Carved from a single block of wood and originally polychromed. A peg on the right side served to attach the adjacent fragment of the retable. The reverse, which follows the rounding of the tree trunk, was hollowed out in places with a large gouge. A smaller gouge was used to work the wood block diagonally along the entire lower side of the reverse.

The gate, the lower left arm of the rightmost horseman, the right hand of the Pharisee, the upper part of the group of trees, and parts of the towers in the wall are missing. Several noses have been renewed. The polychromy has been removed.

…; donated by Abraham Willet (1825-1888), Amsterdam, to the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap, Amsterdam, March 1861; on loan to the museum, since 1885; on loan to the Amsterdam Museum, Amsterdam, inv. no. BB 287, since 2004

Object number: BK-KOG-690

Credit line: On loan from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap

The full width of an oak tree trunk was used for this retable fragment, which comes from what must have been an enormous Passion altar. On the reverse, a gouge was used to apply a location mark in the form of an accent circonflexe (^) (fig. a). The fragment shows the uppermost or left-hand part of the scene of Christ Carrying the Cross, with the procession of men following him. They emerge from the two tall towers in the wall, flanked by the (missing) town gate of Jerusalem, on their way to Golgotha. Walking in front is one of the thieves, recognizable by his fettered hands. The man behind him, who also stares straight ahead, is the second thief. They are led by three servants on foot. Behind them, the two horsemen, who wear costly attire, are embroiled in conversation, which has caused one of them to raise his (broken-off) left arm. To the left of them, at the very front, is a Pharisee wearing a tabard and a turban. In the background, four men approach; their smaller proportions create an illusion of depth and distance. Evidence that the scene originally continued both at right and at the bottom is provided by the traces of attachment on the right-hand side, as well as by the truncated figures of the two thieves at right and the abruptly ending knees of the Pharisee below. The representation continued on these sides on adjoining blocks of wood. This suggests that the various scenes of the Passion that decorated the altar – which would have consisted of at least the central Calvary scene flanked by the Crucifixion and either the Deposition or the Lamentation – were not separated in compartments but flowed into one another, as is the case with the high altar (1488-1500) in the Sankt-Nicolaikirche in Kalkar, designed and partly carved by Master Arnt (active c. 1460-d. 1492) (fig. b).

On the basis of its iconographic similarities to the left wing of Gerard David’s Crucifixion Triptych (c. 1480-85) in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp (fig. c), the subject of the present fragment can be more specifically identified as the rarely portrayed Quod scripsi, scripsi passage from the Gospel according to St John (19:19-22).³³For the iconological interpretation of this wing, see L. Wuyts, ‘“Quod Scripsi, Scripsi”. Ikonologische aantekeningen bij een werk van Gerard David’, Jaarboek van ket Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (1972), pp. 87-100. This passage relates that Pontius Pilate ‘wrote a title, and put it on the cross’: Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudæorum (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews). The Jews objected to this epithet and urged the prefect to change it to Quia ipse dixit: Rex sum Iudæorum (He said, I am King of the Jews). But Pontius Pilate flatly refused to change the words, saying: Quod scripsi, scripsi (What I have written I have written). As far as is known, the only other sculptural representation of this scene is part of the previously mentioned high altar in Kalkar, where it is portrayed to the right of the scene with Christ Carrying the Cross, as part of the centrally depicted Calvary group (fig. d). As Gerard David had done on his side panel and Master Arnt on the high altar in Kalkar, the woodcarver of the Amsterdam retable fragment chose to have the scene take place on horseback, with Pilate at left (recognizable by the double chain) and the high priest at right. It is possible that this priest – like his counterpart in Gerard David’s work – held in his upraised (but now missing) hand the object of consternation: the sign or note with the inscription INRI.

A second fragment of the Passion retable was recently identified in a Dutch private collection (fig. e). This hitherto unpublished group was also carved from the full width of a tree trunk, and it is almost identical in height to the Amsterdam piece. The back also bears a location mark, this time a zigzag, applied with a gouge.⁴⁴Photo in Object FIle. This fragment portrays a bearded man, presumably Nicodemus, wearing a monk’s habit and reaching into a tomb, an unusual iconography that cannot be immediately identified. In a scene of the Entombment, one would expect to catch at least a glimpse of Christ’s lifeless body. According to the pictorial tradition, moreover, this body is laid to rest not by one but by two men, namely Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. A print of the Deposition by the engraver Israhel van Meckenem, active in Cleves and Bocholt (RP-P-OB-1110), offers the only known parallel to this scene and a good explanation of the subject.⁵⁵M. Lehrs, Geschichte und kritischer Katalog des deutschen, niederländischen und französischen Kupferstichs im XV. Jahrhundert, Vienna 1908-34, no. 151. Here we see, to the right of the main scene, Nicodemus, dressed in a monk’s habit and preparing the stone tomb for Christ by laying a cloth in it. In the context of the retable, the carved fragment was probably also combined with a Deposition and/or a Lamentation group.

In the past, the Amsterdam fragment has been localized alternately to the Northern Netherlands and the Lower Rhine region.⁶⁶See A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1904, no. 82 (Northern Netherlands, end fifteenth century); W. Vogelsang and M. van Notten, Die Holzskulptur in den Niederlanden, vol. 2, Berlin/Utrecht 1912, no. 37 (as ‘Lower Rhine, late 15th century’); A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1915, no. 161 (Northern Netherlands, end fifteenth century); J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 77 (as ‘Northern Netherlands, c. 1500’). Although the robust horses recall the type preferred by the Utrecht master Adriaen van Wesel (cf. BK-1979-94), the men’s ascetic appearance – with their expressive heads, pronounced jawbones and corkscrew curls – and the abundant use of Tremolierung (waggle-work) are more typical of the region of Cleves-Guelders, as seen in the work of Master Arnt (cf. BK-1956-31). The stockier figures, as well as the heavier drapery and the penchant for decoration, as manifested by the garments and the horses’ trappings, suggest that it was made around 1500-20 by a sculptor of the generation after this artist.

In an old inventory of the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht, the Amsterdam altar group is connected with two retable fragments in that collection: an Adoration of the Magi and a Descent of the Holy Spirit. In the 1962 collection catalogue of that museum, Bouvy maintained the comparison with the second group only – which he described as ‘from Guelders 1520’ – and hypothesized that the two pieces could have come from the same retable.⁷⁷D.P.R.A. Bouvy, Beeldhouwkunst van de middeleeuwen tot heden uit het Aartsbisschoppelijk Museum te Utrecht, coll. cat. Utrecht 1962, no. 234. Although Defoer thought that the heads resembled each other to some extent, he concluded in an article of 1994 that these similarities were of little relevance.⁸⁸H.L.M. Defoer, ‘Het Catharijneconvent in Utrecht. Enige beelden nader bekeken’, Antiek 29 (1994), pp. 10-15, p. 10. In the same publication, the author succeeded in identifying an iconographically interesting, chalice-bearing saint in the collection of the Museum Catharijneconvent (fig. f),⁹⁹Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, inv. no. BMH bh1680, see M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent ca. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, p. 312. on the basis of its similarity to a figure – representing Joseph – that appears at the far left in an Adoration of the Magi (Museum Schnütgen, Cologne) by Master Arnt.¹⁰¹⁰H.L.M. Defoer, ‘Het Catharijneconvent in Utrecht. Enige beelden nader bekeken’, Antiek 29 (1994), pp. 10-15, p. 12 and H.L.M. Defoer in B. Rommé (ed.), Der Niederrhein und die Alten Niederlande: Kunst und Kultur im späten Mittelalter: Referate des Kolloquiums zur Ausstellung ‘Gegen den Strom: Meisterwerke niederrheinischer Bildschnitzkunst in Zeiten der Reformation (1500-1550)’, Bielefeld 1999, pp. 142-45. Defoer subsequently attributed this fragment to the anonymous Cleves-Guelders Master of St Anthony Abbot, whom he named after the well-known St Anthony Abbot (c. 1480) in the Museum Catharijneconvent. This statue is closely related to the St Joseph but its proportions are more elongated.¹¹¹¹Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, inv. no. BMH bh226, see M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent, ca. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, p. 47 (ill.) and pp. 310-11. With his compact body, heavy drapery, sharply defined cheekbones, the furrows above the bridge of his nose, and the tight, curly locks of his hair and beard, Joseph is also closely related to the figures in the retable fragments discussed above. In fact, the similarities between these works – with regard to the ‘waggle-work’ on the bases, the backs of the wood blocks, which have been worked with a gouge, and their large dimensions – are striking enough to suggest that this figure of Joseph originated in the same workshop. The localization of this workshop to Cleves-Guelders is supported by the fact that all the known parallels for the rare iconography of the chalice-bearing Joseph, the Quod scripsi, scripsi scene, and Nicodemus preparing the tomb are centred in the graphic art and altarpieces of this region.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 77, with earlier literature; H.L.M. Defoer, ‘Het Catharijneconvent in Utrecht. Enige beelden nader bekeken’, Antiek 29 (1994), pp. 10-15, esp. p. 10; M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent ca. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, p. 339

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'possibly Meester van Sint-Antonius, Procession of Men on Foot and Horseback, from a Christ Carrying the Cross, Cleves-Guelders, c. 1500 - c. 1520', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200115851