Flight into Egypt and Joseph as Carpenter, Builder, Cartwright and Cooper

Entry

The central scene of this wooden relief is the Flight into Egypt. At left is the pillar with the pagan idol that broke into pieces just as the Holy Family passed by, as told by a popular medieval legend.¹ Joseph, according to the Bible a carpenter by profession, appears on the right, carrying a long tree saw with a basket over his left shoulder. This central scene is framed on either side by two scenes, each depicting a field of craftsmanship related to woodworking. Top left, a man works at a planer’s bench; behind him mounted on the wall are the tools required for precision carpentry. Below this, a man splits a tree trunk. Lying on the ground around him are various tools used in building construction, including a water level and a mitre square. Top right, a wheelwright works on a section of a wheel rim resting on a wheelwright’s bench, with an auger, harrow and plough hanging on the wall to his right. In the last scene bottom right, a cooper stands at his barrel-shaped bench, wielding a cooper’s hammer to make a bucket.

In view of the four depicted woodworking professions, this limewood relief would have belonged to a carpenters’ guild house or joiners’ workshop, where it would have served as a signboard. The overall style and the artisan’s attire suggest a Northern Netherlandish origin in the early seventeenth century.² In Leiden, a sculpted image of Joseph adorned the former St Josephshuis, built in 1615, which housed the carpenters and masons’ guild.³ In this specific case, the facade’s decoration – which simultaneously functioned as a signboard – had the form of a frieze with a stone figure in high relief depicting the guild’s patron saints: St Joseph, flanked by the stonemasons and Christian martyrs Symphorianus, Castorius, Claudius and Nicostratus, all five standing in a niche dressed as Roman soldiers, while holding tools (cf. fig. a). Three of the five figures are today in the possession of the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap, with the other two lost.⁴ The St Joseph altarpiece of the Gouda carpenters’ guild (c. 1560), originating from the city’s Sint-Janskerk, shows a very similar iconography to the present limewood panel. The main scene depicts the Flight into Egypt, while the predella features four separate scenes illustrating the four trades of the guild: shipwrights, carpenters, joiners and chair makers.⁵

Bieke van der Mark, 2025