Carved and polychromed. The reverse is flat.

Catherine’s right hand with attribute (sword?) is missing, as are a section of her book, the point of her shoe and a section of the mound on which she stands. Her crown is damaged. On Maxentius, the left hand with the sword has been lost. Also missing is the statuette’s socle, carved separately. The polychromy has been removed with a caustic

…; from the collection A.P. Hermans-Smits (1822-1897), Eindhoven, with numerous other objects (BK-NM-2001 to -2800), fl. 14,000 for all, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885; on loan to the Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch, 1974-2017

Object number: BK-NM-2491

In the late Middle Ages, a local ‘industry’ centring on the production of simple saintly statuettes, available in a uniform number of iconographic types, flourished in the city of Mechelen. Given the many examples surviving today, this production is certain to have occurred on a massive scale.¹¹For an extensive overview, see W. Godenne, ‘Préliminaires à l’inventaire général des statuettes d’origine malinoise, présumées des XVe et XVIe siècles’, ten articles published in Bulletin du Cercle Archéologique, Littéraire et Artistique de Malines: 61 (1957), pp. 47-127; 62 (1958), pp. 51-80; 63 (1959), pp. 30-54; 64 (1960), pp. 108-29; 66 (1962), pp. 67-156; 73 (1969), pp. 43-87; 76 (1972), pp. 1-80; 77 (1973), pp. 87-155; 78 (1974), pp. 93-104; 80 (1976), pp. 71-105, and issued as separate volumes in 1958-76. Referred to as poupées de Malines (Mechelen dolls), these figures derive their name from their full-round faces and doll-like features. After the Virgin and Child, by far the most predominant themes were small groups of the Virgin and Child with St Anne (also known as St Anne Trinity, or in Dutch Anna-te-Drieeën) and statuettes of St Catherine and St Barbara. As established by the St Luke’s Guild of Mechelen, the wood and the polychromy were subjected to very strict quality standards. If meeting this standard, appraisers applied the city’s quality mark to the figure’s reverse – three vertical pales (from the city’s coat of arms) – thus conveying the inspection and approval of both the wood and the carving itself. The presence of the letter ‘M’ (for Mechelen), stamped or branded in front, signified the same for the polychromy. As freestanding works, the completed ‘dolls’ chiefly functioned as objects of saintly veneration. In rare cases, these figurines were displayed in special retables conceived as Enclosed Gardens (Besloten Hofjes), filled with hand-made silk flowers and a wide variety of miniature objects, devoltionalia and decorations in different media, such as saintly relics, metal pilgrim badges, wax medallions, glass-blown grapes, parchment, alabaster, pipeclay, pearls, amber and coral.²²Cf. C. Ceulemans et al., Mechels houtsnijwerk in de eeuw van keizer Karel, exh. cat. Mechelen (Museum Schepenhuis) 2000, nos. 3-9; L. Watteeuw and H. Itterbeke, Enclosed Gardens of Mechelen: Late Medieval Paradise Gardens Revealed, Amsterdam 2018.

St Catherine is depicted here holding an open book in her left hand. In her (now missing) right hand, she most likely wielded a large sword, in accordance with iconographic tradition. With her left foot, she treads on the head of Maxentius, the emperor of Rome on whose orders Catherine was tortured and beheaded for her Christian faith. The figure’s flat reverse bears the Mechelen quality mark for wood. Surviving statuettes of this same type are more common, and can, for example, be found in one of the Enclosed Gardens preserved by the Augustinian hospital sisters in Mechelen.³³W. Godenne,’Prélimiaires à l’inventaire général des statuettes d’origine malinoise, présumées des XVe et XVIe siècles’, Bulletin du Cercle Archéologique, Littéraire et Artistique de Malines 61 (1957), pp. 47-127, esp. no. XXXI. or those today preserved in the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht.⁴⁴C. Ceulemans et al., Mechels houtsnijwerk in de eeuw van keizer Karel, exh. cat. Mechelen (Museum Schepenhuis) 2000, no. 2. The present figure belongs to the late-gothic production occurring at the onset of the sixteenth century. Most characteristic of examples from this period is the manner in which the mantle drapes across the waist, creating extended triangular folds with lengthy spirals descending at the hips on either side.⁵⁵M. van Vlierden and J. Giltaij, Uit het goede hout gesneden: Middeleeuwse beelden uit de collectie Schoufour-Martin in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 2008, p. 175. On later versions, these folds become flatter, as can be observed on a Virgin and Child with St Anne from circa 1515-30, also in the Rijksmuseum collection (BK-NM-1214).

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 170, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, St Catherine, Mechelen, c. 1500 - c. 1510', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035603