Three Medallions with a Virgin and Child and Two Escutcheons, Frieze from a Chimney-Piece

Carved in relief and polychromed. The recesses on the underside of both ends were made to provide room for the fireplace jambs.

The ends have been shortened slightly, particularly on the right. The recesses underneath are original. The polychromy is modern.

...; found in a street (St Annastraat) near Utrecht Town Hall and acquired by Mr Samuel Muller Fzn (1848-1922), Utrecht;¹¹Written communication from Samuel Muller Fzn to W. Vogelsang, 6 July 1907. by whom donated to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1877;²²Written communication, Samuel Muller Fzn, first mentioned on 7 April 1877. transferred to the museum, 1885

ObjectNumber: BK-NM-3290

Credit line: Gift of S. Muller, Utrecht

This relief (see close up) is one of a group of typical Utrecht carved (fragments of) stone chimney-piece friezes dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.³³The Rijksmuseum has fragments of another three chimney-piece friezes of this kind, see BK-NM-3290, BK-NM-8370 and BK-NM-11304. They are best represented in the collection of the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, see J. Klinckaert, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, vol. 3, Beeldhouwkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1997, including nos. 65-66, 71, 76-80, 89-91, 93, 97, 107-09, 112-14, 127, 129. For a general overview see Defoer in 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, pp. 88-91. In other towns these lintels were usually plain or very simply decorated, but in Utrecht they were often elaborately ornamented with figurative reliefs, which were then polychromed. The rise in their popularity was probably prompted by the construction work on Utrecht Cathedral, which was adorned with a great deal of decorative and figurative carving.⁴⁴D.P.R.A. Bouvy, Middeleeuwsche beeldhouwkunst in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, Amsterdam 1947, p. 78. The chimney-pieces in the larger rooms of mansions sometimes assumed huge proportions. The finest example came from Huis Zoudenbalch in Donkerstraat, Utrecht, but is now in Huize Hiëronymus on Maliesingel in the same city.⁵⁵See 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, fig. 6.1. The Centraal Museum in Utrecht has a contemporaneous Utrecht chimney-piece that is likewise still complete.⁶⁶Utrecht, Centraal Museum, inv. no. 1766, see J. Klinckaert, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, vol. 3, Beeldhouwkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1997, no. 113, fig. on p. 122; 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, fig. 32. The frieze there is supported on either side by two jambs that go down to the floor. Recesses to take the jambs were cut in the lower corners of the frieze, as is the case in this example.⁷⁷J. Klinckaert, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, vol. 3, Beeldhouwkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1997.

Chimney-piece friezes usually contain three medallions with a saint in the centre, flanked by escutcheons. The Virgin is represented most frequently, as in this frieze. She appears as a half-length figure in an aureole above the crescent moon with the Christ child in her arms. She is dressed in a wide cloak and wears a scarf over her head with a very wide crown on top. Christ makes a gesture of blessing with his right hand and holds an apple or globe in his left. An escutcheon on a strap hangs from the top edge of each of the flanking medallions.

The chimney-piece frieze was gifted to the Rijksmuseum in 1877 by Samuel Muller Fzn (1848-1922).⁸⁸The year 1881 was previously erroneously given as the date of the gift, see J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 66. This Utrecht city archivist found it in the street in Utrecht and bought it from the then owner, but was unfortunately unable to discover the property from which it had come.⁹⁹Written communication from Samuel Muller Fzn to W. Vogelsang, 6 July 1907. To date, the arms of alliance on the escutcheons have likewise failed to produce an identification. A caption to a 1909 reproduction of a photograph of the gallery in which the chimney-piece was displayed at the time (fig. a) stated, without further explanation, that the frieze may have come from Loenersloot Castle, but the coats of arms do not support this.¹⁰¹⁰Note RMA. The parts of the reconstruction chimney-piece in which the frieze was displayed in the Rijksmuseum for some time from 1885 onwards are kept in storage with the frieze. The letter A is painted in red on these parts, which were made by Pierre Cuypers’s team.

The dexter part of the arms of alliance at left with the crowned lion rampant on a field of blocks may belong to the Van Stepraedt family or the Van Wijhe family.¹¹¹¹Lunsingh Scheurleer and Terwindt linked these arms to the Van Bouchorst family (T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer and J. Terwindt, Catalogus van Meubelen en Betimmeringen, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1952, no. 1) but the arms of this family do not usually have squares on the field. With thanks to Guus van Breugel, CBG | Netherlands Centre for Family History, The Hague, for this information. The sinister part of the escutcheon with three viols was carried by the Van Swieten family among others. The dexter part of the arms of alliance at right with the eight bars wavy is probably the arms of the notable Van Hardenbroek family of Utrecht. The sinister part of this escutcheon with the six-pointed star could belong to the De Vooght (also Voicht) family.¹²¹²The arms as a whole do not belong to the De Voocht van Rijnevelt family, as previously suggested by Samuel Muller Fzn; written communication from Samuel Muller Fzn to W. Vogelsang, 6 July 1907, suggestion adopted in T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer and J. Terwindt, Catalogus van Meubelen en Betimmeringen, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1952, no. 1, with thanks to Guus van Breugel, CBG | Netherlands Centre for Family History, The Hague, for this information.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 33, with earlier literature; H.L.M. Defoer, ‘Een laat-middeleeuws schoorsteenfries uit Utrecht met de bekoring van Antonius’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 45 (1994), pp. 300-23, esp. p. 303; M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent, c. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, pp. 217-18, 237

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, Three Medallions with a Virgin and Child and Two Escutcheons, Frieze from a Chimney-Piece, Utrecht, c. 1510 - c. 1525', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24299