Carved and polychromed. On the reverse, continuing down to the underside, the sculpture has been deeply and crudely hollowed out with a wide, coarse chisel. The top of the head has been planed to accommodate a separately carved mitre, now missing, attached to the back of the head with a nail, of which the hole remains. The separately carved morse was also attached with nails. Holes for securing the separately carved jambs, also lost, can be discerned in the sides of the throne. On the reverse, several small nail holes can be seen at the level of the shoulders. Emerging from two of these holes are the stubs of iron nails. On the lower left, sections of the cope have been attached with wooden nails (Ø 0.5). Punch marks on the cope indicate this area was originally gilded.

A. Truyen in B. Rommé et al., Gegen den Strom: Meisterwerke niederrheinischer Skulptur in Zeiten der Reformation 1500-1550, exh. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 1996, p. 116.

The right side of the base and the alb above it have sustained woodworm damage. The front of the base has suffered wood rot. Cracks due to dehydration can be discerned. The throne’s jambs, the crosier, mitre and morse are missing. The polychromy is modern, along with traces of an older polychromy layer.

…; from the estate of ‘Count’ Jan Jacob Nahuys (1801-1864), Utrecht, with eight other objects (BK-NM-20, -23 to -26, -28, -29 and -31), fl. 400 for all, to the Dutch State, in or after 1864;¹¹Note RMA. transferred to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1875; transferred to Amsterdam, 1883; transferred to the museum, 1885

Object number: BK-NM-27

This Bishop Enthroned, in its current state bearing no attributes from which a specific identification can be made, is dressed in full raiment, wearing an amice over a long alb, a dalmatic, and a cope with ornamental orphrey bands. In his gloved right hand, the bishop was holding a now missing crosier; his left hand was probably raised in a sign of benediction. The morse (a clasp) that previously joined the two sides of the cope at the breast is also missing, though the holes used to secure it to the chest can still be seen.

Adorning the length of the cope’s ‘gold-embroidered’ orphrey bands (aurifrisia) are eight apostle figures, each depicted standing beneath a baldachin. This much-loved motif often ornamented episcopal vestments, conveying the role of bishops as successors to the apostles. On this bishop, the following figures appear on the orphrey bands (starting at the bottom): on the left band, the apostle Peter, an unidentified figure hidden in the fold, the apostle John, and a figure at the top only semi-visible; on the right band, the apostle Andrew, James the Less, a figure partly hidden under the arm and at the top another semi-visible figure. Undoubtedly, four additional figures adorned the front (and back?) of the bishop’s now missing mitre, thus completing the total number of twelve apostles.

Together with a second example in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (BK-NM-28), the present work belongs to a small group of extant wooden statues of sitting or standing popes and bishops produced in the regions bordering the Netherlands as well as the Lower Rhine region, distinguishable by their copes with relief-carved orphrey bands. The figures incorporated in these ornamental bands can sometimes be useful in pinpointing the identity of the sculptor. The apostle Peter on the orphrey of the Bishop Enthroned in Venray by Henrik Douverman (c. 1490-1543/44), for example, is rendered in the very same manner as his large, autonomous statues.²²Venray, Sint-Petrus’ Bandenkerk, see B. Rommé et al., Gegen den Strom: Meisterwerke niederrheinischer Skulptur in Zeiten der Reformation 1500-1550, exh. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 1996, no. 69 and fig. 69.2. On Henrick van Holt’s (c. 1480/90-1545/46) reliquary bust of Pope Sylvester, one of several busts integrated in the high altar of Xanten Cathedral, the John the Evangelist on the bust’s cope is attired in a wide-sleeved robe and a cloak draped diagonally across the body. These same motifs recur in absolutely identical form in other works by Van Holt, e.g. in a reliquary bust depicting St John himself, also integrated in the high altar of Xanten, and a sculpture of St John in Griethausen.³³G. de Werd, ‘Ein Meister im Schatten des Henrik Douvermann: Zum Werk des Kalkarer Bildhauers Henrik van Holt’, in H.P. Hilger, Stadtpfarrkirche St. Nicolai in Kalkar, Cleves 1990, pp. 299-331, esp. pp. 322-23.

There is no debate regarding the present sculpture’s Lower Rhenish origin. Nevertheless, Rommé’s proposed attribution of this work and the other Bishop Enthroned in the Rijksmuseum to a follower of Henrik Douverman, with both consequently dated circa 1520-30, appears unfounded.⁴⁴B. Rommé et al., Gegen den Strom: Meisterwerke niederrheinischer Skulptur in Zeiten der Reformation 1500-1550, exh. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 1996, p. 354. On the contrary, the severely angular drapery folds and the pointed shoes of these Amsterdam bishops – not to mention the socle’s by then outmoded concave-polygonal form – strongly indicate a date of origin some twenty to forty years earlier, before Douverman was even active.

Guido de Werd, 2004 (updated by Bieke van der Mark, 2024)
This entry was originally published in F. Scholten and G. de Werd, Een hogere werkelijkheid: Duitse en Franse beeldhouwkunst 1200-1600 uit het Rijksmuseum Amsterdam/Eine höhere Wirklichkeit, Deutsche und Französische Skulptur 1200-1600 aus dem Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, exh. cat. Cleves (Museum Kurhaus Kleve) 2004-06, no. 11

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 27, with earlier literature; B. Rommé et al., Gegen den Strom: Meisterwerke niederrheinischer Skulptur in Zeiten der Reformation 1500-1550, exh. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 1996, pp. 116, 354; De Werd in F. Scholten and G. de Werd, Een hogere werkelijkheid: Duitse en Franse beeldhouwkunst 1200-1600 uit het Rijksmuseum Amsterdam/Eine höhere Wirklichkeit, Deutsche und Französische Skulptur 1200-1600 aus dem Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, exh. cat. Cleves (Museum Kurhaus Kleve) 2004-06, no. 11

G. de Werd/ B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, Bishop Enthroned, Lower Rhine region, c. 1500', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035588