Angel Corbel with the Coat-of-Arms of Breda

Entry

Decorative wooden sculpture from the Middle Ages, like this Angel Corbel, is much rarer than individual pieces. This is because it was subjected to much harder wear, much of it was destroyed in the Iconoclasm and tastes changed. Stone corbels and keystones in the form of an angel bearing a coat of arms have been preserved in situ here and there or are held in collections, but a wooden angel corbel of this high quality is rare.¹ What makes this example so exceptional, however, is the presence of the escutcheon with the arms of Breda: three saltires or St Andrew’s crosses. This means that the carving was in all probability made in that city, so that it is at the same time one of the few surviving examples of late medieval sculpture from Breda.

In the late Middle Ages, Breda was one of the most important cities in the northern part of the Duchy of Brabant, in part because the House of Nassau had held the city as its domain and resided there since 1404. The city was also a centre of cloth-making and brewing. Under Nassau rule, Breda became a major cultural centre. The building of a large gothic church, the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk (from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth) helped local sculpture to flourish during this period. Only a fraction has survived, however – some on the choir stalls in the building (c. 1460), but they suffered badly in the Iconoclasm.² It is difficult to establish the extent to which this carving was local. There can be no doubt that the city’s prosperity and the presence of the Nassau court attracted artists from other Brabant or even more northerly centres of art.

Despite its compactness, the Angel Corbel is remarkably elegant, thanks in part to the contrapposto of the arms and the tilt of the head, and in part to the grace of the folds. This last is particularly apparent in the softly folded collar of the angel’s alb and the calligraphically flowing folds of the garment on the left. This assured design and detailing attests to the talent of the anonymous woodcarver. The sharp eyes and plump face are features reminiscent of the carving from a more southerly part of the Duchy of Brabant, particularly Brussels and Mechelen, but there are certainly also characteristics in common with the work of Adriaen van Wesel in Utrecht, both in facial type and the fluid and lively handling of the folds.³ The blunt shield shape of the angel’s wing feathers, which were usually pointed in this period, is an unusual style detail.

Regrettably, the Angel Corbel cannot be directly related on stylistic grounds to the scarce surviving examples of late medieval Breda sculpture. The shield-bearing misericord angel on the Breda choir stalls (c. 1460-70) is stiffer and has a different hairstyle; the same is true of the pairs of angels at the top of the wings of these stalls.⁴ Fragments of badly damaged stone corbels in the church likewise differ too greatly in their design and detail for any stylistic comparison to hold water.⁵ With their streaming, rigidly waved hair and more elongated figures, the angels on the tomb of Engelbrecht I of Nassau and Johanna of Polanen (c. 1505-15) are yet another style type.⁶ The suggested kinship between the Breda angel and two small angels in a Brussels portable altar in the Rijksmuseum (BK-1958-40) is equally unconvincing.⁷

In view of its relatively small size and the fact that it is made of wood, this corbel may have come from a small church or, more likely, from a municipal building in Breda – a hospital, for example – where it would have supported a figure of a saint. The Rijksmuseum holds a statue of St Sebastian from Mechelen, on its original corbel (BK-1971-50), which came from a local hospital. In that case, however, the unidentified coat of arms is that of the probable donor of the statue and not the arms of the town. The Mechelen corbel is about five centimetres smaller than the Breda example and the workmanship is considerably less refined.

Frits Scholten, 2024