Object data
oak
height 32.7 cm × width 16.7 cm × depth 11 cm
Master of Joachim and Anne (follower of),
The Virgin and Child with St Anne
? Northwest Brabant, c. 1500
Technical notes
Carved and originally polychromed. The reverse is flat. Dendrochronological analysis by Domínguez Delmás in 2020 has pointed out that the outermost growth ring in the main wood block dates to the year 1480. Due to the absence of sapwood it is not possible to give a more specific estimate felling date of the tree than ‘after 1486’. The timber originates from the eastern Baltic region (likely from the northwest of current Lithuania).
Scientific examination and reports
- dendrochronology: M. Domínguez Delmás (DendroResearch), RMA, DR_R2020005, 7 February 2020
Condition
The polychromy has been removed with a caustic. The infant Christ’s right hand and the corner of the base have been restored.
Provenance
...; sale, J.A. Alberdingk Thijm (1820-1889), Schiffer van Bleiswijk, Van der Chijs collections, Amsterdam (Frederik Muller), 10-12 December 1889, no. 96, fl. 93.50, to the museum
Object number: BK-NM-8974
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Master of Joachim and Anne (active in ? Breda c. 1460-80)
It was Vogelsang who in 1906 assigned a name of convenience to works attributed to the Master of Joachim and Anne based on his best-known surviving work, entitled the Meeting of Joachim and Anne (BK-NM-88). At this time, this altar group was stylistically linked to a Birth of the Virgin in the Bode-Museum in Berlin, believed most likely to have originated from the same altarpiece,1 and to a large standing statue of the Virgin and Child formerly in the Stuyt Collection (BK-2016-13). The latter two works are dated circa 1470. Since their first publication in 1865, the Master of Joachim and Anne has been regarded as one of the leading representatives of the late-Gothic ‘Holland School’ of sculpture. On the basis of his highly personal, restrained style and the intimate character of his works – associated with the style of the Haarlem painter Dieric Bouts (1410-1475) – the master was situated in the Northern Netherlands and specifically in the County of Holland or the city of Utrecht. In light of stylistic similarities to Brabantine sculpture and the west-Brabantine provenance of some of his works – most notably the large standing Virgin and Child and the group in Berlin – it appears more likely that he worked in the Duchy of Brabant, possibly in or near Breda. Two other works tentatively attributed to the master’s oeuvre are said to have come from churches in Breda, namely a Virgin and Child in a Bed and a Christ Carrying the Cross.2 Another hypothesis raised is that the Master of Joachim and Anne spent time as a journeyman in southern Germany, notably in Ulm, though this theory has gained no general support.
Based on more generic stylistic parallels to the core group of works, two other sculptures in the Rijksmuseum have previously been attributed to the Master of Joachim and Anne: a Virgin and Child with St Anne (BK-NM-8974) and a Lamentation (BK-NM-12389). With respect to the latter group, however, convincing arguments have been posed in favour of an attribution to Master Tilman (active c. 1475-1515) in Cologne.
Marie Mundigler, 2024
References
D.P.R.A. Bouvy, Middeleeuwsche beeldhouwkunst in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, Amsterdam 1947, p. 79; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, pp. 74-77; J. Leeuwenberg in R. van Luttervelt et al., Middeleeuwse kunst der Noordelijke Nederlanden, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1958, pp. 190-92; A. Schneckenburger-Broschek, ‘Ein Niederländer als schwäbisches Genie. Neues zum Ulmer Chorgestühl’, Zeitschrift des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 40 (1986), 1-4, pp. 40-68; J.J.M. Timmers, Houten beelden: De houtsculptuur in de Noordelijke Nederlanden tijdens de late middeleeuwen, Amsterdam/Antwerp 1949, p. 59; W. Vogelsang, ‘De Nederlandsche beeldhouwkunst’, Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift 31 (1906), pp. 366-80
Entry
This religious image of the Virgin and Child with St Anne (St Anne Trinity, or in Dutch St. Anna-te-Drieën) has assumed the form of a genre work avant la lettre. Anne and her daughter Mary are dressed as ordinary housewives and look as if they have just come back from the market. The Christ child roots around with one hand in the basket of apples held by his grandmother. The rosary in his other hand is the only religious accent.3 Capturing an everyday moment like this is often regarded as a typical characteristic of Northern Netherlandish, particularly Hollandish, sculpture. For this reason a group with similar iconography in Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht is also located to the County of Holland.4 It is also, though, typical of the work of the Master of Joachim and Anne (active c. 1460-80), with which the present example can be linked. This anonymous artist has now been convincingly placed in the northwest of the Duchy of Brabant, possibly more precisely in the important town of Breda. The Rijksmuseum holds the work from which his name of convenience derives, The Meeting of Joachim and Anne (BK-NM-88), as well as a large Standing Virgin and Child (BK-C-2007-2), both pieces made around 1470. In the Bode-Museum in Berlin, lastly, there is another carved altar group by him, The Birth of the Virgin.5
The fringe edging the headscarf that St Anne wears in the present group, with its meticulously detailed minuscule folds, is a motif repeatedly used by the Master of Joachim and Anne. The positions of Anne’s and Mary’s legs moreover correspond almost exactly to those of Joachim and Anne in the altar group referred to above (BK-NM-88). These similarities, taken in conjunction with ‘the intimate character of the group and the three-dimensional conception of the whole’, was sufficient cause for Leeuwenberg to attribute it to the same artist.6 As an explanation of Mary and Anne’s slightly anomalous, round faces and facial types, he suggested that this may have been a later work by the master, dating from around 1480-90. However, Mary’s pleated chemise and square neckline and Anne’s thick-soled, round-toed shoes, as Bouvy rightly observed,7 suggest the fashions of around 1500. Also striking is the fact that these garments, unlike those in his other works, are not trimmed with fur. Taking all this into account, we seem more likely to be dealing with a follower of his style. A similar, but mirror-image Virgin and Child with St Anne in the Klein Seminarie in Mechelen (fig. a), dating from somewhere between around 1490 and 1510, reinforces the later dating and the Brabant origin of the group.8
Bieke van der Mark, 2024
Literature
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. 59; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 44, with earlier literature; D.P.R.A. Bouvy, ‘Review of J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973’, Simiolous 7 (1974), pp. 103-06, esp. p. 105; T. Brandenburg et al., Heilige Anna, grote moeder. De cultus van de Heilige Moeder Anna en haar familie in de Nederlanden en aangrenzende streken, exh. cat. Uden (Museum voor Religieuze Kunst) 1992, no. 19
Citation
B. van der Mark, 2024, 'follower of Meester van Joachim en Anna or , The Virgin and Child with St Anne, Northwest Brabant, c. 1500', in F. Scholten (ed.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24312
(accessed 19 September 2024 18:13:32).