Female Saint (St Agatha?)

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 figures 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

Among the statues found was that of the body of a female saint. She stands with her right foot slightly forward. Under her bodice, with stand-away neckline and wide, slashed sleeves, she wears a finely pleated under-gown. A sash, ends dangling, is knotted around her waist, and around her shoulders she has a cloak bunched up under her arms. The rounded toe of her right shoe protrudes from under her gown. Which saint this seriously damaged figure represents is unclear. Her only attribute is a fragment of an open book in her hands – not enough to be able to identify her.

In view of her importance to the village of Soest, Nederveen suggested that this could be St Agatha.⁴ This martyr was the patron saint of the village and of the local civic guard company, the Guild of St Aechten (Agatha).⁵ With this in mind, it is tempting to assume that there must have been a St Agatha among the figures found in Soest, particularly since the find was probably the church’s entire collection of late-medieval statues. The fact that the people went to the effort of hiding the relatively cheap pipeclay figurines (see for example BK-NM-12006-18) and taking down and bringing to safety the Marianum in the tower, suggests that in all probability nothing was left behind.⁶

Of all the figures found in 1905, this female saint is the only one that could be identified as St Agatha. Her long, fashionable gown with its elegant openwork sleeves corresponds to contemporary images of St Agatha, whose attribute was often a platter or book bearing her severed breasts.

Nederveen attributed the statue to the same workshop as the two statues of a Virgin and Child from a Marianum (BK-NM-12006-16) and -17) and the St Cunera (BK-NM-12006-8), Utrecht figures that all come from the Soest find.⁷ Bouvy had already recognised the latter objects as being by the same hand.⁸ The similarities between these statues are indeed convincing enough for an attribution to the same workshop. The shoes with round toes and the busy folds of the garments indicate that they were made between around 1500 and 1520.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024