anonymous
Meuse area, c. 1296 - c. 1325
Namur stone
total: height 90 cm × width 323 cm × depth 142 cm × weight 4561 kg (total)
tomb: height 45 cm (excl. lid) × width 323 cm × depth 133 cm × thickness 20 cm (walls)
lid: height 54 cm × width 289 cm (excl. the missing section at the foot end) × depth 142 cm × weight 1800 kg
inscription, on the bevelled edge of the lid: [Qui fuerat gratus cun]ctis iac[et] h[ic] tumulat[us] Husde[n]si nat[us] ex clara stirpe vocat[us] Arnold[us] mile[s] de slusa sp[er]ne[re] viles Act[us] h[ic] novit falso[s] [a] seque removit Fortis formosus prudens erat atque animosus Justus pacifuc probitati semper amicus Finiit is vitam morum gravitate [p]olita[m] Q[ua]rto redde[n]das a mense dec[em]bre kale[n]das. An[n]o milleno d[omi]ni noviesq[ue] noveno Et bis centeno terno quo[que] cu[m] duedeno Gaudeat in c[oelis ut hoc orat] quis[que] fidelis Hoc pater et flamen sacrum nat[us]q[ue] [det amen]
(He who lies buried here was loved by all; born to the renowned Heusden family, named Arnold van der Sluis, knight. He scorned base deeds and kept his distance from false acts. He was strong, fair, watchful and fearless, just, peace-loving, always a friend of righteousness. He came to the end of his life, graced by [the] dignity of [his] conduct, on the fourth day before the calends of the month of December [=28 November]. In the year of Our Lord one thousand and nine times nine, and twice a hundred, and three plus twelve [=1296]. May he rejoice in heaven, as every believer prays. May the Father, the Holy Ghost and the Son grant this, Amen)
coat of arms, on the escutcheon held by the knight, in relief: a wheel with six spokes [Lords of Heusden]
coat of arms, on the dexter escutcheon at the foot of the tomb, in relief: a crowned lion rampant with a forked tail [? Heinsberg family]
coat of arms, on the sinister escutcheon at the foot of the tomb: left empty or the coat of arms was later chiselled off
Carved from five separate parts and put together with dowels: a lid with the figure of a knight (a single piece), two short ends and two long sides of the tomb. The top is executed in high relief, and the sides of the tomb in low relief. The underside of the lid is very crudely chiselled out. Parts of the base may still be in situ where the abbey once stood.
There are several cracks in the sides of the tomb and in the lid. The knight’s face is badly damaged. The lid is missing the section with the recumbent figure’s legs, feet and fingertips, the hilt of the sword and parts of the canopy. A dog originally lay at the knight’s feet. The arms on the empty escutcheon at the foot of the tomb may have been chiselled off. The bottom of the tomb is missing.
Commissioned by or for Arnold van der Sluis (c. 1245-1296), erected in the Norbertine Abbey of Berne, near Heusden, after his death in 1296;1 donated by Jonkheer W.A.C. de Jonge, owner of the Bernse Hoeven, to the museum, 1886; on loan to Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, 1976-2004
Object number: BK-NM-8657
Credit line: Gift of Jonkheer W.A.C. de Jonge
Copyright: Public domain
There are only fifteen surviving medieval Northern Netherlandish monumental tombs with a sculpted gisant (fig. a).2 The tomb of Arnold van der Sluis is one of the most important examples in this group. The tomb comes from the former Norbertine Abbey in Berne (near Heusden), where it remained unprotected in the ruins of its church for centuries after the abbey was destroyed by the Geuzen (the Beggars) in 1579. During a visit in 1610 the historian Jean-Baptiste Gramaye (1579-1635) copied the inscription (already incomplete) in his Antiquitates illustrissimi ducatus Brabantiae3, noting that he had found the tomb ‘ad latus Chori’ – on the choir side. In 1886 the tomb, by now severely weathered, was removed from the site of the former abbey and given sanctuary in the Rijksmuseum.4
From the lengthy inscription on the tomb,5 we know that Van der Sluis was born into the house of the Lords of Heusden, a high-ranking family with a castle in what is now the town of Heusden.6 Van der Sluis’s presence at the Battle of Woeringen (5 June 1288) is described by Jan van Heelu in his Rijmkroniek.7 It can be deduced from various records that the knight was closely involved with the fortunes of Berne Abbey. He acted as a witness when John III of Heusden granted the abbey certain rights8 and donated money to the abbey at least twice.9 Regrettably, nothing is known about the installation of his tomb in the abbey church.10
Van der Sluis’s escutcheon bears a wheel with six spokes – the arms of the family of the Lords of Heusden to which the knight belonged.11 We do not know who his mother was nor the family she came from. Although a large part of the end is now missing, old drawings of the monument show that there was originally a dog at the knight’s feet.12 The sides of the tomb are decorated with nine blind two-paned windows with pointed arches. At the foot end there are three shallow niches, with an escutcheon left and right, between them a standing, praying woman, who has to be regarded as a pleurant or weeper (fig. b).13 The sinister arms (heraldic left), which would normally be those of the family on the mother’s side, are a crowned lion rampant with a forked tail, which are borne by, among others, the Heinsberg family.14 The other escutcheon, which is usually reserved for the paternal arms, has either been chiselled off, for unknown reasons, or was never there in the first place. Vermeulen put forward the alternative suggestion that the two escutcheons can be interpreted as the paternal arms of the knight’s two wives. The arms with the lion correspond with those of the family of Arnold’s second wife, Agnes van der Leck. The other shield would then have been intended for the arms of his first wife, Aleydis van Roistelle, who may have been a member of the family of the Lords of Boxtel.15
The figure of the knight is rendered in the traditional way, in full armour, with eyes open, his hands folded in prayer on his chest, amend with a canopy above his head, a convention that probably originated in France and spread from there.16 As comparisons Leeuwenberg referred to the effigy of Robert d’Artois (d. 1317) in the Basilique Saint-Denis in Paris, attributed to the sculptor Jean Pépin de Huy (active in Paris 1311-1329), who originally came from the Meuse area,17 and the tomb effigy of Haymon I, Count of Corbeil (d. 957) in Corbeil Cathedral, which can be dated to around 1335-40.18
While masons in other countries had already switched to softer types of stone, such as marble, in the Low Countries they continued to use hard, dark sorts, such as Tournai stone, for tomb sculptures until the late fourteenth century. Stone of this kind is very difficult to work, which meant that the vitality of the sculpture often suffered; this is very evident in the effigy of Arnold van der Sluis. From the viewpoint of the use of materials and the type, the following tombs in the Northern Netherlands are similar: the tomb of Bishop Guy of Avesnes (d. 1317) in Utrecht Cathedral,19 the monument to Jan III of Arkel (d. 1324) and his wife in the Dutch Reformed Church in Gorinchem,20 that of Nicolaas van Putten (d. 1311) and Aleida van Strijen (d. 1316) in the Dutch Reformed Church in Geervliet,21 that of a knight of the Utrecht Drakenborch family in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht (c. 1370-90),22 and the four-person tomb of Gijsbrecht (d. 1342) and Arnold (d. 1363) van IJsselstein and their wives in the Dutch Reformed Church in IJsselstein.23
Although it was previously thought that there was a Tournai monopoly on the export of tombs to the Northern Netherlands,24 it later emerged that a number of the monuments, including those in Gorinchem, in the Centraal Museum, in IJsselstein and the present tomb, were carved from Namur stone, which resembles Tournai stone, and are therefore more likely to have come from the Meuse area, where there were also many monumental masons.25 The tombs would have been transported across the Meuse River to the Northern Netherlands.26
Bieke van der Mark, 2024
J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 4, with earlier literature; H.L.M. Defoer et al., Vroomheid per dozijn, exh. cat. Utrecht (Rijksmuseum Het Catharijneconvent) 1982, p. 30; H.A. Tummers, ‘Het grafmonument van een heer Van Arkel en zijn vrouw te Gorinchem’, Bulletin van de Stichting Oude Hollandse Kerken 17 (1983), pp. 3-14, esp. p. 3; N.H. Koers, ‘Dr. D.P.R.A. Bouvy en zijn Catharijneconvent, 2’, Catharijnebrief 27 (1989), pp. 4-11, esp. p. 9; H.A. Tummers, ‘Medieval Effigial Monuments in the Netherlands’, Church Monuments: Journal of the Church Monuments Society 7 (1992), pp. 19-33, note 25; H.A. Tummers, ‘Recente vondsten betreffende vroege grafsculptuur in Nederland. Dertiende en veertiende eeuw’, Bulletin van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 92 (1993), pp. 34-40, esp. p. 38; H.A. Tummers, ‘Laatmiddeleeuwse figurale grafsculptuur in Nederland’, Nederlands kunsthistorisch jaarboek 45 (1994), pp. 236-69, note 6; F. Scholten, ‘The World of the Late-Medieval Artist’, in H. van Os et al., Netherlandish Art in the Rijksmuseum 1400-1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2000, pp. 233-52, esp. p. 246; M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent ca. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, pp. 64-66
B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, Tomb of Arnold van der Sluis of Heusden, Knight (c. 1245-1296), Meuse area, c. 1296 - c. 1325', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.27181
(accessed 27 December 2024 23:51:13).