Cleveland.⁴⁴ Even prior to this, however, early traces of naturalism are found, for instance, on the face of the Utrecht bishop St Frederic, as portrayed on his reliquary bust of 1362 by the local goldsmith Elias Scerpswert (BK-NM-11450),⁴⁵ and contemporaneous ivory-carvings made in Paris, works that clearly convey the artistic ambience of the French and Burgundian courts. Examples include a standing angel in New York,⁴⁶ an Annunciation group from Langres associated with the patronage of Philip the Bold, and the minuscule portrait of John the Fearless encrusted in a cameo ring.⁴⁷ The features on this latter piece are very similar to the inkwell’s monk, with almond-shaped eyes, heavy-set eyelids and an angular jawline, ending in a prominent mouth and chin.

Archival evidence confirms that important sculptors in this Parisian/Flemish artistic environment also engaged in creating small-scale works of sculpture carved in ivory and boxwood.⁴⁸ One documented example involves Philip the Bold’s court sculptor, Jean de Marville, who in 1377 received 26 pounds of ivory to be used for carvings destined for the duke.⁴⁹ Noteworthy is the explicit wording that accompanies his name – son tailleur de menus euvres (his sculptor of small works) – a title likewise accorded Jehan de Liège, a woodcarver also employed by the duke.⁵⁰ Small-scale sculpture was apparently De Marville’s main specialty. All the more surprising, as today he is known first and foremost as the artist responsible for the first version of Philip the Bold’s monumental burial tomb. To switch from one medium to another was by no means uncommon: from the thirteenth century on, sculptors in Paris accepted commissions for works to be executed in wood, ivory or stone.⁵¹

The origin of the present inkwell must be interpreted in this context – not as a product of a specialized artisan in Paris, such as a tabletier (a maker of luxury writing tablets, chess boards, combs and boxes), or even the work of a professional inkwell-maker.⁵² Quite the contrary, when considering the exceptional, sculptural concept and the skilful and naturally rendered face of the monk, this miniature pulpit in carved boxwood is to be seen as an original work by a sculptor-woodcarver, an ymagier tailleur, accustomed to working and thinking both on a monumental and a micro scale.⁵³ He should therefore likely be sought among artists working for the royal court or one affiliated, like that of the duke of Burgundy.

Frits Scholten, 2024