St Agnes

Utrecht, c. 1470 - c. 1480

Object data

oak with traces of polychromy

height 56.2 cm × width 19 cm × depth 9.5 cm

Technical notes

Carved and originally polychromed. The back is flat.

Scientific examination and reports

conservation report: W.J. Mares, RMA, 1980

Literature scientific examination and reports

Jaarverslag Nederlandse Rijksmusea 1980, p. 19

Condition

Part of the nose and some fingers of the left hand have been replaced. The polychromy has been removed with a caustic.

Conservation

W.J. Mares, 1980: splits and cracks filled with oak wedges and carved to fit; smaller cracks caused by the caustic filled with a wax mixture; damage to the forehead made good; repair to left fold of the cloak rectified; cleaned.

Provenance

...; sale, Mrs K. Ooms-Van Eersel, Antwerp (E. van Herck and J. van de Broek), 29-31 May 1922, no. 1449;...; from the dealer N. Beets, Amsterdam, fl. 1500, to the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap, Amsterdam, 1939; on loan to the museum since 1939

Object number: BK-KOG-1732

Credit line: On loan from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap

The artist

Adriaen van Wesel (Utrecht c. 1417 - Utrecht in or after 1490)

Adriaen van Wesel was the leading sculptor of the Northern Netherlands during the second half of the fifteenth century. The majority of his surviving oeuvre is held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. Van Wesel’s name and city of origin were discovered by Swillens in 1948 in the city archives of Den Bosch while researching two pieces from an altarpiece by Van Wesel formerly in the chapel of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in the Sint-Janskathedraal of that city.¹ Before his identification he was known as the ‘Master of the Singing Angels’ and the ‘Master of the Death of Mary’, names of convenience derived from two altar groups in the Rijksmuseum.

Van Wesel is certain to have been born in Utrecht, as his name appears nowhere in the listings of new citizens after 1400. He is first mentioned in 1447, when elected alderman of the saddler’s guild, to which painters and sculptors also belonged. Since this important position could only be attained by men of at least thirty years of age, he was probably born in or slightly prior to 1417. Van Wesel was elected to this post nine times: four times serving as a member of the city council while holding several other public offices, thus affirming his status as an influential and highly respected figure.

A document from 1468 involving a life annuity indicates that Adriaen van Wesel had a wife named Margriet and a daughter named Belyen. Both probably died before 1491, as their names no longer appear in the life annuity records from this year. Adriaen himself must have died in or shortly after 1490, as this is the last time he appears in any documents. The year of Van Wesel’s death has been subject to some confusion stemming from the existence of a second ‘Adriaen van Wesel’ residing in Utrecht whose death is documented in 1500. This individual, though perhaps a family member, was a butter merchant not known to have held any public position.

Van Wesel’s first documented work is the aforementioned altarpiece for the Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in Den Bosch commissioned in 1475. By this time, however, he was already a sculptor of renown. Unfortunately, this altarpiece was dismantled and dispersed in the nineteenth century. Only two groups from this altarpiece have remained in Den Bosch, together with their original caisses. Another five groups from this altarpiece are today preserved in the Rijksmuseum.² An additional seven have tenably been linked to these works, including a seated Virgin from an Annunciation in Bruges.³ On a final note, several hypothetical reconstructions of the original retable have also been devised (for the most recent, see fig. c in the entry BK-NM-11647).⁴

Adriaen van Wesel produced two other Marian altars: the first in 1470 for the Mariakerk in Utrecht, a work that fell victim to one of the city’s iconoclastic outbreaks in 1584; the second for the high altar of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, probably destroyed in a fire in 1528 (with BK-1979-94 possibly a fragment). Another altar, commissioned in 1487 for the monastery Sint-Agnietenberg in Zwolle, is likewise lost. Several surviving sculptures may originate from these altarpieces, e.g. a Descent from the Cross in Berlin, and a Holy Family in Utrecht.⁵

Van Wesel’s last documented works were made for churches in his hometown of Utrecht: three sculptures for the high altar of the Buurkerk in 1487 and seven groups for the predella of the high altar of Utrecht Cathedral in 1489.⁶

Marie Mundigler, 2024

References
W. Halsema-Kubes, G. Lemmens and G. de Werd, Adriaen van Wesel: Een Utrechtse beeldhouwer uit de late middeleeuwen, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1980-81; M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, pp. 227-31; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, pp. 48-54; Scholten and Van der Mark in F. Scholten (ed.), 1100-1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2015, no. 30 (and fig. 30a); P.T.A. Swillens, ‘De Utrechtse beeldhouwer Adriaen van Wesel, ca. 1420-(na) 1489’, Oud Holland 63 (1948), pp. 149-64; P.T.A. Swillens, ‘De Utrechtse beeldhouwer Adriaen van Wesel. Enige aanvullende mededelingen’, Oud Holland 66 (1951), pp. 228-33; W. Vogelsang in F.W.S. van Thienen (ed.), Algemene Kunstgeschiedenis, vol. 4, Utrecht/Antwerp 1949, p. 28

Entry

When this exceptionally elegant sculpture was purchased by the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap in 1939, it was immediately recognized as being by the hand responsible for a number of superb altarpiece fragments in the Rijksmuseum’s collection that probably came from the Marian altar of the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Virgin in Den Bosch (see, for instance, Joseph with Three Musician Angels (BK-NM-11647).⁷ The woodcarver was at that time still incorrectly thought to be Jacob van der Borch, the architect of Utrecht Cathedral. In 1948 Swillens identified this master as the renowned Utrecht woodcarver Adriaen van Wesel.⁸

St Agnes holds her long robe up with both hands, creating a beautiful, complex interplay of folds. At the young martyr’s feet lies a lamb, which looks up at her, bleating. With her left hand she holds the animal – an attribute she owes to the assonance between her name and agnus, the Latin word for lamb – on a lead. Agnes’s abundant locks are crowned with a floral wreath set with pearls and gemstones.

Among the rare figures that are statues in their own right that are convincingly attributed to Adriaen van Wesel, St Agnes can best be compared with a Virgin and Child in a private collection in Belgium.⁹ The elegant yet relaxed pose of the two women and their girlish faces are similar, as is the loose robe held up at the waist and the virtuoso folds.¹⁰ The déhanchement with the bent right knee clearly showing beneath the robe also occurs in a Virgin and Child by Van Wesel in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (BK-NM-3888) and a related figure by a probably Nether-Rhenish follower in the Museum Schnütgen in Cologne.¹¹

The sculpture’s size suggests that it was used as an individual devotional object which, in view of its flat reverse, was probably placed against a wall. The figure of Agnes with her little bleating lamb, however, was certainly not conceived as a solemn statue, but instead as a representation of a spontaneous, almost secular girl, reminiscent of the anecdotal figures in Van Wesel’s altar fragments.¹² The possibility that it was in fact part of a larger decorative programme, for example as the central figure in or on an altar caisse, can consequently not be ruled out.

Figures of St Agnes are unusual in the late-medieval sculpture of the Northern Netherlands. One of the few examples is a mid-fifteenth-century polychromed calcareous sandstone St Agnes, which, most probably erroneously, has been associated with the Utrecht sculptor Jan Ude (active 1446-94), who is known only from documents. This figure comes from Utrecht Cathedral,¹³ where there was particular reverence for this saint because important relics of her were kept there. It is therefore not inconceivable that Van Wesel made his St Agnes for this church, too.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

Literature

C.M.A.A. Lindeman, ‘Sint Agnes door Jacob van der Borch’, Jaarverslag K.O.G. 81 (1938-39), pp. 52-54, esp. p. 52; J.J.M. Timmers, ‘Achtenveertig eeuwen beeldhouwkunst in hout’, in W. Boerhave Beekman, Hout in alle Tijden, vol. 2, Deventer 1949, pp. 597-772, esp. pp. 680, 683; J. Leeuwenberg, ‘Beeldhouwkunst I’, Facetten der Verzameling 8 (1967; 1st ed. 1957), p. 1; D.P.R.A. Bouvy, ‘Nederlandse beeldhouwkunst’, in T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Sprekend verleden. Wegwijzer voor de verzamelaar van oude kunst en antiek, Amsterdam 1959, p. 55; D.P.R.A. Bouvy, Kerkelijke Kunst, vol. 2, Bussum 1966, p. 49; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 18, with earlier literature; W. Halsema-Kubes et al., Adriaen van Wesel. Een Utrechtse beeldhouwer uit de late middeleeuwen (ca. 1417/ ca. 1490), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1980-81, no. 19; N. van den Berg et al., Bewaard voor Nederland in het Rijksmuseum. Ruim 300 voorwerpen van het Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap in de vaste opstelling van het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap) 2013, p. 16

Citation

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'Adriaen van Wesel, St Agnes, Utrecht, c. 1470 - c. 1480', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24262

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