Pietà, Fragment with Mary’s Lower Legs and a Skull

Entry

The Augustinian monastery Eemstein near Zwijndrecht, founded in 1430, was one of the largest monasteries in the Northern Netherlands.² It was an austere community that thrived primarily on agriculture. During the Reformation, the complex was entirely destroyed after being set on fire by the Geuzen. In the period 1940-70, excavations were carried out on the south side of the monastery’s premises under the direction of A. de Vries and H.J.E. van Beuningen. In the area of what was once the Devel River, used by the monks as a cesspit, numerous items were unearthed, including fragments of pipeclay (and several terracotta) devotional objects that were likely figurines broken or damaged and subsequently discarded by the monks. The best pipeclay fragments were acquired by the Museum Catharijneconvent (Utrecht) in 1949.³ In 1966, Van Beuningen presented this group of twenty fragments to the Rijksmuseum,⁴ including this Pietà, Fragment with Mary’s Lower Legs and a Skull. Other excavated items discovered at Eemstein are still held in private collections.⁵

Simple sculptures of this kind are representative of the late medieval mass production of figurines in terracotta, but more commonly in a white clay known as pipeclay, an inexpensive material used to serially reproduce sculptural ‘squeezes’ in a fairly easy manner via moulds. Typically, pipeclay figures of saints functioned as objects of private devotion.⁶ The archaeological find of a very large group of moulds, misfires and (remnants of) pipeclay sculptures in Utrecht, excavated during the demolition of the city’s ramparts, offered a strong indication that pipeclay figurines and reliefs were produced in the city on a major scale. For this reason, and also on stylistic grounds, pipeclay figures of saints excavated elsewhere have long been assigned a Utrecht provenance almost as a matter of course. More recent archaeological evidence, however, shows that the mass production of pipeclay sculpture also occurred in other cities, including Amsterdam, Leiden, Deventer, Kampen, Antwerp, Liège and Cologne.⁷ These were often based on Utrecht prototypes or moulds.⁸ The present fragment unearthed at Eemstein is highly similar to the fragment of a mould of a Pietà excavated in Utrecht.⁹

Bieke van der Mark, 2024