Object data
oak with traces of polychromy
height 55 cm × width 18 cm × depth 14 cm
Adriaen van Wesel
Virgin and Child
Utrecht, c. 1470 - c. 1480
Technical notes
Carved and originally polychromed. The two round fixing holes on the reverse are in all probability not original because the figure is finished in the round and had an octagonal base that would have fitted on a pedestal, so it would have functioned as a free-standing statue.
Scientific examination and reports
- conservation report: W.J. Mares, RMA, 1980
Literature scientific examination and reports
Jaarverslag Nederlandse Rijksmusea 1980, p. 19
Condition
The bird on the bunch of grapes and part of the infant Christ’s left foot are missing. The Virgin’s right index finger has been replaced. The polychromy has been removed with a caustic.
Conservation
- W.J. Mares, 1980: splits and cracks filled with oak wedges and carved to fit; small cracks filled with a wax mixture; missing index finger on the Virgin’s right hand made good; cleaned.
Provenance
...; from an anonymous owner, with three other sculptures, BK-NM-3886 to -3889, fl. 200 for all four, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1877; transferred to the museum, 1885
Object number: BK-NM-3888
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Adriaen van Wesel (Utrecht c. 1417 - Utrecht in or after 1490)
Adriaen van Wesel was the leading sculptor of the Northern Netherlands during the second half of the fifteenth century. The majority of his surviving oeuvre is held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. Van Wesel’s name and city of origin were discovered by Swillens in 1948 in the city archives of Den Bosch while researching two pieces from an altarpiece by Van Wesel formerly in the chapel of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in the Sint-Janskathedraal of that city.1 Before his identification he was known as the ‘Master of the Singing Angels’ and the ‘Master of the Death of Mary’, names of convenience derived from two altar groups in the Rijksmuseum.
Van Wesel is certain to have been born in Utrecht, as his name appears nowhere in the listings of new citizens after 1400. He is first mentioned in 1447, when elected alderman of the saddler’s guild, to which painters and sculptors also belonged. Since this important position could only be attained by men of at least thirty years of age, he was probably born in or slightly prior to 1417. Van Wesel was elected to this post nine times: four times serving as a member of the city council while holding several other public offices, thus affirming his status as an influential and highly respected figure.
A document from 1468 involving a life annuity indicates that Adriaen van Wesel had a wife named Margriet and a daughter named Belyen. Both probably died before 1491, as their names no longer appear in the life annuity records from this year. Adriaen himself must have died in or shortly after 1490, as this is the last time he appears in any documents. The year of Van Wesel’s death has been subject to some confusion stemming from the existence of a second ‘Adriaen van Wesel’ residing in Utrecht whose death is documented in 1500. This individual, though perhaps a family member, was a butter merchant not known to have held any public position.
Van Wesel’s first documented work is the aforementioned altarpiece for the Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in Den Bosch commissioned in 1475. By this time, however, he was already a sculptor of renown. Unfortunately, this altarpiece was dismantled and dispersed in the nineteenth century. Only two groups from this altarpiece have remained in Den Bosch, together with their original caisses. Another five groups from this altarpiece are today preserved in the Rijksmuseum.2 An additional seven have tenably been linked to these works, including a seated Virgin from an Annunciation in Bruges.3 On a final note, several hypothetical reconstructions of the original retable have also been devised (for the most recent, see fig. c in the entry BK-NM-11647).4
Adriaen van Wesel produced two other Marian altars: the first in 1470 for the Mariakerk in Utrecht, a work that fell victim to one of the city’s iconoclastic outbreaks in 1584; the second for the high altar of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, probably destroyed in a fire in 1528 (with BK-1979-94 possibly a fragment). Another altar, commissioned in 1487 for the monastery Sint-Agnietenberg in Zwolle, is likewise lost. Several surviving sculptures may originate from these altarpieces, e.g. a Descent from the Cross in Berlin, and a Holy Family in Utrecht.5
Van Wesel’s last documented works were made for churches in his hometown of Utrecht: three sculptures for the high altar of the Buurkerk in 1487 and seven groups for the predella of the high altar of Utrecht Cathedral in 1489.6
Marie Mundigler, 2024
References
W. Halsema-Kubes, G. Lemmens and G. de Werd, Adriaen van Wesel: Een Utrechtse beeldhouwer uit de late middeleeuwen, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1980-81; M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, pp. 227-31; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, pp. 48-54; Scholten and Van der Mark in F. Scholten (ed.), 1100-1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2015, no. 30 (and fig. 30a); P.T.A. Swillens, ‘De Utrechtse beeldhouwer Adriaen van Wesel, ca. 1420-(na) 1489’, Oud Holland 63 (1948), pp. 149-64; P.T.A. Swillens, ‘De Utrechtse beeldhouwer Adriaen van Wesel. Enige aanvullende mededelingen’, Oud Holland 66 (1951), pp. 228-33; W. Vogelsang in F.W.S. van Thienen (ed.), Algemene Kunstgeschiedenis, vol. 4, Utrecht/Antwerp 1949, p. 28
Entry
The Virgin cradles her son in both arms. Dressed in a long shift, he plucks at a bunch of grapes on top of which is a hole that would have held a little bird, now lost. As evidenced by other examples, such as a Virgin and Child Standing on a Crescent Moon Surrounded by a Halo in Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht,7 this combination of fruit and bird (a goldfinch?) occurs not infrequently in Northern Netherlandish sculpture in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.
The statue was added to the Rijksmuseum’s collection in 1877. In 1912 Vogelsang connected it for the first time with a group of works by an anonymous master, whom Swillens identified in 1948 as the renowned Utrecht woodcarver Adriaen van Wesel.8 The Virgin’s sweet face, with a collar at the neckline of her gown, her wavy hair parted in the centre and her delicate hands are indeed typical of Van Wesel’s figures of the Virgin (cf. BK-NM-11713; BK-NM-11394). The attribution to Van Wesel is therefore generally accepted. The two round fixing holes on the reverse are in all probability not original because the figure is finished in the round and had a base that would have fitted on a pedestal, so it would have functioned as a free-standing statue. This makes it one of the few free-standing carvings that can be convincingly attributed to Van Wesel.
The peculiar placing of the Virgin’s right foot on a fold of her robe is an old motif deriving from fourtheenth century sculptures from France, used to create sharp diagonal folds in the lower section of the garment. It also occurs in an early sixteenth-century figure of Saint Cunera from the Northern Netherlands in Museum Catharijneconvent.9 Not all aspects of the sculpture are worked out perfectly. For instance, Leeuwenberg was concerned about the uneven treatment of the sleeves of the infant Christ’s shift; the right is longer than the left.10 However, the perspective of the arm turned towards the viewer, seen from a vantage point directly in front of the statue, means that it is hardly noticeable. It is an established fact that Van Wesel sometimes permitted himself licence in working out particular details, usually to benefit the overall effect.
Preising recently linked three sculptures of the Virgin and Child, two in private hands,11 and one in the Museum Schnütgen in Cologne,12 with the present example.13 Of the figures in this group, the work known as the Muttergottes in der Mantelfülle in Cologne, whose original polychromy has largely survived, has the most parallels (fig. a). The Virgin’s facial type, her hairstyle and her pose, with the out-turned knee of her right leg, placed forward, are very alike in the two pieces. Large areas of the drapery, such the sleeve falling open from her right wrist and the way the folds of the robe fall diagonally to touch the base, are very similar. However, in view of the Christ child’s more pointed facial type and the atypical triangular folds in the cloak across the Virgin’s thighs, the traditional attribution of the Cologne figure to Van Wesel is rightly called into question. More likely is an origin in the Lower Rhine region, where these characteristics are quite often found.14 The nevertheless obvious similarities between this and the present figure can be explained by the artistic exchanges between woodcarvers in the Lower Rhine region and Utrecht in the late fifteenth century.15 The Van Wesel family, given its surname, also originated in this eastern region.
Bieke van der Mark, 2024
Literature
P.T.A. Swillens, ‘De Utrechtse beeldhouwer Adriaen van Wesel, ca. 1420-(na) 1489’, Oud Holland 63 (1948), pp. 149-64, esp. p. 160; W. Vogelsang in F.W.S. van Thienen (ed.), Algemene Kunstgeschiedenis, vol. 4, Utrecht/Antwerp 1949, p. 28; P.T.A. Swillens, ‘Beeldhouwers en beeldhouwkunst’, in J. Romijn (ed.), Hart van Nederland, Utrecht 1950, pp. 209-37, esp. p. 218; D.P.R.A. Bouvy, ‘Nederlandse beeldhouwkunst’, in T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Sprekend verleden. Wegwijzer voor de verzamelaar van oude kunst en antiek, Amsterdam 1959, p. 55; D.P.R.A. Bouvy, Kerkelijke Kunst, vol. 2, Bussum 1966, p. 49; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 17, with earlier literature; W. Halsema-Kubes et al., Adriaen van Wesel. Een Utrechtse beeldhouwer uit de late middeleeuwen (ca. 1417/ ca. 1490), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1980-81, no. 17; H.L.M. Defoer, ‘Een laat-middeleeuws schoorsteenfries uit Utrecht met de bekoring van Antonius’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 45 (1994), pp. 300-23, esp. pp. 318, 320; M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, p. 238
Citation
B. van der Mark, 2024, 'Adriaen van Wesel, Virgin and Child, Utrecht, c. 1470 - c. 1480', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24261
(accessed 19 September 2024 23:12:47).