The Visitation

Carved and perhaps originally polychromed. Tremolierung has been applied to the integrally carved base. Two square iron nails and two small round holes (ø 5 mm and ø 1 mm) are discernible on the reverse, the surface of which has been rounded off.

…; bequeathed to the museum by Julius Wilhelm Edwin vom Rath (1863-1940), Amsterdam, 1941

ObjectNumber: BK-15403

Credit line: J.W.E. vom Rath Bequest, Amsterdam

Against the background of a steeply rising landscape with city ramparts surmounting hills in the distance, Mary and Elizabeth clasp hands in a gesture of greeting. The relief shows the moment when Mary reveals to her cousin that she is pregnant (Luke 1:36-56). To the great joy of both, Elizabeth informs Mary that she too is with child, despite her late age and having been barren throughout her life. The scene of the Visitation also signifies the first meeting between Jesus and St John the Baptist, albeit in their mothers’ wombs. The present relief probably comes from a retable containing multiple scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary.

The relief’s style is characterized by the intimate atmosphere and skilful treatment of the fluttering robes. Mary’s endearing facial type is derived from Florentine models of the fifteenth century, while Elizabeth’s slightly distorted physiognomy and fanciful raiment betray the influence of Antwerp Mannerism. Utilizing a woodblock no more than 6 centimetres thick, the anonymous sculptor achieved a great illusion of spatial depth.

The relief was probably made in Mechelen, a city near Antwerp, on the basis of a perceived stylistic agreement with the work of the sculptor Jean Mone (c. 1485-?1554). It was the presence of Margaret of Austria, the governess of Brabant, and her court sculptors – among them Mone, who originated from north-eastern France – that had made this city the cradle of renaissance sculpture in the Low Countries. The present Visitation can be readily compared to an oak-carved relief of the Entombment preserved at the Art and History Museum in Brussels, described by Huymans as a product of an ‘Italianising Mechelen atelier’ and dated circa 1530-40.¹¹Brussels, Art and History Museum, inv. no. 8657, see A. Huysmans et al., Beeldhouwkunst van de Zuidelijke Nederlanden en het Prinsbisdom Luik, coll. cat. Brussels (Royal Museums for Art and History) 1999, no. 97. Both retable groups clearly display Jean Mone’s influence, even if acknowledging the Amsterdam relief as a work far less renaissance-like in spirit. The innocent facial type of the Virgin, together with her hair loosely pulled back, can be linked to the Virgin in Mone’s alabaster house altar of 1530-40 in the same Brussels Museum.²²Brussels, Art and History Museum, inv. no. 2425, see A. Huysmans et al., Beeldhouwkunst van de Zuidelijke Nederlanden en het Prinsbisdom Luik, coll. cat. Brussels (Royal Museums for Art and History) 1999, no. 122. Parallels in the drapery folds are discernible on the robes of the female figures in the relief with the Entombment in Mone’s Passion Retable of 1538-41 in Brussels Cathedral.³³See KIK-IRPA, object no. 20014871.

The manner in which the retable group was conceived as a relief is perhaps related to the production of alabaster reliefs concentrated in Mechelen (cf. BK-NM-7496), which would further reinforce an origin in that city. This aspect clearly deviates from that of Antwerp retables, a manufacture firmly rooted in the late-gothic tradition and practiced well into the sixteenth century. With these altarpieces, the illusion of depth was achieved by positioning the separately carved figures of a group in such a manner that they partly overlapped (cf. BK-15436).

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 190, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, The Visitation, Brabant, c. 1530 - c. 1550', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24474