Carved and originally polychromed. The reverse is partly flat.

Badly worm-eaten and decayed, seriously damaged. The nose, hands (probably folded), part of the crown and a piece at the bottom of the cloak are missing.

…; found in the Oude Kerk, Soest, with several other objects (BK-NM-12006-1 to -19), 1905;¹¹W. Vogelsang, ‘Vondst te Soest’, Bulletin van de Nederlandschen Oudheidkundigen Bond 4 (1905), pp. 187-96, pp. 190-91; J. Kalf, ‘Een belangrijke vondst’, Het huis, oud en nieuw. Maandelijks prentenboek gewijd aan huis, inrichting, bouw- en sierkunst 3 (1905), pp. 289-301. donated by the municipality of Soest to the museum, 1907; on loan to the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 1909-61; on loan to the Haags Historisch Museum, The Hague, 2005-09

Object number: BK-NM-12006-8

Restoration work in the tower of the Oude Kerk in Soest in 1905 uncovered in a bricked-up area an important treasure trove of statues, albeit in a deplorable condition.²²These objects have been donated to the Rijksmuseum in 1907, see inv. nos. BK-NM-12006-1 to -19. It is assumed that the figures were hidden there either in 1566 at the outbreak of the Iconoclasm or in December 1580, when Calvinists in the Eemland region endeavoured to destroy every last remnant of religious art.³³K. Broekhuijsen-Kruijer, ‘Het Passieretabel uit Soest’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 32 (1984), pp. 3-16, esp. p. 3.

Among the statues found was a figure of St Cunera, identified by the scarf with which she was strangled that is crossed around her neck. She wears a coronet and a rosary hangs from her girdle. The legend of Cunera is connected to that of St Ursula.⁴⁴For the legend of St Cunera see F. van Buuren in A.B. Mulder-Bakker and M. Carasso-Kok (eds.), Gouden legenden. Heiligenlevens en heiligenverering in de Nederlanden, exh. cat. The Hague (Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum) 1997-98, pp. 119-25. When St Ursula and her virgins were attacked by the Huns near Cologne in the fourth century, one of the virgins – a Scottish princess named Cunera – was able to escape and was rescued by the Frisian king, Radboud, who took her to his castle in Rhenen in the Bishopric of Utrecht. There the friendly, caring princess soon endeared herself to the people, and this aroused the jealousy of Radboud’s consort, Aldegonde. One day, when the king was out hunting, she strangled the princess with the scarf Cunera’s parents had given her. The supposed original scarf used to strangle her is now held in the Museum Catharijneconvent.⁵⁵Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, inv. no. OKM 165, see M. van Vlierden, Willibrord en het begin van Nederland, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent) 1995, no. 23.

Whereas the story of St Ursula was well-known and popular throughout almost all of Western Europe, the Cunera legend had a much smaller reach, confined to the County of Holland, the Bishopric of Utrecht and the duchies of Cleves and Gelders, with Rhenen at its centre. In Soest, for instance, the road to Rhenen was called the ‘Cunera way’ right up until the Reformation.⁶⁶J.H.M. Hilhorst and J.G.M. Hilhorst, Soest, Hees en De Birkt. Van de achtste tot de zeventiende eeuw, Hilversum 2001, p. 259. Other late-medieval statues of St Cunera from these areas can be found in Museum Catharijneconvent,⁷⁷Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, inv. no. ABM bh358, see M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent, c. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, p. 140. Berne Abbey in Heeswijk-Dinther (North Brabant), the Roman Catholic church in Terborg (Gelderland), the Sankt-Nicolaikirche in Kalkar and the Museum Kolumba in Cologne.⁸⁸For the latter statue 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. 19. The Rijksmuseum has two paintings on the subject of St Cunera (SK-A-1727 and the right-hand panel of SK-A-3141).

Nederveen attributed the figurine to the same Utrecht workshop as the two statues of a Virgin and Child, from a Marianum (BK-NM-12006-16 and -17) and the female saint who can probably be identified as St Agatha (BK-NM-12006-3), all figures that come from the Soest find.⁹⁹B. Nederveen, Soest, tussen Amersfoort en Utrecht. Een studie naar de herkomst van de laatgotische sculptuur uit de Hervormde Kerk te Soest, Amsterdam 1999 (unpub. thesis University of Amsterdam), p. 100. Bouvy had already recognised the latter object as being by the same hand.¹⁰¹⁰D.P.R.A. Bouvy, Middeleeuwsche beeldhouwkunst in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, Amsterdam 1947, p. 151. The similarities between these statues, particularly in the faces, are indeed convincing enough for an attribution to the same workshop. The shoes with round toes and the busy folds of the garments indicate that they were made between around 1500 and 1520.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 27, with earlier literature; A. de Rijk, ‘Laat-middeleeuwse heiligenbeelden uit het Gooi’, Bulletin Stichting Oude Hollandse Kerken 39 (1994), pp. 15-24, esp. p. 22; B. Nederveen, Soest, tussen Amersfoort en Utrecht. Een studie naar de herkomst van de laatgotische sculptuur uit de Hervormde Kerk te Soest, Amsterdam 1999 (unpub. thesis University of Amsterdam), pp. 24-25, 100-02; J.H.M. Hilhorst and J.G.M. Hilhorst, Soest, Hees en De Birkt. Van de achtste tot de zeventiende eeuw, Hilversum 2001, pp. 239-40

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, St Cunera, Utrecht, 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/200115817