Carved in relief and originally polychromed.

Gypsum crust has formed on the surface due to weathering. Christ’s right foot, his left thumb, and St Francis’s right hand are missing. St John’s head and robe were possibly reworked later. Several securing holes can be observed along the edge. Most of the original polychromy has been lost.

…; collection Adriaan Pit (1860-1944), Amsterdam; by whom donated to the museum, 1896

Object number: BK-NM-10624

Credit line: Gift of A. Pit, Amsterdam

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.¹¹Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, inv. no. RMCC s139, see RKD images no. 219514 and H.L.M. Defoer et al., Goddelijk geschilderd: Honderd meesterwerken van Museum Catharijneconvent, coll. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent) 2003, no. 11. 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.²²For memory tablets, see T. van Bueren and W.C.M. Wüstefeld, Leven na de dood: Gedenken in de late Middeleeuwen, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent) 1999 and T. van Bueren (ed.), Care for the Here and Hereafter: Memoria, Art and Ritual in the Middle Ages, Turnhout 2005. 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).³³H. Nieuwdorp, ‘Het 14de-eeuwse gebeeldhouwde retabel in de O.-L. Vrouwekathedraal te Antwerpen’, Bulletin van de Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis Brussel 57 (1986), pp. 7-24; S. Grieten and J. Bungeneers (ed.), De Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal van Antwerpen: Kunstpatrimonium van het Ancien Régime (Inventaris van het kunstpatrimonium van de provincie Antwerpen 3), coll. cat. Turnhout 1996, no. 922. 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.⁴⁴A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor geschiedenis en kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1904, no. 127; A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor geschiedenis en kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1915, no. 211. 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.⁵⁵P. Krutisch, Niederrheinische Kruzifixe der Spätgotik: Die plastischen Kruzifixe und Kreuzigungsgruppen des späten 15. und frühen 16. Jahrhunderts im Herzogtum Kleve, 1987 (diss., Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn), p. 347; inv. no. ABM bh260d, see M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent, ca. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, p. 180 (ill.). The oak figures of the Virgin Mary and St John today flanking this corpus, and the rock below the cross, are non-original.

Nevertheless, a close examination of the relief’s style and composition indicates an origin in the region of Burgundy.⁶⁶Unfortunately, a 2014 XRF analysis could not help determine the precise geographical origins of the limestone. According to Bertil van Os, the Sr/Ca values indicate an originally high purity limestone, probably from the Cretaceous geological period. This type of chalk-stone outcrops across a broad band in the Paris Basin. Burgundy is located precisely at the edge of this band, as an extension of the Rhine graben. Written correspondence 8 January 2018. 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.⁷⁷Dijon, Musée Archéologique, inv. no. 63.5, see S.N. Fliegel and S. Jugie (eds), Art from the Court of Burgundy 1364-1419, exh. cat. Dijon (Musée des Beaux-Arts)/Cleveland (The Cleveland Museum of Art) 2004-05, no. 123 and fig. 1 on the same page for a comparable corpus in Puley. See also S. Nash, ‘Claus Sluter’s ‘Well of Moses’ for the Chartreuse De Champmol Reconsidered: Part II’, The Burlington Magazine 148 (2006), pp. 456-67, esp. p. 464 and figs. 13-14. 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.⁸⁸For the cut of St John’s hair, cf. P. Quarré, La Sculpture en Bourgogne à la fin du moyen âge/Burgundian Sculpture of the late Middle Ages/Höhepunkte burgundischer Bildhauerkunst im späten Mittelalter, Fribourg 1978, nos. 74-75 and 80. For the Virgin Mary’s head veil, cf. the Madonna of Autun in Musée Rolin, inv. no. M.L. 558, see Quarré 1978 (this note), no. 129.

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).⁹⁹My thanks to Frits Scholten for this observation. Dated as a work from the last quarter of the fifteenth century on the basis of the sharply delineated drapery folds,¹⁰¹⁰My thanks to Sophie Jugie, who disputes our attribution of the Amsterdam relief to Burgundy; written correspondence, 27 December 2017. 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).¹¹¹¹P. Quarré, Antoine Le Moiturier, le dernier des grands imagiers des Ducs de Bourgogne, exh. cat. Dijon (Musée des Beaux-Arts) 1973, no. 47. Cf. the limestone reliefs with the Raising of Lazarus from the cathedral of Autun (Autun, Musée Rolin, inv. no. M.L. 528) and the Death of the Virgin (Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. RF 2029) attributed to the workshop or direct circle of Antoine le Moiturier. For this Calvary, also see P. Camp, Les Imageurs Bourguignons de la fin du Moyen Age, Dijon 1990, pp. 208, 213. 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

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 75, with earlier literature; P. Krutisch, Niederrheinische Kruzifixe der Spätgotik: Die plastischen Kruzifixe und Kreuzigungsgruppen des späten 15. und frühen 16. Jahrhunderts im Herzogtum Kleve, 1987 (diss., Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn), pp. 205, 347-48; M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent, ca. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, p. 181

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, Christ on the Cross with the Virgin, St John, Mary Magdalene and St Francis, Burgundy, c. 1475 - c. 1500', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035566