St John, from a Calvary

Entry

This large sculpture of St John once belonged to a Calvary group of which both the crucified figure of Christ and the cross itself are missing. John stood below the cross on the right side, i.e. on Christ’s left. The sculpture has been in the Rijksmuseum’s collection since 1898. According to the art dealer from whom it was acquired, it came from the area of Tiel.³ The original pendant, a sculpture of the Virgin Mary (BK-1987-21), was added to the museum’s collection in 1987.

The fact that both sculptures surfaced on the Amsterdam art market within a period of ten years, respectively in 1898 and 1907, may perhaps indicate that the Calvary group had remained complete up until the late nineteenth century. Its probable location was standing on a beam separating the chancel and nave of a church or chapel. Unfortunately, a more exact provenance is unknown.

In 1980, De Werd convincingly attributed the two statues to Arnt van Tricht,⁴ a Lower Rhenish sculptor active in Kalkar from as early as circa 1533 up until his death in 1570.⁵ While Van Tricht’s early works as yet exuded the spirit of his predecessor in Kalkar, Henrik Douverman (c. 1490-1543/44), by the late 1530s he had begun to develop a highly expressive and personal style. As such, Van Tricht was responsible for introducing the formal idiom of the early Renaissance in the region, while at the same time distancing himself from the late-gothic formulas that continued to dominate Lower Rhenish sculpture well into the sixteenth century. This suggests he obtained his training elsewhere other than the region of the Lower Rhine: perhaps in Utrecht, but possibly in Antwerp, where the presence of a sculptor bearing the name ‘Aerdt van Tricht’ was indeed documented in the year 1522.⁶ The influence of Van Tricht’s workshop extended as far as the eastern regions of the Low Countries, as affirmed by the roof bosses at the Duivelshuis in Arnhem,⁷ his sculpted chimneypiece in Huis ter Horst (Loenen, near Apeldoorn)⁸ and an epitaph for the Ros family from the Grote Kerk in Wageningen preserved in the Rijksmuseum (BK-NM-3099). In light of such considerations, the Calvary group’s purported provenance in the surroundings of Tiel is highly tenable.

When taken into account the style, that marks the beginning of a new phase in Van Tricht’s development, as well as the dendrochronology analysis of the wood,⁹ the sculptures can be dated around 1545. Accordingly, they were likely produced shortly after his earliest documented independent work: the Altar of St John for the Sankt-Nicolaikirche in Kalkar of 1541-43. Mary in fact closely resembles the much smaller Virgin from the Coronation group located higher up in the altarpiece, while John bears a notable similarity to the standing evangelists Luke and Matthew from this same altar.¹⁰ These statues share not only the same style of drapery folds and physiognomic features observed in the Amsterdam Mary and John, but also the characteristic disc-shaped socles. Mary’s pose is reserved, displaying an unusual but subtle contrapposto. In her original state, she held her hands before her breast, folded in prayer. Her cloak rises up and wraps around both arms as a consequence of this gesture, from there falling gracefully and voluminously around her body. Such characteristics mark a clear break in style and form with the conventional late-medieval iconography of Calvary scenes. In the case of John, an even more pronounced deviation from stylistic tradition is to be observed in the severe twisting of the his head in the direction of the cross. Both figures possess the sharply defined eyes, mouth and jawline – all characteristics of Van Tricht – whereas Mary’s domed forehead is likewise found, for instance, in the figure of Mary Magdalene in the Holy Trinity Altar in Kalkar (Sankt-Nicolaikirche).¹¹

Two other surviving and complete Calvary groups in the vicinity of Kalkar – both considered simplified, artistically inferior copies of the Amsterdam statues – are preserved in the Sankt-Hermeskirche in Warbeyen and the Sankt-Antonius Abbaskirche in Hanselaer.¹² These works provide not only an impression of the original layout of Van Tricht’s Calvary group, but also of the missing crucified Christ. In respect to the present group, however, an example more suitable for comparison is the Christ in Van Tricht’s Pietà in Münster (LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur), which also dates from around 1540.¹³

Frits Scholten, 2024