The Virgin and Child with Sts Catherine, Cecilia, Barbara and Ursula

Northern Netherlands, c. 1495 - c. 1500

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 123.1 cm × width 101.1 cm

Technical notes

The support consists of four vertically grained oak planks (24.8, 27.5, 26.8 and 21.3 cm), planed down to 3-4 mm and cradled. The planks were butt joined with dowels. Since the panel is planed down the remains of holes for dowels at the joins have become visible. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1470. The panel could have been ready for use by 1481, but a date in or after 1495 is more likely. The white ground must have been applied in the original frame, as there are unpainted edges and the remains of a barbe at top and bottom (approx. 1 cm), and unpainted edges of approx. 0.3 cm on the left and right sides (painted surface: 121 x 100.5 cm). There is an extensive underdrawing on the white ground that was probably applied in a wet medium, possibly with a fairly stiff brush (or possibly a quill). Contour lines, some of them thick, are visible in the flesh passages, while the shaded areas seem to have been prepared with very closely packed hatchings that almost have the effect of washes. The folds of the draperies of the foreground figures, in particular, were prepared with a great variety of hatchings. Some are small and slightly curved parallel hatchings at right angles to the line of the fold, but others cross the folds. The artist used very dense cross-hatching for deep shadows (fig. b, fig. c). The clothing of the smaller figures is far less extensively hatched and there is no cross-hatching, but the handling of line is no different from that in the foreground figures. Only a few lines are visible in the architecture (fig. e), and no underdrawing at all was detected in the landscape. The underdrawing was followed fairly faithfully in the paint layers, although there are a few departures, as in the arm of the woman in the background, St Barbara’s neckline and the Virgin’s hair. The X-ray revealed that the trees in the background on the right were probably added on top of a fully painted rocky landscape underneath. The window inside the building on the right is only partially reserved. Some parts of the underdrawing may have been intended to remain visible in the final painting, for example in the dress of St Catherine, where it is covered by a thin, more translucent paint layer. There is no clear correct vanishing point for the perspective of the landscape and the buildings; the pattern of the tiles on the floor stops at the bottom row of tiles. The contours of the hands of the figures and the body of Christ were painted with thick reddish-orange lines; these contours were also used in the necks and chins, but more subtly. These contours were applied during the last painting stage over paint that was already dry. Gold and brocade was imitated using lead-tin yellow and impasto. There are wide drying cracks present, mainly in the glazed reds in the clothing of Sts Barbara and Cecilia, but also in the Virgin’s blue dress. Cross-sections show that these paint layers have a complicated build-up with many thin layers placed on top of each other, using materials that are slow driers. Layers were probably placed on top of layers that were not completely dry.

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 14 May 2004
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG317, 23 September 2004
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters, RKD/RMA, no. RKDG325, 12 October 2004
condition report: W. de Ridder / K. Wensveen [2], RMA, 7 March 2005
X-radiography: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 1792/1-16, 7 December 2006
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 153/1-10, 22 December 2006
infrared reflectography: M. Wolters / M. Leeflang [2], RKD/RMA, no. RKDG430, 29 December 2006

Condition

Fair. There are some vertical splits and discoloured retouchings along the joins. The cradled panel has some vertical splits and joins that are stable but show on the front, because they were not completely levelled when reglued in 1949. Damaged areas in the paint layer are mainly located along these splits and joins, but there are several areas with abrasion.

Conservation

H.H. Mertens, 1949: joints glued
H.H. Mertens, 1958: complete restoration
W. de Ridder, 2006 - 2008: complete restoration

Provenance

? Norbertine Koningsveld Convent, Delft (demolished 1572);¹ …; ? estate inventory, Frisian Stadholder’s Court, Leeuwarden, 1731, the cabinet, no. 20 (‘Een schilderije met verscheyde figuuren, dat men meent te zijn ’t huuwlijk van St. Cathrina’);² ? estate inventory, Frisian Stadholder’s Court, Leeuwarden, 1764 (same text as in the 1731 inventory);³ ...; first recorded in the museum in 1801 (‘Eenige heilige maagden spelende met het kind Jezus, door een ouden Meester’);⁴ on loan to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2004-10

Object number: SK-A-501

The artist

Master of the Virgo inter Virgines (active in Delft c. 1475-1510)

The Master of the Virgo inter Virgines (Virgin among the virgins) owes his name to the painting ‘The Virgin and Child with Sts Catherine, Cecilia, Barbara and Ursula’ in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-501). One outcome of the 1902 exhibition of Flemish Primitives in Bruges was that Friedländer attributed five works to this anonymous artist, whom he christened with his ad hoc name in 1906. The affinities between those paintings and woodcuts illustrating incunables published by Jacob van der Meer and Christiaan Snellaert in Delft between 1483 and 1498 led to the assumption that the designs had been supplied by the same anonymous master. He has thus been situated in Delft, but his identity is still unknown.

In 1927 Friedländer attributed 20 paintings to him and his circle, and proposed a chronology for them. The oeuvre has been expanded somewhat by later scholars, and in Unger’s 2004 dissertation 31 works are assigned to the master and his workshop. Unger also argued that the oeuvre was created between c. 1475 and c. 1510, partly on the basis of the dendrochronological evidence.

The oeuvre of the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines consists of religious scenes in various formats, including triptychs and a polyptych, fragments of them, and individual devotional scenes. All are typified by expressive figures with a marked emphasis on the display of emotions. The main distinguishing features are the female facial types with long, straight noses, small, tightly closed mouths, high domed foreheads, and headdresses worn on the back of the head.

References
Friedländer 1903b; Friedländer 1906; Friedländer 1910; Friedländer V, 1927, pp. 65-78, 139-42; Hoogewerff II, 1937, pp. 240-70; Winkler in Thieme/Becker XXXVII, 1950, p. 346; Van Luttervelt 1952; Boon (1963); ENP V, 1969, pp. 38-58, 79-81, 90, 98; Châtelet 1981, pp. 145-55, 231-36; Evans in Turner 1996, XX, pp. 781-83; De Vrij 1999; Unger 2004; Giltaij in Rotterdam 2008a, pp. 236-38

(Margreet Wolters)

Entry

Seated in a fenced-off area of a courtyard are the Virgin and Child surrounded by four sumptuously attired female saints: Catherine, Cecilia, Barbara and Ursula.⁵ They can be identified from their attributes, which take the form of jewellery. In the left foreground is St Catherine with the wheel and sword, which are pinned to her dress as a brooch. The other three saints have their attributes on necklaces. In the right foreground is Ursula with a heart pierced by an arrow, in the left background Cecilia with an organ, and beside her Barbara with her tower. According to Winkler, the Virgo Master was inspired to depict the attributes in this unusual way by a lost work by Hugo van der Goes that is known from a copy by the Bruges Master of 1499 (fig. a). Winkler hypothesised that the Virgo Master had visited the southern Netherlands, where he saw the Van der Goes.⁶ With their lowered heads and half-closed eyes, the women around the Virgin appear to be sunk in contemplation. St Catherine is the exception, for she has fixed her gaze on the Child, who is reaching out to her, perhaps in allusion to her mystic marriage to Christ. Standing outside the fence on the left are two men, possibly St John the Evangelist and Joseph, and on the right two women, who also have symbolic pieces of jewellery hanging from a necklace. The one worn by the woman on the left is probably a dragon, which would identify her as St Margaret, while that of the other woman may be a basket or basket of flowers, which belong to St Elizabeth of Hungary and St Dorothy respectively. The scene is closed off with large buildings at the sides, while in the background a low wall and a gateway with an open door provides a view through to a mountainous landscape.

The subject of the Virgin among the virgins was mainly depicted in the southern Netherlands in works by artists like Hans Memling, Gerard David, the Master of the Legend of St Lucy and the Bruges Master of 1499.⁷ Although there are parallels between some of those scenes and the one in the Rijksmuseum, there is no direct model.

Despite the fact that the fenced-off area with the Virgin Mary and the holy virgins is paved, the manner of depiction is very reminiscent of the enclosed garden or ‘hortus conclusus’, a motif that refers to Mary’s virginity (cf. SK-A-3141, SK-A-3901 and SK-A-2312).⁸ A scene with richly clad virgin saints could have been painted for a convent. Van Luttervelt believed that the Koningsveld Convent in Delft was a possible candidate, partly because of the prominence of St Ursula, who was particularly venerated in the town. However, it is difficult to say for certain whether the painting was commissioned by ‘Sister Katarina van der Does, Diericxdr’ known from the archives, as suggested by Van Luttervelt,⁹ for the presence of St Catherine in a scene of this kind is not at all exceptional.¹⁰ Nor is there any firm evidence to support the theory that the background architecture is that of the Koningsveld Convent. The size of the painting suggests that it would have served as an altarpiece in a convent rather than as a work for private devotion.¹¹

Although the painting was catalogued as a work by the Van Eyck brothers in 1809,¹² it was thereafter regarded as anonymous until Friedländer took it as the denominative work for the oeuvre of the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines.¹³ Since then it has occupied a permanent position within the artist’s oeuvre.¹⁴

Although one would expect a painting from which an anonymous artist derived his name to epitomise his key characteristics, that is not entirely true of ‘The Virgin and Child with Sts Catherine, Cecilia, Barbara and Ursula’.¹⁵ Instead of the impassioned emotions and heightened expressiveness that are typical of the Virgo Master, this scene is restrained and peaceful. This could be due to the subject, which leaves little room for emotion, in contrast to what is displayed in a Crucifixion or Lamentation by the artist.¹⁶ It could also have had something to do with the wishes of the patron.¹⁷ According to De Vrij, there is an evolution in the work of the Virgo Master from more complex compositions and grotesque facial expressions to a more static style. That is why he believes that ‘The Virgin and Child with Sts Catherine, Cecilia, Barbara and Ursula’ is from the artist’s later period, after 1495.¹⁸ In 1927, by contrast, Friedländer had placed the painting in the artist’s middle period.¹⁹ The dendrochronology now shows that the work was very probably not made before 1495, and Unger dates it to around 1500.²⁰

Despite the absence of the artist’s usual fervid emotions, the facial types fit within his formal vocabulary in every respect, and the complex drapery folds also display parallels with other works of his.²¹ Similarities between the underdrawing in this painting and that in several other works attributed to the master also confirm that they are the work of the same hand. The shaded effects in the foreground figures of the Rijksmuseum panel were prepared with a wide range of hatchings. Some of them are built up like networks to define the drapery folds. There are also fairly thick contour lines, and some of the lines for the folds were drawn several times (fig. b, fig. c). Parts of the shaded areas of the flesh passages were prepared with densely packed hatchings that almost resemble washes (fig. d). These and other features are comparable to the underdrawing in other works by the Virgo Master, such as ‘The Annunciation’ in Rotterdam.²²

It can be seen from the underdrawing of the steps leading up to the entrance of the building of the left that the artist constructed the perspective by eye, and that he continued making corrections to it during the creative process (fig. e). That he had trouble with the perspective is also apparent from the rest of the architecture, which looks distorted.²³ There is no underdrawing beneath the landscape. The X-radiograph shows that at one stage there were rocks in the right background where now there are trees.²⁴ The semicircular tower in the left background also appears in several other works by the Virgo Master.²⁵
MW

Literature

Friedländer 1903b, p. 168; Friedländer 1906, pp. 39-40; Friedländer 1910, p. 66; Friedländer V, 1927, pp. 65, 70-71, 76, 142, no. 63; Hoogewerff II, 1937, pp. 241-43; Van Luttervelt 1952, pp. 59-67; Amsterdam 1958, p. 68, no. 54; Boon (1963), pp. 21, 31, no. 18; ENP V, 1969, pp. 40-41, no. 63; Châtelet 1981, pp. 148, 232-33, no. 125; De Vrij 1999, pp. 6-8, 30-31; Van Os in Van Os 'et al.' 2000, pp. 76-77, no. 26; Unger 2004, pp. 162-67, no. 4.1.12, with earlier literature; Giltaij in Rotterdam 2008a, pp. 278-80, no. 50z

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Collection catalogues

1801, p. 50, no. 106; 1809, p. 21, no. 88 (as Hubert and Jan van Eyck); 1858, p. 174, no. 383 (as Anonymous, 14th and 15th century); 1880, pp. 363-64, no. 429 (as Anonymous, 15th century); 1887, p. 67, no. 532 (as Dutch school, second half 15th century); 1903, p. 6, no. 43 (as Dutch school, second half 15th century); 1934, p. 5, no. 43; 1960, p. 200, no. 1538 V1; 1976, p. 637, no. A 501

Citation

M. Wolters, 2010, 'Meester van de Virgo inter Virgines, The Virgin and Child with Sts Catherine, Cecilia, Barbara and Ursula, Northern Netherlands, c. 1495 - c. 1500', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9034

(accessed 10 November 2024 00:56:01).