Carved and polychromed. The right forearm, left arm with the lamb and the foremost section of the book were carved separately. A section of the cartouche has been cut away front bottom and several holes for securing purposes can be discerned.

Several sections of the front underside are missing. Several locks of hair have been replaced.

…; acquired in Brussels by Victor de Stuers for the museum, with BK-NM-9283 and -9284, fl. 50 for all three, 1890; on loan to the Goois Museum, Hilversum, 1988-2002

Object number: BK-NM-9282

St John the Baptist points with the index and middle finger of his right hand in the direction of the Lamb of God lying on the book supported in his left hand. He wears a camel-hair chemise beneath a mantle. Below the waist, the half-figure terminates at the bottom in a cartouche framed by scrollwork and two lion’s heads left and right. Securing holes in the cartouche indicate the piece was previously secured to another object, with the fragment as such perhaps forming the crownpiece of some kind of church furnishing. While the baroque cartilage-style ornamentation of the cartouche suggests a dating around the third quarter of the seventeenth century,¹¹Cf. for example the scrollwork encircling the cartouche of the tomb monument of Claude-François Lamoraal II of Thurn and Taxis from 1678 in the Zavelkerk in Brussels, see P. Philippot, D. Coekelberghs, P. Loze and D. Vautier, L’Architecture religieuse et la sculpture baroques dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et la principauté de Liège: 1600-1770, Sprimont 2003, fig. 3 on p. 403. the figural style of St John is as yet firmly rooted in late-gothic, though rendered in a somewhat more naturalistic variant thereof. The saint’s sunken face with semi-closed eyes recalls that of an Evangelist (BK-NM-1200), Apostle (BK-NM-1202) and Herrgottsruh (BK-NM-2483) in the Rijksmuseum’s collection, but also a St John the Baptist by Master Tilman (active in Cologne from 1475 to 1515) in Museum Schnütgen.²²Cologne, Museum Schnütgen, inv. no. A 200, see R. Karrenbrock et al., Die Holzskulpturen des Mittelalters II: 1400 bis 1540. Teil 1: Köln, Westfalen, Norddeutschland, coll. cat. Cologne (Museum Schnütgen) 2001, no. 36. On stylistic grounds, the present half-length of St John can therefore be situated either in the Southern Netherlands or the (Lower) Rhineland.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 310, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2020, 'anonymous, Demi-Figure of St John the Baptist, Southern Netherlands, c. 1650 - c. 1675', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035761