Carved and polychromed. The reverse has been hollowed out. Dendrochronological analysis by Domínguez Delmás in 2020 resulted in the dating of the outermost growth ring to the year 1447. Due to the absence of sapwood it is not possible to give a more specific estimate felling date of the tree than ‘after 1455’. The timber originates from the Twente/Westphalia area.

The jewel in the centre of the coronet is damaged. The string of beads between the brooches is lost. There may have been a pendant fold of the cloak in the right hand that is now missing. The left hand and possibly the toe of the shoe were replaced. The tip of the thumb and the index finger of the right hand were filled with a synthetic material. Pupils were added to the eyes. The polychromy was removed with a caustic. Some traces of a layer of chalk, original polychromy and gilding were found in some of the deeper folds.¹¹See the condition report by A. Lorne, 1995.

…; anonymous sale, London (Sotheby’s), 11 December 1986, no. 31, £ 16,500 (fl. 53,763), to the Rijksmuseum-Stichting, Amsterdam; on loan to the museum, 1986-97; transferred to the museum (on the dissolution of the Rijksmuseum-Stichting), 1998

Object number: BK-1986-40

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Rijksmuseum-Stichting

On the basis of her long loose hair and opulent clothes with ‘jewel’ trimming on the hem of her cloak, this female saint may be identified as Mary Magdalene. This is confirmed by the existence of a Utrecht pipeclay figure with a very similar appearance and coronet in her hair, which still holds all her attributes: a book in the right hand and an ointment jar in the other.¹⁰¹⁰Utrecht, Centraal Museum, inv. no. 1918, see J. Klinckaert, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, vol. 3, Beeldhouwkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1997, no. 162. With thanks to Bieke van der Mark.

Halsema-Kubes associated the present sculpture with the Master of the Emmerich Saints.¹¹¹¹Note RMA. In 1960 Leeuwenberg had grouped a number of figures together under the name of this anonymous artist, who was located to Utrecht, which he described as the work of a Utrecht follower of Adriaen van Wesel.¹²¹²J. Leeuwenberg, ‘Een nieuw facet aan de Utrechtse beeldhouwkunst’, Oud Holland 75 (1960), pp. 195-205. As well as the statues of St Agnes and St Catherine in the Sankt-Aldegundiskirche in Emmerich, from which the maker’s name is derived,¹³¹³F. Witte, Tausend Jahre deutscher Kunst am Rhein, 5 vols., Berlin/Leipzig 1932, vol. I, p. 172, pointed to the possible Utrecht origin of the two Emmerich statues. D.P.R.A. Bouvy, Middeleeuwsche beeldhouwkunst in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, Amsterdam 1947, p. 133, linked the figure in Museum Catharijneconvent to them. Leeuwenberg enlarged the group with a number of attributions, see J. Leeuwenberg, ‘Een nieuw facet aan de Utrechtse beeldhouwkunst’, Oud Holland 75 (1960), pp. 195-205, esp. pp. 201-04. a very graceful St Agnes in the Bode-Museum in Berlin,¹⁴¹⁴Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Skulpturensammlung, inv. no. 5915, see M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht: 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht: 1430-1530, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, no. 17. a recently discovered Virgin and Child in the Louvre in Paris,¹⁵¹⁵Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. R.F. 1222, see M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht: 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht: 1430-1530, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, no. 16. a similar statue in Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht,¹⁶¹⁶Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, inv. no. ABM bh337, see 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, nos. 43-45. See also M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent, ca. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, pp. 187-88. and a female saint in a Belgian private collection,¹⁷¹⁷R. Didier and H. Krohm, Les sculptures médiévales allemands dans les collections belges/Duitse middeleeuwse beeldhouwwerken in Belgische verzamelingen, exh. cat. Brussels (Generale Bankmaatschappij) 1977, no. 34. have been credited to the oeuvre of this anonymous woodcarver.¹⁸¹⁸Two key pieces from the Duitse Huis (Teutonic House) in Utrecht, which can be dated to around 1475 on the grounds of dendrochronological analysis, have been erroneously associated with the Master of the Emmerich Saints and regarded as an argument for his working in that city, see M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent ca. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, p. 188 and M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht: 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht: 1430-1530, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, no. 14. More recently, Karrenbrock located the Master of the Emmerich Saints in the Lower Rhine region and even cautiously identified him as the woodcarver Raebe Lambert Luetensoen, who was granted burgher rights in Emmerich in 1478 and evidently came from elsewhere.¹⁹¹⁹M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht: 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht: 1430-1530, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, pp. 137-39 and nos. 13, 15-17. See also R. Karrenbrock, ‘Eine Utrechter Madonna der Spätgotik in westfällischem Privatbesitz’, Aachener Kunstblätter 58 (1989-90), pp. 111-14. It is by no means certain, however, that he originally came from Utrecht.

The statues in the Master of the Emmerich Saints group have in common great elegance and a certain verticality and elongation, expressed in long pendant draperies and long, oval faces with fine, sharply drawn eyes, nose and mouth. Some also have elaborately ornamented clothes with decorated hems, girdles or coronets, which we likewise find in the Amsterdam Mary Magdalene. In this respect and in terms of facial type and the handling of the folds, she is most clearly akin to the St Agnes in Emmerich, but the similarities are not great enough to assume one and the same hand.

It is anyway far from certain that all the statues attributed to the Master of the Emmerich Saints are by the same hand or even come from one workshop, in view of the style differences between them. Whereas the Berlin Agnes is most obviously redolent of the influence of Adriaen van Wesel’s style – in the graceful gesture and the sweet, round face – the statue in Museum Catharijneconvent has a much more stately and elongated, and hence less ‘Utrecht’ character. The question is, do we have to assume that we are dealing with a workshop with an evolving style, possibly reinforced by the move from Utrecht to Emmerich, or that there were a few different artists who shared a common origin in the fertile breeding ground of Utrecht? The statues in Emmerich, Paris and Berlin are stylistically the most coherent and also the artistically most successful products. The maker of the Amsterdam figure should similarly be sought in its immediate surroundings. Despite the parallels with the work of the Master of the Emmerich Saints, the statue has a very definite character of its own. It emerges in, among other things, in Magdalene’s full, slightly weak face, in the deep grooves at the corners of her mouth, and in the more stylized and ‘hard’ tresses.

Frits Scholten, 2024

‘Keuze uit de aanwinsten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 36 (1988), no. 4, pp. 343, 347, fig. 2

F. Scholten, 2024, 'circle of Meester van de Emmerikse Heiligen, Mary Magdalene, Utrecht, c. 1480 - c. 1500', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20046972