Virgin and Child

Carved and polychromed. The reverse is flat. A hole in Mary’s head functioned to secure a crown. Two square nail holes can be seen in her back

The woodcarving is severely abraded, especially in the areas of Mary’s forehead, her right hand and the legs of the Christ Child. The child’s right leg and left arm are missing, as well as the head of the small bird cupped in his right hand. The polychromy is not original.

…; from the collection A.P. Hermans-Smits (1822-1897), Eindhoven, with numerous other objects (BK-NM-2001 to -2800), fl. 14,000 for all, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885

ObjectNumber: BK-NM-2730

In 1875, the Dutch government acquired over 800 objects from Antonius Petrus (‘Antoon’) Hermans.¹¹He was a goldsmith, church warden, art dealer and collector, active in Eindhoven and was married to Joanna Maria Smits (1815-1879), see J.P. van Rijen, ‘Antonius Petrus Hermans (1822-1897), een ambivalent lid van het Sint-Bernulphusgilde’, Ex Tempore 12 (1993), pp. 57-64; P. Thoben, ‘Zilver van edelsmid Antonius Petrus Hermans’, Museum Kempenland Eindhoven Nieuws 7 (2001), p. 4; P. Thoben and R. Erven, Trotse burgers, Cuypers en de Sint-Catharinakerk: Speciale uitgave ter gelegenheid van het 150-jarig jubileum van de Sint-Catharinakerk Eindhoven, Eindhoven 2018, pp. 5, 18, 19, 24. on behalf of the then recently opened Nederlandsch Museum van Geschiedenis en Kunst in The Hague. Ten years later, this museum was integrated as part of the newly built Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The Hermans-Smits acquisition included earthenware, glass, silver and brass objects, and furniture, as well as approximately seventy works of sculpture. Many of these sculptures were of inferior quality, to which this unremarkably executed statuette of a Virgin and Child, in very poor condition and repainted, attests.

Vogelsang and later Pit situated the piece in the Lower Rhine region.²²W. Vogelsang and M. van Notten, Die Holzskulptur in den Niederlanden, vol. 2, Das Niederländische Museum zu Amsterdam, Berlin/Utrecht 1912, no. 16; A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor geschiedenis en kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1915, no. 155. Mary’s amiable facial expression, her relaxed pose and the flowing folds of her cloak nevertheless suggest an origin in the Northern Netherlands or Brabant. A walnut sculpture of the Virgin and Child with St Anne in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which dates from approximately 1520, displays a similar arrangement of folds.³³P. Williamson, Netherlandish Sculpture 1450-1550, coll. cat. London (Victoria and Albert Museum) 2002, no. 40. Here too the cloak rises up just below the arms, draped over the legs as a kind of apron. The manner in which Mary carries the Christ Child, using her right hand to support him while holding his foot with the left hand, is reminiscent of the so-called ‘Utrecht Virgin type’ (cf. BK-NM-11299) dating from the second quarter of the fifteenth century, a genre widely disseminated via small pipeclay statuettes.⁴⁴For this type, see I. Reesing, ‘Notre-Dame de Foy: the Reuse and Dissemination of a Late Medieval Figurine of the Virgin in the Low Countries’, Simiolus 33 (2007-08), no. 3, pp. 145-65; M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, no. 80.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 86, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous or anonymous, Virgin and Child, , c. 1500 - c. 1520', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24361