Christ Child Holding a Bird

Entry

In the late Middle Ages, simple pipeclay (white-firing clay) sculptures such as this were serially produced in the Low Countries using moulds.² Utrecht was unquestionably an important centre for the production of pipeclay devotional objects, as the large number of moulds and misfires unearthed there attest.³

Depicted is a naked Christ Child, a so-called Jéseau, holding a bird in his hands.⁴ Hundreds of this type of figurine exist, with minor differences often distinguishing one pipeclay sculpture from the next, with the added variation of the attribute held in the child’s hands.⁵ By far the most common attribute is a bird (cf. BK-KOG-1272-O and BK-KOG-11283), most likely in reference to an episode from the apocryphal Childhood Gospel that tells of how the Christ Child moulded small clay birds which he subsequently brought to life, allowing them to fly away as a prefiguration of his own resurrection.⁶

While the present figurine was excavated on the site of the former monastery in Diepenveen (near Deventer), similar figurines have been found throughout the country, including Halsteren near Bergen op Zoom, where an estimated 200 pieces were unearthed.⁷ During the excavation of a cesspit of the St Catharinagasthuis in Leiden, a pipeclay mould for making such Christ Child figurines was discovered.⁸

Such pipeclay infant figures of Christ typically had their own socle, which allowed them to function as freestanding images. Others were used for the purpose of ‘baby-cradling’, a religious ritual practiced both in the family context and monastic life. The infant Christ was laid in a small crib that one could rock back and forth.⁹ An intricately carved wooden crib in the Rijksmuseum’s collection features a cradle suspended between two stands with pins, thus allowing it to be rocked (BK-2013-14-1). Simple pipeclay figures of the infant Christ with integrated cribs also exist. They can be rocked on their rounded underside (cf. BK-NM-11289).

Bieke van der Mark, 2024