Christ on the Cross with the Virgin, St John, Mary Magdalene and St Francis

Entry

The crucified figure of Christ appears in the middle of this stone-carved Calvary scene. Left beneath the cross, St John supports the swooning Virgin Mary, visibly overcome with sadness. Hovering high above them, an angel raises a chalice to catch the (probably once painted) blood flowing from the wound in Christ’s side. The skull of Adam, said to have been buried on Mount Golgotha, rests at the foot of the cross. Kneeling right, Mary Magdalene wraps her arms around the cross while gazing up at the Saviour. This standard depiction is further expanded by the presence of St Francis far right, with his palms raised to receive the stigmata. Scenes of the Calvary with the saint from Assisi are rare: one example is a painted panel from the end of the fifteenth century, preserved at the Museum het Catharijneconvent in Utrecht.¹ In addition to Mary, John and Mary Magdalene, however, the depiction also includes St Clara, founder of the Order of the Clarisses, the female branch of the Franciscans.

Her presence suggests the panel may have been painted for a Clarissine nun; Francis’s prominent role in the present relief, however, may point to its function in a Franciscan context or in a church or chapel dedicated to the saint from Assisi. Its precise function remains nevertheless uncertain. If originally forming part of a memory tablet, the absence of a donor figure would be exceptional.² More likely is that the relief served as an altarpiece retable. A similar, but substantially earlier work comparable in type and size is a Calvary relief in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe-Kathedraal in Antwerp, which presumably functioned as a retable (fig. a).³ Dating from circa 1380 and carved from a local stone type (tuff stone from Lincent), this latter relief was found mounted in a wall of the cathedral’s ambulatory in 1827, concealed behind a masonry construction probably built after damage sustained during the Iconoclasm of 1566. Paint remnants indicate that the Antwerp relief and the present Calvary were both originally polychromed.

Until recently, determinations of the Amsterdam relief’s possible origin were entirely circumspect. The relief was donated to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst in 1896 by its then director, Adriaan Pit, who catalogued it consistently as a Flemish work of the mid-fifteenth century.⁴ Diverging from Pit’s assessment, Leeuwenberg situated the relief in the Northern Netherlands, dating it to the last quarter of the fifteenth century without further elucidation. Krutisch followed suit, comparing the crucified Christ to a somewhat similar corpus from the onset of the sixteenth century in the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht. While the wood type (walnut) of this latter corpus points to a more southern origin, Van Vlierden also recently described it as a Northern Netherlandish work, possibly from the county of Holland.⁵

Nevertheless, a close examination of the relief’s style and composition indicates an origin in the region of Burgundy.⁶ The Christ type can be traced back to an important limestone (Asnières stone) corpus from the first quarter of the fifteenth century excavated at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Bégine in Dijon (today the Musée Archéologique). This superiorly executed figure of the crucified Christ is attributed to Claus de Werve (c. 1380-1439), which, based on the existence of a series of comparable works in Burgundy, is certain to have been highly influential in the region.⁷ Like the Christ of the Amsterdam Calvary, all are characterized by the very slender corporeal form, the similarly tilted head hanging down over his right shoulder, soft locks of hair falling onto the back, a short, double-pointed beard, and the matching folds of the loincloth, with one end descending from the right hip. Numerous parallels in Burgundian art also exist for the rectangular form of the Virgin’s head veil at the top and John’s long hair with the shortly trimmed bangs.⁸

The most striking similarities, however, can be observed when comparing the Amsterdam Calvary to a limestone relief of the same theme in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, on which the polychromy, even though overpainted, has remained intact intact (fig . b).⁹ Dated as a work from the last quarter of the fifteenth century on the basis of the sharply delineated drapery folds,¹⁰ this second Calvary displays general stylistic characteristics linking it to a sculptor in the artistic milieu of the Burgundian court sculptor Antoine le Moiturier (1425-after 1497).¹¹ The Christ figures of both reliefs are virtually identical. In addition to an overall stylistic agreement, they share the same vertical row of indentations at the level of the sternum. Other parallels include the loincloth, knotted and arranged according to the same drapery scheme, with the fingers of the crucified hands folding slightly over the palm. Both moreover share the same type of halo framing Christ’s head, a disk partitioned into seven sections. The flat cross, the ‘INRI’ plaquette and Adam’s skull correspond precisely. The St John figures don the same cut of hair, accented by a short fringe. Also highly similar is the depiction of the mournful facial type of the two Marys. Lastly, the ends of the cross and the contours of the outermost figures partly overlap the integrally carved, profiled frame, enhancing the visual depth by inventive means.

Nevertheless, differences can also be observed. The Amsterdam Calvary is a more ambitious and more carefully conceived variant of the simpler composition in Dijon. The latter scene features only the three standard figures – Christ, the Virgin Mary and St John – rendered in a rather rigid sculpting style particularly evident in the sharp, schematic arrangement of the drapery folds, versus the greater plastic quality of the same details on the present relief. Presumably, both reliefs were produced in one and the same workshop, whereby different hands might have been (serially?) implemented to create variants based on the same prototype. The Amsterdam relief is approximately twice the height of its Dijon equivalent, possibly indicating an adherence to standard dimensions within the workshop.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024