Carved in relief from a single plank and probably originally polychromed.

There is wear on the front. The noses are damaged. The right-hand end, Caspar’s leg and part of his gift are missing. The brown stain was applied later; originally the relief was probably polychromed.

…; from Jonkheer C.H.C.A. van Sypesteyn (1857-1937), The Hague, fl. 150, to the museum, 1897

Object number: BK-NM-10919

From left to right this low relief depicts the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi. The three wise men wear Burgundian court dress with wide, trailing sleeves. To their right is a shepherd from the Annunciation to the Shepherds. The right-hand section of this scene, with the sheep and the angel, is missing.

In 1944 De Borchgrave d’Altena noted the similarity between this piece and a polychromed relief dated towards the end of the fourteenth century (fig. a) in the Sint-Leonarduskerk in Zoutleeuw.¹¹J. de Borchgrave d’Altena, Oeuvres de nos imagiers romans et gothiques, Brussels 1944, next to pl. 52, dates that example to around 1390. M. Buyle and C. Vanthillo, Vlaamse en Brabantse retabels in Belgische monumenten, Brussels 2000, p. 230, give the same date. Pit and Leeuwenberg on the other hand, date the Amsterdam piece to the first quarter of the fifteenth century, see A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1915, no. 139; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 7. In 1963 this was installed as a predella below Joes Beyaert’s 1479 St Catherine Altar to replace a neo-gothic one. At first sight the works appear to be identical, but on closer examination it is possible to identify all sorts of subtle differences. In the Zoutleeuw version, for instance, Joseph does not stand at the foot of Mary’s bed, but sits at the head end reading a book, with an angel behind him. He looks curiously at the infant Christ, who stands rather than sits on the bed.

The better preserved relief in Zoutleeuw is carved more fluidly and with greater sophistication. The superior quality is most evident in the figures’ more animated poses and in details like the ox and the ass in the nativity scene. Their coats are rendered much more realistically than in the Amsterdam piece, where their primitively conceived heads stick out awkwardly from beneath the stable roof. Despite the differences in quality, the reliefs most probably came from the same workshop, with carvers working from the same model.

Engelen connects the piece in Zoutleeuw with a bill from one ‘Master Aert’ for colouring ‘the Three Kings’ in April 1478.²²C. Engelen, Zoutleeuw, Jan Mertens en de laatgotiek. Confrontatie met Jan Borreman, essay tot inzicht en overzicht van de laatgotiek, Leuven 1993, p. 157. Since the magi were shown as white men until the mid-fifteenth century and the youngest king in this tableau has been given dark skin, the present polychromy, as Engelen indicates, must indeed date from a period later than the carving itself. If Engelen’s identification is correct, it would mean that the relief was already in situ in the Sint-Leonarduskerk in Zoutleeuw in the fifteenth century and in all probability was part of the church inventory from the outset. The relief there and the one in the Rijksmuseum are generally taken to be altar predellas. Another possibility, however, as Engelen suggested,³³C. Engelen, Zoutleeuw, Jan Mertens en de laatgotiek. Confrontatie met Jan Borreman, essay tot inzicht en overzicht van de laatgotiek, Leuven 1993, p. 157. Engelen also asserts here that in this early period carved altars did not have predellas, but this is difficult to verify given the scarce surviving examples. As Wolf demonstrated, altars in Germany occasionally had a predella from as early as around 1330; N. Wolf, ‘Überlegungen zur Entstehung, Funktion und Verbreitung der deutschen Schnitzretabel des 14. Jahrhunderts’, in U. Albrecht et al., Figur und Raum. Mittelalterliche Holzbildwerke im historischen und kunstgeographischen Kontext. Akten des Internationalen Colloquiums auf der Blomenburg bei Selent (7.-10. Oktober 1992), Berlin 1994, pp. 91-111, figs. 19, 25. is that they could have served as ornamented beams above a passageway or choir entrance.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 7, with earlier literature; C. Engelen, Zoutleeuw, Jan Mertens en de laatgotiek. Confrontatie met Jan Borreman, essay tot inzicht en overzicht van de laatgotiek, Leuven 1993, p. 157

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, Relief with the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi and the Annunciation to the Shepherds, Brabant, c. 1390 - c. 1425', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035535