Interior of a Pendant with the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi and the Crucifixion

Carved in pierced relief on all four sides. The wood appears to be boxwood.¹¹Wood analysis by Ilona Stein (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Neuremberg) based on microscopical images made by the Rijksmuseum at the request of Guillermo Alfonso de la Torre y Lucquin (Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris) in March 2024. The determination of the wood species remained indefinite because clear identification features were insufficiently present at the surface.

Breakages in areas. The hollowed-out, rock crystal casing and the silver(-gilt) mounting are missing.

…; collection the Backer Stichting, Amsterdam, date unknown; on loan to the museum, since 1960

ObjectNumber: BK-BR-559

Credit line: On loan from the Backer Stichting

This small woodcarving originally formed the interior of a lantern-shaped pendant. Each of its four rectangular sides holds a scene taken from the life of Christ, meticulously carved in pierced relief: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Crucifixion. A coherent group of this type of devotional micro-carving survives to the present day, some still complete with the accompanying pendant. When intact, these jewellery pieces consist of a hollowed-out rock crystal casing, encrusted in a silver(-gilt) mounting frequently enamelled and usually adorned at the bottom with a hanging pearl. Highly similar to the present piece is a pendant with an interior fruitwood carving preserved in the Metropolitan Museum (fig. a).²²New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 17.190.886. Both works contain four carved, pierced reliefs, each framed by pillars supporting an arch. Other examples are found in collections such as the British Museum,³³London, British Museum, inv. no. WB.183, see H. Tait, Catalogue of the Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum, I. The Jewels, coll. cat. London (British Museum) 1986, no. 46 and D. Thornton, A Rothschild Renaissance Treasures from the Waddesdon Bequest, coll. cat. London (British Museum) 2015, pp. 220-23. the Walters Art Gallery,⁴⁴Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, inv. no. 61.120, see M.J. Egan, Relicarios, Devotional Miniatures from the Americas, Santa Fe 1993, p. 44 (ills.) (see also p. 45 for an example in the Museo Nacional de Historia in Mexico City. the Louvre and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.⁵⁵Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. nos. AO 598, AO 2316, AO 5607 and OA 6180, see P. Malgouyres, ‘Moines franciscains et sculpteurs indiens: À propos de quatre pendentifs mexicains conservés au musée du Louvre’, La revue du Louvre 4 (2015), pp. 34-48; Washington, Smithsonian American Art Museum, inv. no. 1929.8.196, see J. Jones et al., The Art of Precolumbian Gold: The Jan Mitchell Collection, exh. cat. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) 1985, fig. 8. In Hans Maler’s portrait of the German merchant Mathäus Schwartz of about 1526-29, one is able to observe the way in which these jewellery pieces, so-called ‘lanterns’, were worn.⁶⁶Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. RF 1958 8. Micro-carvings of a similar nature are also encountered in other kinds of devotional objects, including a silver-gilt miniature triptych in the Victoria and Albert Museum.⁷⁷London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. 226-1866, see C. Osman, The Golden Age of Hispanic Silver 1400-1665, coll. cat. London (Victoria and Albert Museum) 1968, no. 104a. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) has a comparable piece in its collection: inv. no. 10.141.2.

The origin of these objects has long been uncertain. The style of the goldsmith’s work was initially thought to indicate a German, Italian or Spanish origin,⁸⁸For the history of these geographic attributions, see H. Tait, Catalogue of the Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum, I: The Jewels, coll. cat. London 1986, pp. 232-33. while the minutely carved fruitwood interiors pointed more to a Netherlandish background.⁹⁹J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 127; D.F. Rowe, The Art of Jewelry 1450-1650, exh. cat. Chicago (Martin d’Arcy Gallery of Art/Loyola University of Chicago) 1975, no. 30. In the late Middle Ages, devotional micro-carving in boxwood was popular in the Netherlands, as manifest, for example, in prayer nuts (cf. BK-2010-16).¹⁰¹⁰F. Scholten (ed.), Small Wonders: Late-Gothic Boxwood Micro-Carvings from the Low Countries, exh. cat. Toronto (Art Gallery of Ontario)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2016-17. On carved lanterns such as the present piece, however, the quality of the micro-carving is inferior to that encountered with Netherlandish miniature carvings. Stylistically, the scenes also deviate markedly. The current, most tenable view is that these reliefs were carved in colonial Mexico by indigenous craftsmen after the 1521 Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, and were mainly sold to Europeans.¹¹¹¹First suggested in D. Scarisbrick, Jewellery, Ancient to Modern, exh. cat. Baltimore (Walters Art Gallery) 1979, no. 502; most recently in P. Kirham and S. Weber (eds.), History of Design, Decorative Arts and Material Culture, 1400-2000, New Haven-London 2013, p. 137. Malgouyres has suggested the region of Michoacán (situated in the west of Mexico) to have been a key production place of the pendants, where they were created by indigenous craftsmen at the request of Spanish Franciscan friars, who had founded a monastery in the city of Tzintzuntzán, see P. Malgouyres, ‘Moines franciscains et sculpteurs indiens: À propos de quatre pendentifs mexicains conservés au musée du Louvre’, La revue du Louvre 4 (2015), pp. 34-48, esp. pp. 44-45. The Mexican origin of these objects is most evident in the (remnants of) iridescent blue/green feathers, presumably of the hummingbird, ornamenting the background of many of the reliefs. This decorative technique was commonly applied in Mexico, chiefly in the form of figurative feather mosaics made by specialized artisans known as amantecas.¹²¹²For this art form, see T. Castello Yturbide et al., El arte plumaria en México, Mexico-City 1993. Rock crystal was also used for artistic purposes in Mexico long before Spanish colonization. As early as the sixteenth century, exotic curios and precious objects from the New World were all the rage in Europe, as reflected in Albrecht Dürer’s journal entry enumerating the gifts sent by Hernán Cortés from Mexico – shortly before vanquished by the renowned explorer – to Emperor Charles V’s palace in Brussels in 1520.¹³¹³See H. Rupprich (ed.), Albrecht Dürer: Schriftlicher Nachlass, 3 vols., Berlin 1956-70, vol. 1, pp. 164-65.

The carving’s Mexican origin is additionally supported by the existence of two liturgical goldsmith’s pieces, both furnished with the silver mark of Mexico City and adorned with the very same type of micro-carving encased in rock crystal, and again, set against a background of feathers.¹⁴¹⁴See J.J. Rishel and S.L. Stratton, The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820, exh. cat. Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art), Mexico City (Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso), Los Angeles (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) 2006, nos. III-3 and III-4. The first is a pax in a private collection, the second a chalice preserved at the Los Angeles County Museum, with both dating from circa 1575-78. Like the pendants, these objects are an interesting mix of local and European styles, techniques and materials. Micro-carved scenes produced in Mexico drew upon late-medieval European models up to the very end of the sixteenth century. In the absence of silver marks, this complicates a more precise dating.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 132

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, Interior of a Pendant with the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi and the Crucifixion, Mexico, c. 1525 - c. 1600', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24408