The relief is carved and partly gilded and polychromed. Mounted in an oak frame with pressed and gilded papier-maché pattern of bandwork and circles with floral motifs.

Two diagonal cracks traverse the relief. The oak frame was originally gilded and later overpainted in black. Three of the frame’s corner ornaments are missing.

…; from the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden, The Hague, transferred to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885

Object number: BK-NM-849

The alabaster-carving industry in Mechelen originated with the arrival of a small group of artists, employed by Margaret of Austria, governess of the Netherlands at the onset of the sixteenth century. These artists worked primarily in the new antyckse renaissance style imported from Italy. Most important among them where the sculptors Conrat Meit (1485-1550/51) from Worms and Jean Mone (c. 1485-?1554) from Metz, whose presence in the city stimulated local sculptors to shift their efforts in the direction of the new formal idiom and simultaneously the material alabaster. Lipinska maintains that for those artists originally trained in wood, the move to the new, relatively soft stone type alabaster was minor.¹¹A. Lipinska, ‘“Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen”: Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe’, Simiolus 32 (2006), pp. 231-58, esp. p. 238.

As a result, a veritable industry in this kind of sculpture began to flourish in the sixteenth century, destined for a market that encompassed much of north-western Europe. Besides the Low Countries, Mechelen alabaster reliefs and altars were exported to places as far away as Poland, the Baltic States and Scandinavia.²²M. Rydbeck, ‘Nederländska husaltaren från skånska kyrkor: Renässansskulptur i Skåne’, Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens Handlingar 71 (Antikvariska studier 4), Stockholm 1950, pp. 28-40; A. Lipinska, ‘“Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen”: Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe’, Simiolus 32 (2006), pp. 231-58; A. Lipinska, Wewnetrzne swiatlo: Poludniowoniderlandzka rzezba alabastrowa w Europie Srodkowo-Wschodniej, Wroclaw 2007; A. Lipinska, Moving Sculptures: Southern Netherlandish Alabasters from the 16th to 17th Centuries in Central and Northern Europe (Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History 11), Leiden/Boston 2015. The more luxurious versions of these house altars comprised both larger and smaller alabaster reliefs, mounted in ornately carved wooden frames decorated with pressed-gesso patterns. The Rijksmuseum possesses two such altars (BK-BR-515; BK-NM-2918). However, the majority of this so-called cleynstekerswerk centred on small carved tablets featuring mythological and biblical scenes in a virtually unlimited number of variations produced serially well into the first half of the seventeenth century. With dimensions up to 20 x 20 centimetres, these small alabaster reliefs were typically supplied with decorative frames edged with pressed papier-mâché. To enliven the scenes and the frames, polychromers added highlights in gold. Even today, many of these objects still bear the monograms and house marks left by their makers, conveying the competition among artists but also serving as a kind of quality guaranty.

The allegories of Asia (shown here) and Europe (BK-NM-848) belong to a series of the Continents. A somewhat divergent allegory of Africa (BK-KOG-1255-F), also in the Rijksmuseum collection, belongs to a different series, evident in the deviating form of the bottom cartouche. The two Continents are depicted as elaborately attired women holding sceptres, each seated on a triumphal car drawn, respectively, by a team of horses and a team of dromedaries. A book lies at Europe’s feet, possibly an allusion to her role as the source of wisdom and knowledge. Asia sits with a small gold chest resting on her lap; adjacent to her throne are a standing jug and bag (holding precious items?), perhaps referring to luxury goods produced on that continent.

Allegorical reliefs like these are fairly exceptional examples of Mechelen alabaster production. By far most of the cleynstekers’ repertoire consisted of biblical scenes. Based on stylistic considerations and the rather slipshod finishing, these two reliefs may be deemed late examples of Mechelen manufacture, dating from the early decades of the seventeenth century. Conveying an element of luxury, simple scenes such as these still appeared quite commonly in inventories of possessions of the seventeenth century, where they are typically listed as alabaster bordjes (panels/small boards).³³J. Loughman and M. Montias, Public and Private Spaces: Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Houses, Zwolle 2000, pp. 39, 40, 54, 55, 57-59, 89, 97, 132-34.

Frits Scholten, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 183b, with earlier literature; M.K. Wustrack, Die Mechelner Alabaster-Manufaktur des 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt am Main/Bern 1982, no. 241; Lipińska in A. Lipińska et al., Matter of Light and Flesh: Alabaster in the Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th and 17th Centuries, exh. cat. Gdańsk (National Museum) 2011, no. 42

F. Scholten, 2024, 'anonymous, Asia, Mechelen, c. 1600 - c. 1620', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035612