Archangel Gabriel, from an Annunciation

Carved and originally polychromed. Every side is completely worked. Mortises on the reverse were used to secure the separately carved wings (now missing).

The right hand, the wings, a piece of the nose and parts of the base are missing. The polychromy has been removed, with only several traces remaining.

? Commissioned by the Bridgettine abbey Mariënwater, Koudewater, near Rosmalen, c. 1470;¹¹For the history of these abbeys and the transitional period and transfer of the art patrimony, see L.C.B.M. van Liebergen, Beelden in de abdij: Middeleeuwse kunst uit het noordelijk deel van het hertogdom Brabant, exh. cat. Uden (Museum voor Religieuze Kunst) 1999, pp. 39-57, 62-64, 97. or commissioned by the Bridgettine abbey Marienbaum, near Xanten;²²Ibid. transferred to the Bridgettine convent Maria Refugie, Uden, 1713-24 or 1802 respectively;³³Ibid. from where, with numerous other sculptures (BK-NM-1195 to -1243), fl. 2,000 for all, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885; on loan to the Museum Krona (formerly known as the Museum voor Religieuze Kunst), Uden, inv. no. 0020, since 1973

ObjectNumber: BK-NM-1208

Together with a figure of the Virgin Mary, this sculpture of the archangel Gabriel once belonged to an Annunciation group. Even without wings, now lost, this messenger of glad tidings – depicted with his knees bent – appears to have descended from the sky. Gabriel is dressed in liturgical vestments: an amice, an alb gathered about the waist and a stole that crosses at the breast. Over all of this he wears a cope, closed with a quatrefoil-shaped clasp. Adorning the archangel’s head is an ornamental band with a gemstone. In his raised left hand, he holds a banderole that unravels at his feet, invariably bearing the inscription of Gabriel’s salutary greeting to the Virgin: Ave gratia plena.

Leeuwenberg situated the sculpture in the eastern Netherlands. De Werd and Van Liebergen, by contrast, observed ties to artistic production in the northern part of the Duchy of Brabant. Their conclusion was based on the physiognomic type, e.g. the angel’s bulging eyes, the long, narrow nose, the somewhat protruding chin, and the hair that fans outward in the area of the temples – all highly reminiscent of the physiognomic traits found on statues of saints attributed to the Master of Koudewater (active c. 14760-c. 1480).⁵⁵G. Lemmens and G. de Werd, Beelden uit Brabant: Laatgotische kunst uit het oude hertogdom 1400-1520, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1971, no. 53; L.C.B.M. van Liebergen, Beelden in de abdij: Middeleeuwse kunst uit het noordelijk deel van het hertogdom Brabant, exh. cat. Uden (Museum voor Religieuze Kunst) 1999, no. 25. This anonymous master owes his name of convenience to the fact that most of his saintly statues come from the convent of Mariënwater in Koudewater in the northern part of the Duchy of Brabant, dissolved in 1713.⁶⁶J. Leeuwenberg in R. van Luttervelt et al., Middeleeuwse kunst der Noordelijke Nederlanden, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1958, pp. 192-93. In 1875 the museum acquired the master’s three core pieces – together with a large number of stylistically related statues of saints – from this convent’s direct successor, the convent of Maria Refugie in Uden. Among these acquired works was the present Archangel Gabriel. There are strong indications that the Master of Koudewater also produced several statues for Marienbaum, a abbey founded in the vicinity of Cleves in 1460 by the mother house in Koudewater. With the dissolution of this abbey in 1802, a portion of its art possessions were subsequently transferred to Uden, thus clarifying why certain saints were overrepresented there in the nineteenth century.⁷⁷L.C.B.M. van Liebergen, Beelden in de abdij: Middeleeuwse kunst uit het noordelijk deel van het hertogdom Brabant, exh. cat. Uden (Museum voor Religieuze Kunst) 1999, pp. 61-63, 97. Additional research can perhaps shed new light on the precise provenance of individual statues.

While the sculpture is generally interpreted as the work of a follower of the Master of Koudewater, correspondingly dated circa 1470-80, Steyaert has suggested this work may in fact be one of the earliest works in the Koudewater group, just as a Female Saint in the museum’s collection (BK-NM-1210). In his estimation, this is most certainly true of what he sees as a related sculpture of a Female Saint in the Museum Vleeshuis (Antwerp), which he dates as circa 1450-60 on the basis of its similarity to Utrecht sculpture.⁸⁸Antwerp, Museum Vleeshuis, inv. no. AV 5501, see J.W. Steyaert et al., Late Gothic Sculpture: The Burgundian Netherlands, exh. cat. Ghent (Museum of Fine Arts) 1994, no. 84. Nevertheless, Gabriel’s bent knees and the draping of the cope upward and over the shoulder are details more commonly encountered in Lower Rhenish examples, such as the Angel with the Arma Christi in the museum’s collection, attributed to Master Arnt of Kalkar (BK-16383). For this reason, and in light of its provenance, this sculpture may very well have been carved for the abbey Marienbaum by a Lower Rhenish follower of the Master of Koudewater, only to eventually end up in the convent in Uden.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 109, with earlier literature; L.C.B.M. van Liebergen, Birgitta van Zweden, 1303-1373: 600 jaar kunst en cultuur van haar kloosterorde, exh. cat. Uden (Museum voor Religieuze Kunst) 1986, no. 89; J.W. Steyaert et al., Late Gothic Sculpture: The Burgundian Netherlands, exh. cat. Ghent (Museum of Fine Arts) 1994, p. 296; L.C.B.M. van Liebergen, Beelden in de abdij: Middeleeuwse kunst uit het noordelijk deel van het hertogdom Brabant, exh. cat. Uden (Museum voor Religieuze Kunst) 1999, no. 25

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'follower of Meester van Koudewater, Archangel Gabriel, from an Annunciation, Northern Brabant, 1470 - 1490', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24384