Female Saint (Virgin and Child?)

Entry

Restoration work in the tower of the Oude Kerk in Soest in 1905 uncovered in a bricked-up area an important treasure trove of statues, albeit in a deplorable condition.² It is assumed that the sculptures were hidden there either in 1566 at the outbreak of the Iconoclasm or in December 1580, when Calvinists in the Eemland region endeavoured to destroy every last remnant of religious art.³ Alongside wooden carvings there were a great many pieces of pipeclay figurines, from which, among others, this front section of a figure of a saint could be reconstructed. The woman’s pose strongly suggests that this is a Virgin and Child. Remnants of paint indicate that the figure was originally polychromed.

Pipeclay figures were mass-produced in moulds. This efficient production method, together with the cheapness of the material, made these small figurines of saints popular objects for private devotions by lay people, nuns and monks. Larger works, such as the present figure, were also placed in churches as an alternative to costly one-off statues in wood or stone.

Stylistically the figure ties in with Northern Netherlandish sculpture, particularly that of Utrecht around 1470-80. The Virgin’s pose though, is still very reminiscent of what is known as the ‘Utrecht Virgin’ type dating from the second quarter of the fifteenth century, which was made in pipeclay on a large scale and distributed widely (cf. BK-NM-11299).⁴ The closest comparison to the figure is a Virgin and Child in oak in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, which Klinckaert attributes to a Northern Netherlandish, probably Utrecht artist (fig. a).⁵ The faces have high, domed foreheads, small, half-closed eyes, long, narrow noses, small mouths and small but pronounced chins. The shoulder-length hair falls either side of the head in similar waving tresses. The gown’s drapery, with sharp V-shaped folds formed by the bunching of the fabric under the arms, occurs in both pieces. On the basis of these folds, which are more sophisticated than the broad, heavy, monumental folds of the ‘Utrecht Virgin’ type, Klinckaert dates the wooden Virgin and Child statue to around 1470-80, which is also a plausible date for the model of the present pipeclay version. The finding of a virtually identical head of a woman in terracotta (red-firing clay) in the Lauwerecht district of Utrecht during dredging operations in the river Vecht,⁶ appears to be further confirmation of the Utrecht provenance of the prototype.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024