St Christopher

Entry

In his essay entitled Praise of Folly, Erasmus mocked those ‘who have reached the foolish but comforting belief that if they gaze in a picture of Polyphemus-Christopher, they will not die that day…’.⁸ By no coincidence does the renowned Dutch humanist refer to St Christopher in this sense, as this towering saint was exceptionally popular in the late Middle Ages, known to all via Jacobus da Voragine’s Legenda Aurea. The Golden Legend tells the story of the ferryman Reprobus, who when carrying the Christ Child across a river on his shoulders nearly collapsed beneath the weight of he who bore the sins of the entire world. From that time onward, this narrative figure became known as ‘Christophorus’: the Christ-bearer. As a patron saint, St Christopher kept watch over all travellers on the road, protecting them against unforeseen death. He was invoked against a panoply of misfortunes, including fear, famine, the plague, poverty and treachery of any kind.

This small, delicately carved ivory depiction of Christopher was conceived as an autonomous miniature image on a socle. In light of its diminutive format, it was very likely designed to accompany the traveller on his journey, protecting him from all sorts of misfortune that one might expect along the way. It was perhaps an independent figure, kept in a protective case, but it could also have belonged to a miniature portable retable, as its lack of depth suggests.⁹ Very few monumental retables containing statues of saints standing on pedestals have been preserved to the present day, one exception being the wood-carved retable of Schwabstedt, which also contains a St Christopher similar to the present statuette.¹⁰ Larger-scale en grisaille painted alabaster statues standing on comparable socles commonly adorn altarpieces such as Jan van Eyck’s Annunciation Diptych (c. 1436), providing some idea of the popularity these sculptures enjoyed in Flanders in the first half of the fifteenth century.¹¹

Stylistically, the Christopher ivory is very much in line with a group of alabaster statuettes attributed to the so-called Master of Rimini, a sculptor from the Southern Netherlands active in the second quarter of the fifteenth century.¹² His superior statuettes and ensembles, likely produced primarily for the export market, are characterized by a highly expressive style virtually without parallel in Netherlandish sculpture circa 1430. Links to Flemish painting of that era, however, have been noted, including works by the brothers Van Eyck – e.g. the figures of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist in the Ghent Altarpiece – the Master of Flémalle and Rogier van der Weyden.¹³ The Rimini Master’s style, immediately adopted by many others, demarcates a transition from the soft, elegant stylization of early fifteenth-century sculpture to a certain sharpening and hardening of forms, achieved by means of linear drapery folds and the sharp, often angular rendering of the facial features, anatomy and poses, all pointing to a new form of realism.

The same stylistic traits are also discernible in the present ivory, albeit in simplified form: St Christopher’s face is in fact a miniature version of a number of apostles from the Rimini Master’s principal work, the alabaster Crucifixion altarpiece that originally stood in the Santa Maria delle Grazie in Covignano near Rimini, today preserved at the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt am Main.¹⁴ Yet the same applies when comparing the figure’s facial features to those of various saintly figures attributed either directly to the master, his immediate circle or other followers. Passages of sharp, parallel folds comprised of narrow, raised ridges alternating with wider, deep-lying areas are found in all of the Rimini Master’s works. The same scheme is particularly discernible both on both the front and reverse of the ivory St Christopher’s cloak.¹⁵ Another characteristic of the Rimini Master and his followers are the rectangular or polygonal pedestals with moulding used for individual figures and small groups – a motif we also encounter with the present ivory. On the basis of these stylistic similarities, an interpretation of the St Christopher statuette as a work produced in the Rimini Master’s immediate artistic milieu is highly tenable. Overlooking the difference in scale, the observed parallels between alabaster and ivory are more than obvious: both materials share a similar quality and feel and virtually the same approaches to carving and polychromy.¹⁶ In addition, the Rimini Master and artists in his circle also worked with small-scale objects, as exemplified by a small alabaster fragment from a relief of the Last Supper preserved in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich (fig. a) and a related sculpture in the Bode-Museum in Berlin.¹⁷ The agreement between the apostles of the Last Supper and the present St Christopher ivory is particularly striking, with respect to both the faces – see, for example, the apostle on the upper-right – and the treatment of the drapery folds.¹⁸

In 2012, Woods introduced the Bruges sculptor Gilles de B(l)ackere as a tenable candidate for the Rimini Master.¹⁹ Well documented is his involvement in the tomb monument for Michelle de France, daughter of King Charles VI of France and first wife of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, built in the years 1422-1436. If indeed an accurate identification – at first glance a tempting hypothesis when considering De Blackere’s considerable reputation as a court artist and Bruges’ status as a prominent trading centre in both ivory and art destined for the export market – then Flanders, if not Bruges itself, may indeed be recognized as the St Christopher ivory’s most likely place of origin.²⁰ In 2019, Woods’s hypothesis was nevertheless convincingly rebutted by Van den Maagdenberg, who pointed out that a nineteenth-century misinterpretation of the original document cited by Woods (and those before her) had led to the erroneous belief that De Blackere was a tailleur d’ymaiges d’albastre (sculptor of alabaster works), when in fact he was described only in broader terms as a tailleur d’ymaiges (carver/sculptor).²¹ Furthermore, Woods confused the supplier of the alabaster for the tomb of Michelle de France – one Loy de Blackere (very likely a relative of the sculptor Gilles de Blackere) – with a fur tradesman of the same name.²² Although Van den Maagdenberg’s research demonstrated that the identification of Gilles de Blackere as the Rimini master is indeed less probable, it in no way rules out Bruges as the possible locus of the master’s activity. The larger Flemish cities – where sculptors commonly worked in alabaster – were not only home to a thriving trade in alabaster and ivory, but would also have provided a highly lucrative, international network for the exportation of completed works of art. Nevertheless, for a more definitive localization of the Rimini Master’s workshop and that of his followers, in Germany and elsewhere,²³ further scientific analysis of the (origin of the) alabaster types is however essential.

Besides the Amsterdam Christopher, several surviving ivories can be traced to the same artistic circle on the basis of style. The mutual differences between these pieces, however, seem slightly too significant to attribute them to a single hand or workshop.²⁴ A seated St Jerome in the Louvre (h. 10.9 cm) – erroneously catalogued as ‘Northern Italian’ – shares the same facial features as the Amsterdam St Christopher in the style of the Rimini Master.²⁵ The Parisian ivory is closely related to a second, even smaller Saint Jerome and the Lion (h. 5.5 cm), which was already associated with the style of the Rimini Master by Philippovich in 1982.²⁶

Furthermore, a stylistically comparable figure in the round of St George standing on the Dragon is part of the collection of Schatzkammer of Burg Eltz (Rheinland-Pfalz),²⁷ which also shows very clear traits of the Master of Rimini style, and, to a lesser extent, a relief depiction of the Coronation of the Virgin, encased in a rock crystal pendant, preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.²⁸ Most similar to the Amsterdam St Christopher, however, is an ivory statuette of the Virgin and Child in Frankfurt. Although practically the same size, the Frankfurt piece has been executed in substantially greater detail.²⁹ On the basis of style and iconography, this refined ivory has been regionally attributed to the Southern Netherlands and dated circa 1430. While its drapery folds betray an evident familiarity with the work of the Rimini Master, this work shares a highly specific detail when compared to the Amsterdam St Christopher: the two infant Christs (apart from their disparate poses) are matching twins of one another. In addition, the two ivories are standing on a virtually identical polygonal socle with moulding.³⁰ Finally, a second St Christopher statuette, possessing essentially the same pose as the Rijksmuseum statuette in mirror image, adorns a fifteenth-century reliquary from Salzburg. ³¹ This work diverges more significantly from the Rimini Master’s style and moreover lacks the refinement and detailing of the latter, especially in the face and hair.
The presence of Albrecht Dürer’s ‘AD’ monogram on two of the ivory statuettes in this group, added circa 1600 , indicates a demand for such luxury objects in Germany at that time. Like the alabasters from the Rimini Master’s workshop, these ivories were perhaps primarily produced for export from the Low Countries. In the German-language regions, these works would have lost their original religious role after the Reformation, only to experience a second life as Kunstkammer objects. The association with Dürer is certain to have enhanced their appreciation as delicate and costly collector's items.

Frits Scholten, 2024