St Ursula and her Virgins

Entry

Legend has it that the Christian king’s daughter Ursula and her retinue of 11,000 virginal handmaidens were murdered by the Huns near Cologne. This figure, whose original, probably much more magnificent polychromy has regrettably been removed, shows St Ursula as a lively, well-to-do lady, dressed in what was the height of fashion around 1525. Some of her equally opulently dressed followers seek protection under her cloak, a motif derived from the so-called Schützmantelmadonna. In her left hand St Ursula originally held an arrow, an allusion to her death, and there is a deep hole in the back of her head, in all probability to hold a relic, now lost. Since the discovery of a Roman graveyard in the twelfth century – which was identified as the ager Ursulanus – the spot where, according to the Golden Legend, Ursula and her virgins met their deaths, there was a remarkably large number of relics of them in circulation. The veneration of St Ursula was concentrated primarily in Cologne, but in the late Middle Ages spread throughout Western Europe, including the Lower Rhine region, the Southern Netherlands and to a lesser extent the Northern Netherlands.² The purpose of the figure and the place for which it was made are unknown. She may have come from a convent. The notion that the saint died protecting her virginity made her a highly suitable role model for nuns.

Originally Pit and Vogelsang, with no explanation, located the figure in the Rhineland and the Lower Rhine region in Germany, respectively.³ Leeuwenberg, on the other hand, placed it in the Northern Netherlands – more precisely in Utrecht or Amsterdam – and suggested an artist who ‘may have been influenced by Brussels carving’.⁴ He also referred to a ‘great affinity’ with some figures by the Amsterdam painter Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen,⁵ such as the St Catherine on the right wing of his Adoration of the Magi of 1517 (SK-A-4706). He believed that the relationship with works by the Master of the Utrecht Stone Female Head (active in Utrecht c. 1490-1530), an anonymous Utrecht artist whom Leeuwenberg named after an Avesnes stone fragment of a female saint in Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht, pointed to that city (fig. a, for this artist see Christ as Salvator Mundi BK-1964-1).⁶

This last association, in particular, gained a lot of support in art-historical literature, recently even leading to the erroneous assertion that the figure was among the works that Leeuwenberg had attributed to the Master or his workshop.⁷ In fact, though, Leeuwenberg had only compared the figure with another Ursula group in Museum Catharijneconvent, which in his view was closer to the oeuvre of the Master of the Utrecht Stone Female Head. However, he did not attribute that figure, either, to the Master himself, but to a woodcarver from his workshop or immediate circle.⁸ In his view, the connection between the Amsterdam Ursula and the Utrecht sculptor’s oeuvre was ‘very superficial’.⁹ He saw similarities in the faces with the high, domed foreheads, narrow mouths and small, pointed chins.¹⁰ The Avesnes stone head from which the Master derives his name, which is obviously the best starting point for attributions (fig. a), however, has quite a wide, sensual mouth and not such a pronounced chin as the Amsterdam saint. Ursula’s nose is much narrower and she has a rather mannered smile on her lips. This gives her a jaunty air that is completely foreign to both the core group and the export works associated with the Utrecht Master.

The style of the figure reflects the extravagant taste of Antwerp Mannerism. The characteristics of this style – such as the oval heads, the fantastical headgear and the elaborately decorated gowns worn by the women, tight in the bodice and at the waist with wide skirts – which had spread throughout the rest of Brabant, the Meuse area, the Rhine region and the Lower Rhine region as far as Utrecht and Amsterdam provide insufficient clues to permit a more precise location in the Low Countries. As well as in the work of the Master of the Utrecht Stone Female Head, they are also found, for instance, in a Brussels altar exported to Sweden, that is in Vadstena in Östergötland,¹¹ several Southern Netherlandish (Antwerp?) figures, such as a St Agnes,¹² a St Elizabeth,¹³ a St Cecilia,¹⁴ and a Female Saint in the Rijksmuseum (BK-KOG-653), and the work of the Maastricht woodcarver Jan van Steffeswert (c. 1470-after 1525).¹⁵

Finally, there is an indirect indication that points towards a Southern Netherlandish origin for the Amsterdam St Ursula group. This is the existence of a faithful early sixteenth-century Hispano-Flemish copy, with the women’s garments adorned with estofado decoration (fig. b).¹⁶ One result of the close political and trading relations between Spain and, in particular, the Southern Netherlands in this period was Flemish influence on Spanish sculpture.¹⁷ An earlier copy exported from the (Southern?) Netherlands to Spain may have served as the model for the – much smaller – replica.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024