Flight into Egypt (Patacon?)

Formed in a mould, fired and possibly originally polychromed.

The terracotta has greyish black discolouration in places, caused by a lengthy period in the ground.

...; found, with BK-2010-10-1, BK-2010-9-1 and -2, during excavation works in Galgenveld in Leiden, c. 1980;¹¹This was soil from Galgenveld on the north side of Leiden’s old city centre, opposite Galgenwater, which was dumped on the outskirts of the present city around 1980. A quantity of waste earthenware from a pottery was found, including these intact moulds and impressions. Another part of the find was sold to the collector H.J.E. van Beuningen and transferred to the Stichting Het Nederlands Gebruiksvoorwerp in Langbroek. These were the following moulds and reliefs: Flight into Egypt (5 complete moulds and 1 fragment; 2 complete reliefs) and The World Upsidedown (4 moulds, 3 fragments; 2 complete reliefs and 2 bags of shards). Provenance information supplied by J.P. van Halderen of Delft, Christine Vaandrager-Van Beuningen (Huize Rodensteyn in Langbroek) and the dealer who sold the pieces, G. Verhoeven of Delft (written communication June 2010). Van Someren Collection, Leiden, c. 1980-before 2004;²²Van Someren is the dragline operator who made the find.…; Plomp Collection, Delft, 2005; …; Jan Pieter van Halderen Collection, Delft, 2005; from whom to the dealer G. Verhoeven, Amsterdam (Sanctus Religious Art and Antiques), 2010; from whom, with BK-2010-10-1, BK-2010-9-1 and -2, €1,200 for all four, to the museum, May 2010

ObjectNumber: BK-2010-10-2

This positive impression and corresponding negative mould (BK-2010-10-1) are in the shape of a gothic quatrefoil combined with a four-pointed star. The central medallion depicts the Flight into Egypt, surrounded by alternating decorations (clockwise from the point of the star at the top): a flower, a squirrel, a flower or insect, the head of a putto, a flower, a bird, a flower and the head of a putto. Each element is framed in a laurel wreath.

This decorative relief is an example of the relatively cheaply reproduced popular devotional items that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries responded to a rapidly growing individually experienced religiosity in north-western Europe.³³M. Hermann, Augsburger Bilderbäcker. Tonfigürchen des späten Mittelalters und der Renaissance, Augsburg 1995 (Augsburger Museumsschriften 6); F.M. Kammel et al., Spiegel der Seligkeit. Privates Bild und Frömmigkeit im Spätmittelalter, exh. cat. Nuremberg (Germanisches Nationalmuseum) 2000, pp. 350-96; G.V. Grimm et al., Kleine Meisterwerke des Bilddrucks. Ungeliebte Kinder der Kunstgeschichte, Büchenbach 2011. In the urbanized Netherlands there was a particularly great demand for them among laymen in the towns and cities, pilgrims and members of religious orders. As well as simple woodcuts and engravings, lead pilgrim’s badges and pipeclay figurines and reliefs, devotional objects were also made in pewter, wax, stucco, papier-mâché and even edible materials like marzipan or cake.⁴⁴F.M. Kammel et al., Spiegel der Seligkeit. Privates Bild und Frömmigkeit im Spätmittelalter, exh. cat. Nuremberg (Germanisches Nationalmuseum) 2000, pp. 350-96; . Böing, G. Inhester and T. Sodmann (ed.), Judocus Vredis: Kunst aus der Stille: eine Klosterwerkstatt der Dürerzeit/Judocus Vredis: Kunst uit de stilte: Een kloosterwerkplaats uit de tijd van Dürer, exh. Münster (Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte)/Vreden (Hamaland-Museum)/Borken (Kreismuseum)/Deventer (Historisch Museum de Waag) 2001; G.V. Grimm et al., Kleine Meisterwerke des Bilddrucks. Ungeliebte Kinder der Kunstgeschichte, Büchenbach 2011, pp. 21-25. For the Low Countries see H.L.M. Defoer et al., Vroomheid per dozijn, exh. cat. Utrecht (Rijksmuseum Het Catharijneconvent) 1982; H.J.E. van Beuningen and A.M. Koldeweij, Heilig en Profaan. 1000 laatmiddeleeuwse insignes uit de collectie H.J.E. van Beuningen, Cothen 1993 (Rotterdam Papers 8: A Contribution to Medieval Archeology); H.J.E. van Beuningen et al., Heilig en Profaan 2. 1200 Laatmiddeleeuwse insignes uit openbare en particuliere collecties, Cothen 2001 (Rotterdam Papers 12: A Contribution to Medieval Archeology). The designs are usually fairly schematic and were probably often derived from woodcuts. Their fragility, the intensive use to which they were subjected and the coming of the Reformation mean that few intact examples of the output of this significant industry have survived. Most of those that have are in Germany. Some tondi, moulds and impressions from the Middle Rhine region, which are similar in size and material, are held in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.⁵⁵F.M. Kammel et al., Spiegel der Seligkeit. Privates Bild und Frömmigkeit im Spätmittelalter, exh. cat. Nuremberg (Germanisches Nationalmuseum) 2000, nos. 181-83; G.V. Grimm et al., Kleine Meisterwerke des Bilddrucks. Ungeliebte Kinder der Kunstgeschichte, Büchenbach 2011, p. 51, fig. 19. The combination of an intact mould and corresponding contemporaneous impression dating from the sixteenth century is therefore extremely unusual.

The design of this mould and impression is not medieval, although the style of a mould and impression of a relief of the Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan (BK-2010-9-1 and -2) from the same find is late gothic. This suggests that the two reliefs were probably made in the same pottery in the mid-sixteenth century at the earliest. This Leiden pottery in Galgenveld was probably active for anything between a century to a century and a half, because among other pieces from the same find there are a mould and impression of the World Upside Down dated 1645.⁶⁶Langbroek, Collection Stichting Het Nederlands Gebruiksvoorwerp. This means that the possibility that this Flight into Egypt was made later in the sixteenth century or even in the early seventeenth cannot be ruled out.

It is as yet not possible to establish the extent to which this pottery was a continuation of a Leiden pottery that produced devotional figurines in pipeclay in the nearby Varkenmarkt in the fifteenth and possibly early sixteenth centuries. In 1989 the firing spoil from this medieval pottery – a great many fragments of statuettes, reliefs and moulds – was found opposite Varkenmarkt 13 in Leiden.⁷⁷Langbroek, Collection Stichting Het Nederlands Gebruiksvoorwerp. These fragments, whose subjects are the same as pipeclay finds from other towns and cities, have no obvious iconographic or physical similarities to the material from Galgenveld.

Aside from the diversity in style and shape, another noteworthy aspect of the Galgenveld find is the fact that religious and secular subjects occur in the same place. This raises the question as to the function of the reliefs that were found. The different shapes – here a star, elsewhere a round or rectangular curved relief – make their use as decorative wall reliefs, for example by a fireplace, unlikely, although the technical and stylistic likeness to sixteenth-century hearthstones is considerable.⁸⁸For a German hearthstone with the Baptism of Christ in the River Jordan dating from c. 1562 see G.V. Grimm et al., Kleine Meisterwerke des Bilddrucks. Ungeliebte Kinder der Kunstgeschichte, Büchenbach 2011, pp. 103-04 and figs. 59-60. Their use for private devotions at home, for instance standing on a shelf, in a small niche or on a simple house altar, is conceivable, but there are no other known Netherlandish examples. Since the Flight into Egypt is regarded as one of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin and as such was often placed, in the form of a small tondo, around a likeness of the Mater Dolorosa, this relief could have been used in this context.⁹⁹For example the 1503 relief of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows pressed in stucco in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen, see M. Rief et al., ‘Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe-van-Zeven-Weeën. Ein Sieben-Schmerzen-Mariens-Relief, sein spätgotischer Ursprung und sein später Abdruck. Kopie oder Krimi?’, Im Blickpunkt 2 (2007); G.V. Grimm et al., Kleine Meisterwerke des Bilddrucks. Ungeliebte Kinder der Kunstgeschichte, Büchenbach 2011, no. 22 and fig. 12. See also G.W.C. van Wezel, De Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk en de grafkapel voor Oranje-Nassau te Breda. De Nederlandse monumenten van geschiedenis en kunst, Zeist/Zwolle 2003, pp. 183-84 and fig. 164, 168 (Adriaen Isenbrant’s diptych of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows of 1521 in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk in Bruges and the tomb of Frederik van Renesse of c. 1540 in de Grote Kerk of Breda.

The most plausible explanation is that reliefs like this were used as what are known as patacons.¹⁰¹⁰A. Delcart, Winterfeesten en gebak. Mythen, folklore en tradities, Antwerp/Apeldoorn 2007, pp. 133-35. I. Reesing, ‘From ivory to pipeclay. The reproduction of late medieval sculpture in the Low Countries’, in E.M. Kavaler, F. Scholten and J. Woodall (eds.), Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th Century (Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 67), Leiden/Boston 2017, pp. 256-85, esp. pp. 264-66. These small clay tablets were made for use as decorations on festive loaves and cakes at the end of the year. The designs in the clay were usually painted. Their use was most common in the Southern Netherlands from the sixteenth century onwards. The patacons were often made in pipeclay, although there were also cheaper variants in local types of clay.¹¹¹¹A. Delcart, Winterfeesten en gebak. Mythen, folklore en tradities, Antwerp/Apeldoorn 2007, p. 134. For a fragment of a patacon (17th century?) unearthed in Ghent (Schepenhuisstraat), see R. van de Walle, ‘Voorwerpen in pijpaarde uit de afvalput aan de Schepenhuisstraat’, Stadsarcheologie 15 (1991), pp. 20-28 and fig. 19. Most of them are relatively small, but larger examples – with a diameter similar to this Flight into Egypt – also occur.¹²¹²A. Delcart, Winterfeesten en gebak. Mythen, folklore en tradities, Antwerp/Apeldoorn 2007. The patacons were mostly incorporated in Christmas and New Year cakes, although they may also have been used in bread for other religious and secular feast days in the last months of the year.

Frits Scholten, 2024

Jaarverslag, Amsterdam 2010 (annual report Rijksmuseum), p. 33; I. Reesing, ‘From Ivory to Pipeclay: The Reproduction of Late Medieval Sculpture in the Low Countries’, in E.M. Kavaler, F. Scholten and J. Woodall (eds.), Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th Century (Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 67), Leiden/Boston 2017, pp. 256-285, esp. note 10; F. Scholten, ‘Acquisitions: Medieval Sculpture from the Goldschmidt-Pol Collection and from Other Donors’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), pp. 414-45, esp. p. 435

F. Scholten, 2024, 'anonymous, Flight into Egypt (Patacon?), Leiden, c. 1550 - 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.486993