Carved in relief.

The right top and right bottom corners of the relief have broken off. The left top corner has broken off and been restored. The relief’s surface is fairly coarse, possibly resulting from a rigorous cleaning with water. The relief is mounted in a black-polished, 19th-century frame.

…; from sale The Hague (Van Stockum), to the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap, Amsterdam, 1859; from which on loan to the museum, since 1885

Object number: BK-KOG-1255-G

Credit line: On loan from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap

The alabaster-carving industry in Mechelen originated with the arrival of a small group of artists, employed by Margaret of Austria, governess of the Netherlands at the onset of the sixteenth century. These artists worked primarily in the new antyckse renaissance style imported from Italy. Most important among them where the sculptors Conrat Meit (1485-1550/51) from Worms and Jean Mone (c. 1485-?1554) from Metz, whose presence in the city stimulated local sculptors to shift their efforts in the direction of the new formal idiom and simultaneously the material alabaster. Lipinska maintains that for those artists originally trained in wood, the move to the new, relatively soft stone type alabaster was minor.¹¹A. Lipinska, ‘“Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen”: Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe’, Simiolus 32 (2006), pp. 231-58, esp. p. 238.

As a result, a veritable industry in this kind of sculpture began to flourish in the sixteenth century, destined for a market that encompassed much of north-western Europe. Besides the Low Countries, Mechelen alabaster reliefs and altars were exported to places as far away as Poland, the Baltic States and Scandinavia.²²M. Rydbeck, ‘Nederländska husaltaren från skånska kyrkor: Renässansskulptur i Skåne’, Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens Handlingar 71 (Antikvariska studier 4), Stockholm 1950, pp. 28-40; A. Lipinska, ‘“Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen”: Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe’, Simiolus 32 (2006), pp. 231-58; A. Lipinska, Wewnetrzne swiatlo: Poludniowoniderlandzka rzezba alabastrowa w Europie Srodkowo-Wschodniej, Wroclaw 2007; A. Lipinska, Moving Sculptures: Southern Netherlandish Alabasters from the 16th to 17th Centuries in Central and Northern Europe (Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History 11), Leiden/Boston 2015. The more luxurious versions of these house altars comprised both larger and smaller alabaster reliefs, mounted in ornately carved wooden frames decorated with pressed-gesso patterns. The Rijksmuseum possesses two such altars (BK-BR-515; BK-NM-2918). However, the majority of this so-called cleynstekerswerk centred on small carved tablets featuring mythological and biblical scenes in a virtually unlimited number of variations produced serially well into the first half of the seventeenth century. With dimensions up to 20 x 20 centimetres, these small alabaster reliefs were typically supplied with decorative frames edged with pressed papier-mâché. To enliven the scenes and the frames, polychromers added highlights in gold. Even today, many of these objects still bear the monograms and house marks left by their makers, conveying the competition among artists but also serving as a kind of quality guaranty.

The high quality of the present relief’s carving distinguishes it from this more serial production. Its maker rendered the crucified figure of Christ on Mount Golgotha with a marked attention to detail. Through additional undercutting, he managed to visually liberate several of the figures from the background, thus achieving an exceptional degree of depth and shadow. This applies not only to the soldier and shield on the far right, but also, albeit to a lesser degree, to the recumbent figure of Mary in the foreground, supported by St John the Evangelist. The result is a subtle, gradual reduction in depth, which ultimately takes on a sketch-like, atmospheric rendering in the background.

The composition of the present relief adheres to examples from the mid-sixteenth century, such as the type produced by the Antwerp sculptor Guglielmus Paludanus (1530-1580). The quality of the present relief, however, is significantly inferior to cleynstekers’ work produced only a few decades earlier. Lipinska noted compositional similarities to reliefs in the parish church in Wehningen and those of the now lost epitaph-cum-house altar made for Balthasar Buettner in Wroclaw.³³A. Lipinska et al., Matter of Light and Flesh: Alabaster in the Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th and 17th Centuries, exh. cat. Gdansk (National Museum) 2011, p. 219; A. Lipinska, Wewnetrzne swiatlo: Poludniowoniderlandzka rzezba alabastrowa w Europie Srodkowo-Wschodniej, Wroclaw 2007, fig. 120. Despite the piece’s slightly diminished quality, the maker of the Amsterdam relief lent a certain distinctiveness to the work by introducing details such as the round form of the faces, with turned-up noses and diminutive chins – a trait even carried through on the horses’ heads in the background. Perhaps in a gesture of subtle pride, the anonymous cleynsteker added his initials to the shield of the soldier on the right: F N F (Fecit NF or FN Fecit). Nowhere does this monogram appear on any other works, as far as can be ascertained. Equally cryptic is the remainder of the inscribed monogram (I 4 II), ostensibly referring neither to a Bible passage nor date.

Frits Scholten, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 180, with earlier literature; M.K. Wustrack, Die Mechelner Alabaster-Manufaktur des 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt am Main/Bern 1982, no. 515; J. Kriegseisen, A. Lipińska et al., Matter of Light and Flesh: Alabaster in the Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th and 17th Centuries, exh. cat. Gdańsk (National Museum) 2011, no. 29

F. Scholten, 2024, 'anonymous, Calvary, Mechelen, c. 1575 - c. 1600', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035609