Prayer Nut with the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi, in a Box

P. Reischig et al., ‘A Note on Medieval Microfabrication: The Visualization of a Prayer Nut by Synchrotron-Based Computer X-Ray Tomography’, Journal of Synchrotron Radiation 16 (2009), pp. 310-13

…;¹¹An alternative early provenance scenario might involve the Beelaerts family, which produced several regents in Dordrecht during the 17th and 18th centuries and is believed to be connected to the Delft Van Bleiswijck family (from which the prayer nut inv.no. BK-1981-1 originates), with thanks to M.G. Beelaerts van Blokland, Amsterdam for this suggestion, written communication 25 September 2010: alternative provenance …; ? Pieter Beelaerts (1639-1691), burgomaster of Dordrecht; ? his son Gerard Beelaerts (1673-1718), captain at sea, Admiraliteit op de Maze; ? his son Gerard Beelaerts van Blokland (1710-1790), burgomaster of Dordrecht; ? his son Pieter Beelaerts van Blokland (1744-1812), regent in Dordrecht; ? his son Gerard Beelaerts van Blokland (1772-1844), minister of State; ? Frans Willem Anne Beelaerts van Blokland (1810-1886); ? his son Gerard Jacob Theodoor Beelaerts van Blokland (1843-1897), Speaker of the Dutch House of Representatives; ? his son Gerard Jacob Theodoor Beelaerts van Blokland (1843-1897), country house De Hemelsche Berg, Oosterbeek, 1885-1923, etc. ? Nicolaas Cornelis de Gijselaar (1792-1873), Leiden;²²F. Scholten, ‘A Prayer Nut in a Silver Housing by ‘Adam Dirckz’’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011) no. 4, pp. 322-47, esp. pp. 325-26. ? donated to his stepson, the writer Johannes Kneppelhout (1814-1885), known under the nom de plume Klikspaan, country house De Hemelsche Berg, Oosterbeek, before 1885;³³Ibid. Kneppelhout became De Gijselaar’s stepson in 1818, after the death of Kneppelhout senior. ? with the house, to his niece Johanna Maria Kneppelhout (1851-1923) and her husband Gerard Jacob Theodoor Beelaerts van Blokland (1843-1897), Oosterbeek, 1885; with the house, to their son Jonkheer Johannes Beelaerts van Blokland (1877-1960) and his wife Jeannette Wernarda Louise de Girard de Mielet van Coehoorn (1887-1958), Oosterbeek, 1923;⁴⁴Country house De Hemelsche Berg was destroyed by the Germans in 1944. The prayer nut, along with some other valuable items and the family silver, was safely secured in time and thus survived the Battle of Arnhem. With thanks to M.G. Beelaerts van Blokland, written communication 28 September 2010. to their son Jan Jacob Gerard Beelaerts van Blokland (1909-2005), 1960;⁵⁵He was a well-known Engelandvaarder and resistance hero. He and his wife had four children, in chronological order: Jonkheer J.M. Beelaerts van Blokland, Jonkheer K.A.C.O. Beelaerts van Blokland, Jonkheer M.G. Beelaerts van Blokland, and Jonkheer W.W.A. Beelaerts van Blokland. from his heirs, €80,000, to the museum, with support of the Rijksmuseum Fonds/Ebus Fonds,⁶⁶With thanks to John Schlichte Bergen for his mediation during the acquisition. 2010

ObjectNumber: BK-2010-16

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Ebus Fonds/Rijksmuseum Fonds

Exceptionally, this boxwood prayer nut is contained in a contemporaneous silver housing.¹⁰¹⁰Most of these devotional items are made wholly out of boxwood, the outside being carved openwork gothic tracery. The Rijksmuseum also has an example of this standard type (BK-1981-1). The piece is carved in boxwood, a heavy, compact type of wood that since the Middle Ages has often been called by the rather misleading term ‘palm wood’. The wood does not come from a palm tree, but the name suggests that it originates in the Holy Land. According to medieval sources, Christ’s cross was made of palm wood, see T. Raff, Die Sprache der Materialien. Anleitung zu einer Ikonologie der Werkstoffe, Munich 1994, p. 50. The silver case adds significant value to this piece. There are very few examples of prayer nuts in a precious housing like this, and the finely engraved images that make up the secular decoration of the silver is of very high quality.¹¹¹¹S.J. Romanelli, South Netherlandish Boxwood Devotional Sculpture, 1475-1530, 1992 (diss., Columbia University) lists three examples with contemporaneous cases: nos. 27 (Copenhagen, Nationalmuseet, inv. no. D166a), 33 (Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, inv. no. 1878.134), 37 (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 17.190.328); there is also a half nut mounted as a miniature altar in a late 16th- or 17th-century silver setting, see P. Williamson, Netherlandish Sculpture 1450-1550, coll. cat. London (Victoria and Albert Museum) 2002, no. 48. The example in Copenhagen is the closest to the Rijksmuseum prayer nut. Belonging with the prayer nut is an eighteenth-century, gold-embossed, red leather box in which the nut could be kept along with a magnifying glass (now lost) and a brief description written by the then owner in an eighteenth-century hand. It is a painstaking, but partially inaccurate, summary of the scenes and characters carved into the prayer nut (figs. a and b).¹²¹²Front: Dit zeer konstig silver balletje, het welk uyt twee delen bestaat, in welk een aller uytmuntende teekening, uyt gesneede houwt-werk te vinden is – en in zyn ronte en holligheid, niet grooter is als 1 1/2 duijm in zyn bewerking vind men --- Aan / (This very artful little silver ball, made in two parts, in which is found a most excellent design carved out of wood, is no greater than 1½ inches in its convexity and depth.) Below: Dese schrap is 1 1/2 duym / (This line is 1½ inches.) Back: Aan de Eene zyde, de Geboorte van den Heijland, met de wijsen úyt het Oosten die haare vereeringe aanbrengen vertoond in 17 menschen beelden 2 koeyen in de stal, 6 paarden enz. De andere Zijde Sc…t af den Saligmaker als in het land doorgaande, preedikende en Wondere doende --- Door 16 menschenbeelden, 1 koe, 1 Ezel 3 schaapen & 3 vliegende engeltjes enz / NB Dit blaadye is de groote van het turks-leeren koffertje, / daar konst en vergrood glas in beslote is... (On the one side the Birth of the Messiah, with the Wise Men from the East bearing their gifts, illustrated in 17 persons, 2 cows in the stall, 6 horses etc. The other side (depicts?) the Saviour going through the (Holy) Land, preaching and performing miracles – through 16 people, 1 cow, 1 ass, 3 sheep & 3 flying angels etc. NB This paper is the same size as the little Turkish leather box in which the work of art and a magnifying glass are kept…). When the prayer nut is open, two extremely small scenes of figures and motifs largely freely carved in boxwood are revealed: at the top is the Nativity and in the lower register is the Adoration of the Magi, both surrounded by a number of smaller individual scenes.¹³¹³For a detailed description, see F. Scholten, ‘A Prayer Nut in a Silver Housing by “Adam Dirckz”’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), no. 4, pp. 323-47, esp. pp. 327-32.

The iconography of the Nativity follows the vision of St Birgitta of Sweden, popular in the Low Countries, where the Virgin kneels in worship before her child, who lies on the ground in a halo of light. According to the eighteenth-century note, the scene in the background is ‘the Saviour going through the land, preaching and performing miracles’, but this is based on an incorrect interpretation. The images are partly typological prefigurations of Mary’s virginity – in the way they are arranged around the Nativity they are reminiscent of the structure of the Biblia Pauperum or Paupers’ Bible.¹⁴¹⁴J.P. Filedt Kok, ‘Een biblia pauperum met houtsneden van Jacob Cornelisz. en Lucas van Leyden gereconstrueerd’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 36 (1988), no. 2, pp. 83-116, esp. pp. 83-85. In the centre at the back, Moses removes his sandals during the apparition of the Angel of God in a burning bush (Exodus 3:1-5). The image may have been inspired by the left-hand side of a Biblia Pauperum woodcut by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (c. 1460/65-1533) and Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533) which has a Nativity in the centre. The burning bush is regarded as a prefiguration of Jesus’s virgin birth (cf. RP-P-OB-12.453).¹⁵¹⁵With thanks to Bieke van der Mark for this identification. See J.P. Filedt Kok, ‘Een biblia pauperum met houtsneden van Jacob Cornelisz. en Lucas van Leyden gereconstrueerd’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 36 (1988), no. 2, pp. 83-116, esp. pp. 83-85, fig. 1a. The publication date of this Biblia pauperum is uncertain, but Filedt Kok places it around 1530. In a number of cases, however, the illustrations used in it are considerably older. There are also obvious similarities to an image of Moses in an older Dutch Biblia pauperum held in the cathedral in Esztergom (Hungary), see A. Radcliffe et al., The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Renaissance and Later Sculpture, London 1992, p. 416, fig. 2. The same Biblia Pauperum also presents a possible source of inspiration for the scene on the far right, the appearance of the angel to Gideon (Judges 6:36-40); this, since Bernard of Clairvaux, has likewise been a generally adopted prefiguration of the Annunciation to Mary and her virginity (cf. RP-P-BI-6244).¹⁶¹⁶J.P. Filedt Kok, ‘Een biblia pauperum met houtsneden van Jacob Cornelisz. en Lucas van Leyden gereconstrueerd’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 36 (1988), no. 2, fig. 17. The scene in the centre is the vision of Caesar Augustus and the Tiburtine Sybil. The clairvoyant Sybil of Tibur, whom Augustus consulted on the day of Christ’s birth, takes the old emperor by the hand and points upwards. Above them Mary and the Christ Child on a sickle moon appear in a vision, whereupon the Sybil predicts that this child will be a greater ruler than Augustus himself. Admittedly the apparition of Mary and Christ is now missing from the scene, but it was there originally: minuscule remnants of the attachment of this group can still be seen on the upper edge of the prayer nut between the two angels. The man behind the emperor is a servant carrying the imperial crown.¹⁷¹⁷This apocryphal tale was often depicted together with the Nativity in the Middle Ages, for example in the Bladelin altar by Rogier van der Weyden (Staatliche Museum, Berlin) and in the great Marian altar that Adriaen van Wesel made for the Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in Den Bosch. The Vision of Augustus occurs together with the scenes of Moses and Gideon in two miniatures in a Ghent or Bruges book of hours of around 1510-20, this time in combination with an Annunciation rather than a Nativity (Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig IX 18, fols. 92 verso, 93 recto). With thanks to Merel Groentjes (Emory University, Atlanta) for this identification. For Van Wesel’s Marian Altar 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, pp. 94-95. A number of the elements in this half of the prayer nut – the Nativity, Moses, Gideon – are found in a similar form in a prayer nut in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (fig. c).¹⁸¹⁸Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, inv. no. K79A, see A. Radcliffe et al., The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Renaissance and Later Sculpture, London 1992, no. 82; F. Scholten (ed.). Small Wonders: Late-Gothic Boxwood Micro-Carvings from the Low Countries, exh. cat. Toronto (Art Gallery of Toronto)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2016-17, no. 25. A comparison of the two works shows how effectively the carver varied standard motifs to create an entirely new composition. The stable in the Nativity scene has the same wall in both works, but in the Thyssen nut it also has a small roof. Augustus’s place in the Amsterdam nut is more or less literally occupied by Moses in the other prayer nut; he is virtually identical to his Amsterdam counterpart. The meeting of the shepherds to the right of the stable in the Thyssen nut is on the left in the Amsterdam scene; the two shepherds leaning on a wall or fence have likewise switched sides, as has the shepherd with the bagpipes. The carving of the two nuts is also very similar in style and technique.

The lower register of the Amsterdam prayer nut shows the adoration of the infant Christ by the three wise men from the east and their retinue. Their meeting is shown in the background. A shepherd with three sheep sits on a rock above the stable. The composition of the adoration scene in the foreground – a balding old king kneeling in worship before the Virgin and Child, who has placed his gift, a chalice, at Mary’s feet, behind him a standing Oriental king in a turban, holding his gift in his hand, and the third king, who is being handed his gift by a page – follows a traditional Netherlandish scheme. The scene of the encounter in the background is a confusion of tiny figures and horses, who face towards one another. In sum, all these individual scenes can be described as epiphanies, apparitions or manifestations of God. This is true in the case of the Magi (‘Epiphany’), and in the upper register of the vision of St Birgitta, the vision of the Emperor Augustus and the appearance of angels to Moses, Gideon and the shepherds at the stable.¹⁹¹⁹In Christian doctrine, three moments in the life of Christ are described as epiphanies: the Adoration of the Magi, Christ’s Baptism in the River Jordan and the Wedding at Cana, but the Feast of the Epiphany is chiefly associated with the coming of the Magi. There are three other known prayer nuts that feature the Magi, see S.J. Romanelli, South Netherlandish Boxwood Devotional Sculpture, 1475-1530, 1992 (diss., Columbia University), nos. 40, 57-58, but none in combination with the Nativity.

Seemingly undaunted by the minute scale, the carver let himself go in all sorts of millimetric details, like the spur on the boot of the kneeling king, the gossamer fine lances carried by the foot-soldiers and pages, the tiny sheep scratching behind its ears with one back hoof, and the rosary hanging on a peg in the little wall above the kneeling king (fig. d). This, of course, is a self-referential motif, referring directly as it does to the use of the prayer nut as part of a rosary or paternoster. In the right-hand wall of the stable in the Nativity scene there is a minuscule hole and a tiny, broken piece of wood. This is the remnant of a ring on the wall roughly one and a half millimetres in diameter that originally hung free from the wall and could actually move. We find a similar astounding detail in other micro-carvings, including a prayer nut in private hands,²⁰²⁰Former collection of J.P. Six, Amsterdam, and presently in the possession of a descendant in the Netherlands. See also J. Leeuwenberg, ‘De gebedsnoot van Eewert Jansz van Bleiswick en andere werken van Adam Dircksz’, in J. Duverger, Miscellanea Jozef Duverger. Bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis der Nederlanden, vol. 2, Ghent 1968, pp. 614-24, esp. p. 614, note 2. and two miniature altars.²¹²¹C.A. Mesenzeva, ‘Spätgotische Miniaturschnitzereien in der Ermitage in Leningrad’, Pantheon 36 (1978), pp. 31-35, esp. fig. 2 (St Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum); sale, London (Sotheby’s), 7 December 2010, no. 32. It is a playful demonstration of the maker’s virtuosity and ingenuity.

The silver shell of the prayer nut follows the size and design of the standard prayer nuts made entirely in wood fairly precisely. There are gold rosettes at the top and bottom, and a twisted gold cable border around the middle; in this border there are a hinge and a fastening that can be closed with a silver pin on a chain. Between them there is exceptionally fine gothic engraving: on one side six animals among flowers and foliage: a dog, a monkey with a collar, a heron-like bird, an owl, a small bird with outstretched wings and a calling bird (fig. e). Populating the other half are five people – a nude woman surrounded by four men engaged in different occupations: a man thrusting a spade into the ground, a man poking the fire, a fisherman standing in the water and a falconer (fig. f). The animals stem from the tradition of marginalia, the border decorations in illuminated manuscripts, where they frame the sacred prayers and religious images as secular, often scabrous and obscene commentaries.²²²²M. Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art, London 1995. This, in a sense, is what the animals on the prayer nut do too, but at the same time, in conjunction with the design on the other half of the piece, they seem to present a compact image of the world. With the monkey and the owl as symbols of lust and sin, the animals symbolize savage, sensual and untamed nature.²³²³For the monkey and the owl as sinful animals see among others E. Kirschbaum (ed.), Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, vol. 1, Freiburg 1968, cols. 76-79 (headword ‘Affe’); O. Schmitt et al., Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, Munich 1973, vol. 6, esp. pp. 306-09 (under the headword ‘Eule’); H.W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, London 1952, pp. 123 (monkey in savage nature), 169, 181-86 (monkey and owl) and 261-68 (monkey as a symbol of sexual desire). An alternative interpretation of the animals as symbols of the Five Senses can be ruled out, as that would leave one animal over. Were this the case, moreover, one would expect banderols with explanations like those for the Four Elements. Four of the six animals on the prayer nut can be linked to one of the senses according to the pictorial tradition of the 16th century: the monkey (taste), the owl (sight), the dog (smell) and a pecking bird (touch). The other one, a calling bird, could represent hearing, although as far as we know this combination does not occur in the pictorial tradition. Hearing is usually associated with a deer or a boar. The sixth creature, a biting, heron-like bird, is left over. For this symbolism see among others C. Nordenfalk, ‘The Five Senses in Flemish Art Before 1600’, in G. Cavalli-Björkman, Netherlandish Mannerism: Papers Given at a Symposium in Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, September 21-22, 1984, Stockholm 1985, pp. 135-54; L. Konecny, ‘I Cinque Sensi da Aristotele a Constantin Brancusi’, in S. Ferino-Pagden (ed.), Immagini del sentire. I cinque sensi nell’arte, Cremona 1996, pp. 23-48, esp. pp. 27-33; S. Ferino-Pagden (ed.), Immagini del sentire. I cinque sensi nell’arte, Cremona 1996, pp. 106-19. The four men on the other half of the little sphere stand for the four Aristotelian elements: earth, fire, water and air. Each of them is engaged in taming, shaping or using nature. The woman, an alter Eve, gestures towards her genitals and breasts. It is a pose reminiscent of a classical Venus pudica and found in some fifteenth-century boxwood and ivory statuettes, particularly an ivory figurine in Kassel.²⁴²⁴A. Kosegarten, ‘Inkunabeln der Gotischen Kleinplastik in Hartholz’, Pantheon 22 (1964), pp. 302-21, esp. pp. 316-18 and fig. 31. Here, however, she must not be regarded as pudica, but rather as the unchaste human counterpart of the monkey, who sits directly opposite her.²⁵²⁵F. Scholten, ‘A Prayer Nut in a Silver Housing by “Adam Dirckz”’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), no. 4, p. 336 and note 34.

Stamped on the smooth edge of the half with the Nativity are two unknown maker’s marks or assay marks.²⁶²⁶They represent a serrated leaf and an animal head (?). Comparable symbols are found on the copper plate with the names and marks of members of the St Eligius Guild of Ghent between 1454 and 1481 (Ghent, Bijloke Museum), see U. Weekes, Early Engravers and their Public: The Master of the Berlin Passion and Manuscripts from Convents in the Rhine-Maas Region ca. 1450-1500, Turnhout 2004, p. 29, fig. 14. The mark on the prayer nut is also similar to Den Bosch assay marks, it could therefore be part of the ‘bosboom’ (forest tree), the Den Bosch assay mark, but there are also similarities to the seven-pointed star and the trefoil flower marks. A.M. Koldeweij, Zilver uit ’s-Hertogenbosch van bourgondisch tot biedermeier, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1985, pp. 30-33. With thanks to Dirk Jan Biemond. The style of the stamping is akin to book bindings dating from the third quarter of the 18th century, cf. J.S. van Leeuwen, De achttiende-eeuwse Haagse boekband in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek en het Rijksmuseum Meermanno-Westreenianum, The Hague 1976, nos. 134, 220. On the banderols around the figures in gothic minuscule we read: SOKET · VAER · GHI · VILT · HIER · VINDET · IN · D ARDE · IN · VUER · · IN · VATER INDEN · LOCH (seek where ye will, ye find it here, in the earth, in fire, in water, in the air), a confirmation of the identification of the figures with the four elements. It is an expansion on the biblical aphorism ‘Seek and ye shall find’, which occurs in several variants in the Old and New Testaments.²⁷²⁷Proverbs 8:17, Jeremiah 29:13, Matthew 7:7, Matthew 21:22, Mark 11:24, Luke 11:9. The inscription and the engraved representation were probably inspired by the seventh and eighth chapters in the Old Testament Book of Proverbs, where the personification of Wisdom offers the reader a parable about the wiles of a harlot (Proverbs 7) and calls upon those who love Wisdom to search for her everywhere (Proverbs 8:17): ‘I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me’.²⁸²⁸F. Scholten, ‘Immersive play: perception and the use of small devotionalia in the late Middle Ages’, Queeste. Journal of Medieval Literature in the Low Countries 26 (2019), no. 2, pp. 152-76, esp. pp. 162-64. But whereas in the Bible this text always relates to God, Wisdom and faith, a connection is made here with untamed nature and the elements. The user of the prayer nut, who is commanded on the outside to seek God everywhere, (but to guard against the lust and impurity of nature and his own fleshly desires), is witness on the inside to a number of specific revelations of Christ. He or she could identify with the three wise men who were witnesses to the first appearance of God’s son on earth, imagine himself or herself an alter St Bridget of Sweden (c. 1302-1373) with her vision of Jesus’s birth. Both themes offered a channel to meditation and prayer and could lead to one’s own ‘epiphanic experience’ of ‘enlightenment’.

The personifications of the four elements, the literal opposition of nature and culture, and the spherical shape mark this prayer nut out as a microcosm, an elemental imagining of the world in pocket size, which a few decades later would become the core of the Kunst- und Wunderkammern.²⁹²⁹F. Scholten, ‘A Prayer Nut in a Silver Housing by “Adam Dirckz”’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), no. 4. Romanelli dated Netherlandish micro-carving to a period of more than fifty years, between 1475 and 1530. The documented pieces found so far, however, suggest a much shorter time span – the first quarter of the sixteenth century, reaching a peak of popularity between 1510 and 1525.³⁰³⁰R. Marks, ‘Two Early 16th Century Boxwood Carvings Associated with the Glymes Family of Bergen op Zoom’, Oud Holland 91 (1977), pp. 131-42; S.J. Romanelli, South Netherlandish Boxwood Devotional Sculpture, 1475-1530, 1992 (diss., Columbia University), no. 4 (the triptych in the Waddesdon Bequest, British Museum, dated 1511), no. 15 (the paternoster for Henry VIII, made between 1509 and 1526), no. 22 (the prayer nut after a print by Lucas van Leyden of 1519, Abegg Stiftung), no. 25 (the prayer nut for Eewert van Bleiswick in Amsterdam, before 1531), no. 55 (the example for Dismas van Berghen in London between 1510 and 1514); the prayer nut for Franciscus de Puteo was made between about 1517 and 1521, (see F. Scholten, ‘A Prayer Nut in a Silver Housing by “Adam Dirckz”’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), no. 4. Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen’s portrait of the Alkmaar burgomaster Jan Gerritz van Egmond in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-3838) provides confirmation for dating this prayer nut in this period. The sitter holds a silver prayer nut in his hand, attached by a chain to a ring on his finger. The shape of this devotional trinket is virtually identical to that of the real prayer nut. The portrait is dated to around c. 1518 and must in any event have been made before 1523, the year Van Egmond died.

On the grounds of the style of the micro-carving, the prayer nut can be attributed to the otherwise unknown Adam Theodrici (‘Adam Dircksz’), whom Leeuwenberg identified in 1968 as the maker of a whole group of micro-carvings on the basis of a prayer nut in Copenhagen signed by him.³¹³¹J. Leeuwenberg, ‘De gebedsnoot van Eewert Jansz van Bleiswick en andere werken van Adam Dircksz’, in J. Duverger, Miscellanea Jozef Duverger. Bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis der Nederlanden, vol. 2, Ghent 1968, pp. 614-24. His studio was probably in one of the towns in the Northern Netherlands, where it must have been active for roughly a generation.³²³²P. Williamson, Netherlandish Sculpture 1450-1550, coll. cat. London (Victoria and Albert Museum) 2002, pp. 140-41; F. Scholten, ‘A Prayer Nut in a Silver Housing by “Adam Dirckz”’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), no. 4; I. Reesing, ‘The Donors of the Louvre Boxwood Miniature Altar Identified’, in E. Wetter and F. Scholten (eds.), Prayer Nuts, Private Devotion, and Early Modern Art Collecting (Riggisberger Berichte 22), Riggisberg 2017, pp. 158-68, esp. pp. 163, 164; F. Scholten, ‘The Boxwood Carvers of the Late Gothic Netherlands’, in F. Scholten (ed.). Small Wonders: Late-Gothic Boxwood Micro-Carvings from the Low Countries, exh. cat. Toronto (Art Gallery of Toronto)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) 2016-17, pp. 13-78, esp. p. 35; I. Reesing, ‘Patronage and Early Ownership of Sixteenth-Century Micro-Carvings from the Northern Netherlands’, in ibid., pp. 244-89, esp. pp. 247, 276-84. It was responsible in this period for a steady stream of dozens of prayer nuts and other miniature carvings for the elite of the Netherlands and a few foreign clients.

Frits Scholten, 2024

F. Scholten, Handzaam verzamelen, Amsterdam 2011 (self-published in association with the Rijksmuseum Fonds); Jaarverslag 2010 Rijksmuseum Fonds, p. 30; Jaarverslag, Amsterdam 2010 (annual report Rijksmuseum), pp. 32-33; F. Scholten, ‘A Prayer Nut in a Silver Housing by “Adam Dirckz”’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), no. 4, pp. 323-47; F. Scholten, ‘Acquisitions: Medieval Sculpture from the Goldschmidt-Pol Collection and from Other Donors’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 414-35, esp. pp. 424-25; D. Meuwissen (ed.), Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (ca. 1475-1533). De Renaissance in Alkmaar en Amsterdam, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdam Museum)/Alkmaar (Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar) 2014, pp. 229, 231 (fig. 32.1); F. Scholten (ed.), 1100-1600, Amsterdam 2015, no. 57a; F. Scholten (ed.). Small Wonders: Late-Gothic Boxwood Micro-Carvings from the Low Countries, exh. cat. Toronto (Art Gallery of Toronto)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) 2016-17, no. 12, pp. 146-47, 608; F. Scholten, ‘Immersive Play: Perception and the Use of Small Devotionalia in the Late Middle Ages’, Queeste: Journal of Medieval Literature in the Low Countries 26 (2019), no. 2, pp. 152-76, esp. pp. 162-64 and fig. 5; M. Unger and S. van Leeuwen, Jewellery Matters, Amsterdam/Rotterdam 2017, p. 455 and fig. 481; É. Antoine-König, P. Dandridge and L. Ellis, Le Jugement dernier dans une noix de prière: Microsculptures de devotion, coll. cat. Paris (Musée du Louvre) 2021, pp. 34, 52, figs. 23, 36

F. Scholten, 2024, 'workshop of Adam Dircksz and , Prayer Nut with the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi, in a Box, Northern NetherlandsDelft, c. 1500 - c. 1530', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.493080