Polyptych with the Seven Works of Charity

See the individual panels.

See individual panels

The seven vertical panels are mounted in a large medieval oak frame. A cross-section of the profile shows a wide tenia, a jump, a jump, a scotia, a bead, a fillet and a jump at the sight edge (fig. a). The six vertical inside members have the same profile on either side with a tenia in the middle (fig. b). The sill has a bevel at the sight edge (fig. c). The lintel and the sill are each made out of one piece of wood. The twelve inside connections are constructed with stub mortise and tenon joints, secured with dowels (fig. d). The construction of the four outside corners was probably similar, but they have been replaced. The frame is stripped, but there are some traces of gilding and polychromy, indicating that at least part of the moulded section along the sight edges was originally gilded. There are also traces of light blue and white paint. There are faint Gothic letters in light blue on the tenia of the sill, which relate as ghost images to a clearly visible black Gothic text. The black inscription was applied in wax.

? Commissioned by the regents of the Holy Spirit Almshouse, Alkmaar, and installed there, or placed in the St Laurenskerk, Alkmaar;¹¹Knevel 1996, p. 240. ? transferred to the St Laurenskerk after the closure of the Holy Spirit Almshouse, 1575;²²Knevel 1996, p. 240. recorded in the St Laurenskerk, Alkmaar, 24 June 1582 (‘[…] en hebben de Schildery van de zeven werken van Barmhertigheden, hangende agter in de grote kerk, tegen het Doopvond by het groot Orgel deerlyk bedorven met een quast met zwarte verve’);³³Jacob Dircsz Wijncoper (d. 1599), ‘Kroniek van Wijnkoper’, RAA, collectie aanwinsten, inv. no. 3; transcribed in Boomkamp 1747, p. 387. from the churchwardens of the Nederlands Hervormde Gemeente, Alkmaar, fl. 50,000, to the museum, with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1918; on loan to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2004-10

ObjectNumber: SK-A-2815

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt and the Commissie voor Fotoverkoop

For four centuries this colourful polyptych, which is dated 1504, called on the faithful, in both Catholic and Protestant times, to be charitable to people in need. The seven panels are still in their original framing, the inscriptions on which make it clear that those who help their fellow men with the works of charity will be richly rewarded in the next world.

In Matthew 25:31-46, Christ explains that people will have to answer for their deeds at the Last Judgement. He then lists six works of charity, saying ‘Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’. Damnation awaits those who fail to do so, while eternal life is the reward for those who have come to the aid of others. This explains why Christ is depicted among the needy in the polyptych, usually inconspicuously in the background. The seventh work of charity, burying the dead, is derived from the book of Tobit 1:17, and was only officially added to the six mentioned in Matthew at the beginning of the 13th century.⁵⁵Van Bühren 1998, pp. 25-26. It is depicted on Burying the Dead (SK-A-2815-4) with Christ enthroned on a globe in the sky as the judge of the Last Judgement, accompanied by the Virgin and John the Baptist.

The scenes of the seven good works in this polyptych present a vivacious picture of life in a late-medieval city. The needy, beggars, invalids and lepers are depicted almost as caricatures, while the well-dressed benefactors are fairly stereotype. The colourful groups of figures are a little stiff and emphatic. The brightly coloured buildings look more like stage scenery due to the lack of a convincing perspective. Despite these bits of clumsiness, though, the scenes leave nothing to be desired as regards clarity, with the lessons being driven home by the inscriptions.⁶⁶See Knevel 1996, pp. 232-39, for the description of the panels.

A combination of The Seven Works of Charity with a Last Judgement in a single work of art was often found in almshouses in the 15th and 16th centuries.⁷⁷Van Bühren 1998. One such painting, which was attributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans, hung in the Holy Spirit Almshouse in Haarlem until the 18th century.⁸⁸An 18th-century drawing made after a figure in that painting, with an explanatory inscription, is illustrated in Rotterdam 2008a, p. 80; for the inscriptions see Miedema II, 1995, p. 167, note 32. However, a manuscript of c. 1750 by P. Langendijk associates the painting with Lucas van Leyden; see Köhler‘et al.’ 2006, p. 61. See Van Gelder-Schrijver 1930, p. 103, for the possible importance of that lost painting for the Master of Alkmaar.

It is assumed that the Rijksmuseum polyptych was commissioned by the regents of the Holy Spirit Almshouse in Alkmaar. They could be the three men posing prominently with Christ in the right foreground of Visiting the Sick (SK-A-2815-6), whose faces have the look of portraits. It is not known whether the work was originally installed in the Holy Spirit Almshouse, which closed in 1575, or whether it was immediately hung in the St Laurenskerk, where it is certainly recorded in 1582. A chronicle written by the churchwarden Jacob Dircsz Wijncoper states that on 24 June of that year some miscreants forced their way into the church and smeared the scenes on the pulpit and The Seven Works of Charity with black paint.⁹⁹Boomkamp 1747, p. 387. See also Provenance. It was removed soon afterwards, but in the course of 20th-century restorations of the polyptych it was discovered that during one of the earlier iconoclasms, in 1566 or 1572, it had been seriously damaged with a knife, with parts of the paint layer being hacked off, mainly in the faces. During the most recent restoration in the 1970s it was decided to leave the damaged areas visible, mainly in Burying the Dead (SK-A-2815-4).¹⁰¹⁰De Bruyn Kops 1975. Not only can traces of the iconoclasms be seen, but also the areas of water damage around the edges of the panels, where the paint has been lost right down to the oak support. That, combined with the stripping of the oak frames in the 20th century, has destroyed much of the spatial illusion. The framing probably had a uniform colour or was marbled, and possibly sparsely gilded. When the layers of paint and ground were removed from the framing, care was taken to preserve the inscriptions done in black paint, which look reliable.

As noted, the polyptych hung in Alkmaar’s Laurenskerk from the late 16th to the early 20th century, behind the font and below the main organ. After the Reformation it must have continued to serve in the now Protestant church as an encouragement to visitors to leave alms for the poor. There was probably a collection box close by.¹¹¹¹Knevel 1996, p. 240. It was also one of the sights in the church. In 1913, the churchwardens lent it out for the first exhibition of early northern Netherlandish painting and sculpture in Utrecht. They sold it to the Rijksmuseum in 1918 for the then considerable sum of 50,000 guilders in order to raise funds for the restoration of the church.¹²¹²Knevel 1996, pp. 229-30, 243-44. After the museum had acquired it with the aid of the Vereniging Rembrandt, there were lengthy discussions as to how it should be restored. This was finally done in 1930, when the seven panels were cradled and the framework was stripped.¹³¹³See NHA, ARM, no. 350, ‘Schilderij door de Meester van Alkmaar, met stukken betreffende de restauratie, 1918-23’. The illustrations in Van Kalcken/Six II, 1919, give a good idea of the condition of the polyptych when it was acquired.

The work was being associated with Geertgen tot Sint Jans as early as the 18th century, until it was discovered in the 19th century that the date 1504 on Refreshing the Thirsty and the frame of Burying the Dead (SK-A-2815-2 and SK-A-2815-4) ruled that out, given the date of Geertgen’s death in c. 1485/95.¹⁴¹⁴Dülberg 1899a, p. 24. The close ties with the Haarlem school of painting have always been noted. The relationship to Geertgen’s work lies not so much in the formal vocabulary as in the light palette and the lighting effects. In 1914, Valentiner gave the maker the ad hoc name of the Master of Alkmaar, and attributed several other paintings to the same hand. None of the many attempts to identify the artist is satisfactory,¹⁵¹⁵See the biography. nor has any explanation been found for the mark ‘AA’ on Feeding the Hungry (SK-A-2815-1).

One possible clue for an attribution is provided by the very extensive underdrawing, probably executed with the brush, which infrared reflectography revealed on all the panels. Most of the forms were prepared with contour lines, with the drapery folds, shadows and architecture being indicated with a wide range of hatchings. The latter are not just parallel, but also criss-cross in the deeper shadows, when they are often very densely packed (SK-A-2815-5). Regularly, too, there are parallel lines across the fingers, sometimes over the first phalanxes and sometimes over the last ones. The very varied underdrawing has the same characteristics in all seven panels, and is undoubtedly by the same hand. No underdrawing of this kind has been found in any of the other paintings attributed to the Master of Alkmaar. The paint layer is quite thin and was applied flowingly. The details in the faces were applied in a draughtsman-like way with a combination of red and brown paint and white highlights. The detailed underdrawing, the thin technique and the light palette are features of a tradition followed by various northern Netherlandish painters in this period, so it is likely that the artist worked in Alkmaar, Haarlem or Amsterdam.

(J.P. Filedt Kok)

Boomkamp 1747, p. 387; Dülberg 1899a, p. 24; Utrecht 1913, pp. 60-65, no. 56; Valentiner 1914, pp. 76-77, 201; Hirschmann 1919, pp. 88-91; Van Kalcken/Six II, 1919 (as Jan Joest van Kalkar); Van Gelder-Schrijver 1930, pp. 102-06; Friedländer X, 1932, pp. 33-36, 126, no. 55; Hoogewerff II, 1937, pp. 347-59; Amsterdam 1958, pp. 89-90, no. 87; ENP V, 1967, p. 96, X, 1973, pp. 24-29, 74, no. 55; De Bruyn Kops 1975; Knevel 1996; Van Bühren 1998, pp. 53-54, 79, 171, 322-23, no. 67; Bangs 1999, pp. 82-83 (as Mourijn Simonsz and Claas Simonsz van Waterlant); Kloek in Van Os et al. 2000, pp. 82-83, no. 19; Filedt Kok in Rotterdam 2008a, pp. 152-56, no. 21

1918, inserted leaf at p. 7, no. 46a (as Dutch school, beginning 16th century); 1934, p. 6, no. 46a (as ‘Meester der Barmhartigheden’); 1960, p. 193, no. 1538 B1; 1976, pp. 627-28, no. A 2815, with earlier literature

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2008, 'Meester van Alkmaar, Polyptych with the Seven Works of Charity, 1504', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9048