Virgin and Child

Entry

The Virgin Mary holds the naked Christ Child in front of her with both hands. He lies on a thin folded cloth that follows the diagonal angle of his body. Mary gazes lovingly in his direction. Long waving locks of hair, originally flowing from the now missing crown, fall gracefully over her shoulders to the level of the elbows. Beneath her cloak, her dress is gathered together high above the waist by means of a knotted sash. The dress closes on the right; visible above the ‘V’-shaped neckline and the openings of the sleeves is a pleated, tightfitting chemise. Although a significant section of the sculpture has been sawn off at the bottom, an arching curve can still be discerned, most likely a depiction of the moon. Carvings of the Virgin standing on a moon formed the central figures of large hanging sculptural structures known as Mariana’⁷ The tenable presence of the moon in this Virgin and Child suggests this sculpture might also have had this function. A comparable sculpture of a Virgin and Child from a Marianum is today preserved in Huis Bergh Castle in ‘s-Heerenberg.⁸

In 1942, Leeuwenberg assembled a homogenous group of six wooden statues that he attributed to Dries Holthuys (active c. 1480-c. 1510), the sculptor responsible for the stone Madonna in Xanten Cathedral, carved in 1496. Leeuwenberg’s group included not only the present Virgin and Child, but also a St Christopher from the Sint-Maartenskerk in Oud-Zevenaar, a Virgin and Child and a St John from the collegiate church of Cleves, a Virgin Annunciate from Nijmegen and a Bust of St Anthony held in a private collection.⁹ While the interpretation of the six wooden images as a composite group received general acceptance, the link to the stone sculpture and the Holthuys attribution were rejected. In 1949, Timmers attributed the very same group to an anonymous woodcarver, whom he donned the ‘Master of Oud-Zevenaar’, a name of convenience derived from the known provenance of the St Christopher.¹⁰ Only in 1965 was a direct association established between the group in question and the works of Henrik Douverman, the most important sculptor along the Lower Rhine during the period in question.¹¹ The attribution of these six works to Douverman’s oeuvre is today widely acknowledged, while Dries Holthuys’s oeuvre has also been more precisely defined.¹²

The Amsterdam sculpture is typically dated circa 1510-15, i.e. after the period of the works produced in Master Arnt’s youth but prior to his moving to Kalkar, where he commenced work on the Retable of the Seven Sorrows of Mary.¹³ Numerous stylistic points of agreement can be observed in other works produced during this period, including the sculpture of St John from the Stiftskirche Sankt-Mariae Himmelfahrt in Cleves, a Catherine in the Sankt-Aldegundiskirche in Emmerich and a Virgin of which the present whereabouts are unknown.¹⁴ The aforementioned sculpture of the Virgin and Child in Cleves, though certainly of an earlier date, bears the greatest similarity to the Amsterdam sculpture. Both Virgins hold the Christ Child at a diagonal angle, supporting his upper body with one hand and his legs with the other. The type of the diagonally reclining child is derived from Master Arnt’s Virgin of circa 1480, carved for the Sankt-Nicolaikirche in Kalkar.¹⁵

In the late fifteenth century, it was not uncommon for wooden sculptures to be left unpainted. This meant not only a reduction in the cost, but it also reflected the growing appreciation for the virtuosity of the woodcarving. Without polychrome finishing, this became vastly more important, as did the intrinsic qualities of wood as a material. This development occurred primarily in southern Germany, where sculptors worked in limewood. Douverman was one of the first Lower Rhenish woodcarvers to apply this Holzsichtigkeit to oak, albeit on the condition that the wood itself contained no visible knots, splits or other forms of damage. He nevertheless continued to produce both statues carved with the intention of being polychromed as well as images designed to remain Holzsichtig.¹⁶ For the present Virgin and Child, wood of inferior quality was used. This indicates the sculpture’s surface was probably originally polychromed, with irregularities such as knots and cracks concealed. Following the removal of the sculpture’s polychromy with a caustic in the nineteenth century, likely motivated by preferences of taste, these wood blemishes resurfaced.

Guido de Werd, 2004 (updated by Bieke van der Mark, 2024)
This entry was originally published in F. Scholten and G. de Werd, Een hogere werkelijkheid: Duitse en Franse beeldhouwkunst 1200-1600 uit het Rijksmuseum Amsterdam/Eine höhere Wirklichkeit, Deutsche und Französische Skulptur 1200-1600 aus dem Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, exh. cat. Cleves (Museum Kurhaus Kleve) 2004-06, no. 12