The Mercy Seat

Carved and polychromed. The reverse is flat with chisel marks, and there is a forged iron securing eye. The polychromy is still reasonably intact. Spots of blood have been painted on the cross and there are indications of arcade arches in red on the sides of the bench on which God the Father sits.

The work is damaged in various places. Parts of the arms of God and Christ, Christ’s toes and the ends of the crossbeam of the cross are missing. The original polychromy layer has largely survived.

...; ? an unknown Utrecht church;¹¹Anonymous, Catalogus van voorwerpen uit vroegeren tijd, tentoongesteld in het gebouw der Mij. ‘Arti et Amicitiae’ [te Amsterdam] ten behoeve van het weduwen- en weezenfonds, April & Mei 1858, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Arti et Amicitiae) 1858, no. 2534-87. collection Jan Jacob Nahuys (1801-1864), Utrecht, first recorded in 1858;²²Anonymous, Catalogus van voorwerpen uit vroegeren tijd, tentoongesteld in het gebouw der Mij. ‘Arti et Amicitiae’ [te Amsterdam] ten behoeve van het weduwen- en weezenfonds, April & Mei 1858, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Arti et Amicitiae) 1858, no. 2534-87. from whom, with eight other objects, BK-NM-20, -23 to -27, BK-NM-29 and BK-NM-31, fl. 400, to the Dutch State, 1864;³³Note RMA. transferred to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885

ObjectNumber: BK-NM-31

This way of representing the Holy Trinity is called the Throne of Grace or, after the Luther Bible, the Mercy Seat (Gnadenstuhl). It symbolizes the reconciliation between God and mankind brought about by Christ’s death on the cross. Although artists made increasingly freer variations of this iconography from as early as the thirteenth century, this early fifteenth-century version retains the archetypical form derived from eleventh- and twelfth-century German and French examples.⁴⁴R. Ligtenberg, Over den oorsprong en de eerste beteekenis van den genadestoel, Den Bosch 1932; K. Smits, ‘De Genadestoel in de Nederlandsche kunst der late Middeleeuwen’, Het Gildeboek 19 (1936), pp. 125-30; E. Kirschbaum (ed.), Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, vol. 1, Freiburg 1968-76, cols. 535-36. God the Father sits on a bench with his crucified son between his legs in front of him. With both hands he holds the ends of the patibulum, the cross-piece of the cross. The Holy Ghost in the form of a dove flies out of his mouth and down towards Christ’s head.

This Mercy Seat comes from the estate of the Utrecht-born ‘Count’ Jan Jacob Nahuys (1801-1864) who in 1858 submitted it along with dozens of other pieces from his collection for an exhibition of ‘old objects’ at the Amsterdam artists’ society Arti et Amicitiae.⁵⁵For the question of the noble status of the Nahuys family see C. Gietman, ‘Genealogie, waarheid en statusangst in de late negentiende eeuw. De Nederlandsche Heraut (1880-1903)’, in A. Gevers et al., Mensen van adel. Beelden, manifestaties, representaties, Hilversum 2007, pp. 178-208, esp. pp. 193ff. According to the brief description in the exhibition catalogue, it was a ‘stone statue, the Trinity, from one of the churches in Utrecht’.⁶⁶Anonymous, Catalogus van voorwerpen uit den vroegeren tijd, tentoongesteld in het gebouw der Mij ten behoeve van het weduwen- en weezenfonds,exh. cat. Amsterdam (Arti et Amicitiae) 1858, no. 2534-87. The statue was probably made in the same city.⁷⁷Ignorant of the mention of the Utrecht provenance, Bouvy and Hilger placed the piece in Guelders. See D.P.R.A. Bouvy, Middeleeuwsche beeldhouwkunst in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, Amsterdam 1947, p. 62; H.P. Hilger, ‘Eine geldrische Statue der Muttergottes in Qualburg bei Kleve’, Zeitschrift des Deutschen Verein für Kunstwissenschaft 19 (1965), pp. 35-53, esp. p. 41). Geisler compared it to a limewood Christ and John group dating from around 1430 from the Upper Rhine region in the Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe. See Geisler 1957, p. 23, no. 28, fig. 54. Unlike other towns in the Northern Netherlands, Utrecht had a large population of stone sculptors from the early fourteenth century onwards, when they were working on, among other things, the decoration of the cathedral.⁸⁸M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, pp. 48-49, 92. Unfortunately little evidence of their presence survived the Iconoclasm that raged in 1566, 1579 and 1580.

In the absence of directly related works, the Mercy Seat can best be compared with a St Catherine in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, which was excavated in the cathedral close, Domplein, in 1883 on the site of the former Sint-Salvatorkerk.⁹⁹For this figure see 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. 1. Catherine’s robes and those of God the Father both have a double row of folds at the bottom that fall open gracefully. Both statues, moreover, are carved from Hohenleie, a variety of Weibern tuff that can be very finely worked. In the fifteenth century it was brought along the Rhine from the Eifel region of Germany to Utrecht.¹⁰¹⁰For this type of stone see T.G. Nijland and R.P.J. van Hees, ‘Tufsteen uit de Eifel: toepassingen in Nederland’, Vitruvius 2 (2009), no. 6, p. 41. On the basis of her high-girdled waistline and the vertically fanning folds of her robe, the St Catherine is dated to the last phase of International Gothic, around 1420-30, which in view of the facial type of God the Father, the folds of his robe and the form of the Corpus Christi is also a plausible period for the making of this Mercy Seat. This would mean that these statues are among the oldest locally made surviving stone sculptures from Utrecht.

The subject of the Mercy Seat was popular in the Low Countries during the late Middle Ages, particularly in Cleves and Guelders, Brabant and Hainaut.¹¹¹¹For an example from Cleves-Guelders see M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent, ca. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, pp. 313-14. For an example from Hainaut see J.W. Steyaert et al., Late Gothic Sculpture: The Burgundian Netherlands, exh. cat. Ghent (Museum of Fine Arts) 1994, pp. 102-03, no. 5. For two examples from Brabant see A. Huysmans et al., Beeldhouwkunst van de Zuidelijke Nederlanden en het Prinsbisdom Luik, 15de en 16de eeuw, coll. cat. Brussels (Royal Museums of Art and History) 1999, pp. 72-73, nos. 26, 27. Among the relatively small group of surviving sculptures from the Diocese of Utrecht, no other examples have been preserved. This does not, though, necessarily mean that the subject was not depicted there more often. It is highly likely that the sculpture functioned in a funerary context. In the Southern Netherlands, particularly Tournai, the iconography of the Mercy Seat was widely used on memorials from the end of the fourteenth century onwards.¹²¹²K. Smits, ‘De Genadestoel in de Nederlandsche kunst der late Middeleeuwen’, Het Gildeboek 19 (1936), pp. 125-30, esp. p. 127. For examples see L. Nys, Les tableaux votifs tournaisiens en pierre 1350-1475, Brussels 2001, nos. 23, 29, 30, 33; D. Brine, Pious Memory, Leiden 2015, pp. 151-54 and figs. 71, 73. The image was also used in the commemoration of the dead in the north, as we see from the carved epitaph Arnt van Tricht made for Derick Ros (d. 1548) around 1550 which came from the Grote Kerk in Wageningen (BK-NM-3099). The first stone memorials in Utrecht appeared at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The Mercy Seat may have been part of an early example in which the figures, in contrast to later versions, were still shown full length.¹³¹³It was not until around 1480 that the memorial tablets developed into the typical Utrecht variant, populated solely by half-length figures. See for example J. Klinckaert, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, vol. 3, Beeldhouwkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1997, pp. 80-82, 256, no. 64. Such stones were usually rectangular, sometimes with a raised central section. This Mercy Seat may therefore have been the main image, with the person commemorated kneeling in adoration to the right or left, or in the case of more than one person, on either side, possibly accompanied by patron saints.¹⁴¹⁴See for example the monument with the portraits of Bela and Hendrik van Goch at prayer in the Sint-Walburgiskerk in Zutphen, illustrated in D.P.R.A. Bouvy, Middeleeuwsche beeldhouwkunst in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, Amsterdam 1947, fig. 134. A considerable number of these sorts of early stone memorial reliefs are still in situ in Utrecht churches, particularly the Pieterskerk, albeit severely damaged by iconoclasts. In most cases only the lettering has survived.¹⁵¹⁵For example the memorial to Simon van Oostende (d. c. 1449) on the south wall at the back of the Pieterskerk, Utrecht.

Another possibility is that the Mercy Seat was part of a sacrament tower or wall tabernacle. The Sint-Pieterskerk in Leuven holds the oldest preserved sacrament tower in the Netherlands. A separately carved polychromed stone sculpture of the Mercy Seat is positioned in the central niche of the tower, which was designed by the architect Matheus de Layens in 1450.¹⁶¹⁶See KIK-IRPA, object no. 68562. Similarly, a fourteenth-century wall tabernacle in the Sebalduskirche in Nuremberg displays a polychromed stone sculpture of a Mercy Seat in its central niche.¹⁷¹⁷With thanks to Frits Scholten for this observation.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 15, with earlier literature; B. Kruijsen, Verzamelen van middeleeuwse kunst in Nederland 1830-1903, Nijmegen 2002, no. 33; Scholten in F. Scholten and G. de Werd, Een hogere werkelijkheid: Duitse en Franse beeldhouwkunst 1200-1600 uit het Rijksmuseum Amsterdam/Eine höhere Wirklichkeit, Deutsche und Französische Skulptur 1200-1600 aus dem Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, exh. cat. Cleves (Museum Kurhaus Kleve) 2004-06, p. 8

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, The Mercy Seat, Utrecht, c. 1420 - c. 1430', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24256