The Confession

anonymous, c. 1500 - c. 1520

Op een plint zit een monnik tussen twee knielende knapen. Hij steunt met de linkerhand op een knie en buigt zich naar links over de knaap, die zijn handen gevouwen heeft; rechts de rugfiguur van een tweede knaap. De monnik in monniksgewaad draagt de kap over het hoofd; de kanpen zijn in lange hemden, van de tweede is dit gegord.

  • Artwork typesculpture
  • Object numberBK-NM-11913
  • Dimensionsheight 14.2 cm x width 11 cm x depth 5 cm
  • Physical characteristicsoak

anonymous

The Confession

Antwerp, c. 1500 - c. 1520

Technical notes

Carved in relief and originally polychromed.

Condition

The relief has sustained woodworm damage; on the reverse, a section at the bottom has been sealed with a glue-like substance. The polychromy has been removed with a caustic.

Provenance

…; from the dealer D. Komter, Amsterdam, fl. 40, to the museum, 1906

Object number: BK-NM-11913

Entry

A monk leans forward to hear confession from the kneeling youth on the left; an ostensibly similar figure far right faces the opposite direction, with his back in full view. The two kneeling figures wear the same kind of long tunic. The scene follows a standardized iconography for Confession more commonly encountered in prefabricated Antwerp retables, including the Passion altarpiece of Fisenne from circa 1510-15, today preserved at the Musée Luxembourgeois in Arlon.1H. Nieuwdorp (ed.), Antwerp Altarpieces 15th-16th centuries, 2 vols., exh. cat. Antwerp (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) 1993, vol. 1, no. 4. Given its small scale and fairly rudimentary design, the present retable group belonged to one of the outer concave mouldings of a similar, prefabricated altarpiece. Like the retable of Fisenne, the Amsterdam Confession would have appeared together with five other sacraments in the concave moulding that frames a Calvary scene featured in the central retable caisse. Like the Antwerp Passion retable of circa 1510-20 at Elmpt – another example of prefabricated altarpiece production in Antwerp – the seventh sacrament that followed the first six was probably situated in the concave moulding of the adjacent caisse, framing the central scene of the Lamentation or the Descent from the Cross.2H. Nieuwdorp (ed.), Antwerp Altarpieces 15th-16th centuries, 2 vols., exh. cat. Antwerp (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) 1993, vol. 1, no. 6.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

Literature

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 147, with earlier literature; A. Eljenholm Nichols, Seeable Signs. The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments 1350-1544, Woodbridge 1994, note 15 on p. 227

Citation

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, The Confession, Antwerp, c. 1500 - c. 1520', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20015001

(accessed 10 January 2026 09:18:57).

Footnotes

  • 1H. Nieuwdorp (ed.), Antwerp Altarpieces 15th-16th centuries, 2 vols., exh. cat. Antwerp (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) 1993, vol. 1, no. 4.
  • 2H. Nieuwdorp (ed.), Antwerp Altarpieces 15th-16th centuries, 2 vols., exh. cat. Antwerp (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) 1993, vol. 1, no. 6.