Moses Draws Water from the Rock

Entry

The alabaster-carving industry in Mechelen originated with the arrival of a small group of artists, employed by Margaret of Austria, governess of the Netherlands at the onset of the sixteenth century. These artists worked primarily in the new antyckse renaissance style imported from Italy. Most important among them where the sculptors Conrat Meit (1485-1550/51) from Worms and Jean Mone (c. 1485-?1554) from Metz, whose presence in the city stimulated local sculptors to shift their efforts in the direction of the new formal idiom and simultaneously the material alabaster. Lipinska maintains that for those artists originally trained in wood, the move to the new, relatively soft stone type alabaster was minor.¹

As a result, a veritable industry in this kind of sculpture began to flourish in the sixteenth century, destined for a market that encompassed much of north-western Europe. Besides the Low Countries, Mechelen alabaster reliefs and altars were exported to places as far away as Poland, the Baltic States and Scandinavia.² The more luxurious versions of these house altars comprised both larger and smaller alabaster reliefs, mounted in ornately carved wooden frames decorated with pressed-gesso patterns. The Rijksmuseum possesses two such altars (BK-BR-515; BK-NM-2918). However, the majority of this so-called cleynstekerswerk centred on small carved tablets featuring mythological and biblical scenes in a virtually unlimited number of variations produced serially well into the first half of the seventeenth century. With dimensions up to 20 x 20 centimetres, these small alabaster reliefs were typically supplied with decorative frames edged with pressed papier-mâché. To enliven the scenes and the frames, polychromers added highlights in gold. Even today, many of these objects still bear the monograms and house marks left by their makers, conveying the competition among artists but also serving as a kind of quality guaranty.

Depicted on this relief, executed with relative simplicity, is the Old Testament story of Moses Drawing Water from the Rock. Positioned far right, Moses points his cane towards a stream of water spewing from a wall of rock. At his feet, a thirsty Israelite drinks from the stream. Standing opposite is a woman who appears to have just arrived, balancing a water jug on her shoulder. Kneeling below her is a second woman with her right hand stretched outwards to catch water in a bowl-like dish. The relief bears the maker’s mark belonging to a member of one of the most productive cleynsteker families of Mechelen, the Van Tissenakens. In all probability, the initials ‘IvT’ refer to Isaac van Tissenaken (c. 1560/70-1624), a representative of the last generation of alabaster-carvers working in the city. Listed in 1643 as residing in a house called De Appelboom, centrally located on the city’s Bruul street, Isaac’s work illustrates the conservatism that ultimately dominated the Mechelen alabaster industry. Stylistically, his work falls perfectly in the same line as the products made by generations of cleynstekers preceding him, perhaps most evident when comparing the present relief to the stylistically similar Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan (BK-NM-850), carved by Tobias van Tissenaken, an older member of the family, around the same period.³ The present relief follows the standard iconography associated with Moses. Conveying an element of luxury, simple scenes such as this still appeared quite commonly in inventories of possessions of the seventeenth century, where they are typically listed as alabaster bordjes (panels/small boards).⁴

Frits Scholten, 2024