Carved from a working block composed of two planks of quarter-sawn oak (wainscot), glued and nailed together and possibly originally polychromed. The raised edge at the top of the Virgin’s head functioned to hold a now missing (metal?) crown. The reverse has been slightly finished.

The Virgin’s (metal?) crown is missing, as are the Christ Child’s right hand and a section of his right foot. Breakages can be discerned along the bottom edge. The polychromy has been removed with a caustic. Remnants of the chalk ground are still present in deeper-lying areas.

…; from the Bridgettine convent Maria Refugie, Uden, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, together with numerous other sculptures (BK-NM-1195 to -1243), fl. 2,000 for all, 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885

Object number: BK-NM-1227

The naked Christ Child held in the Virgin’s arms is holding an apple, an attribute associated with the Fall of Man. In the present context, however, the forbidden fruit acquires a positive meaning. Through Christ – who took upon himself the burden of man’s sin – and the purity of his mother, the Virgin Mary, the apple is transformed into the fruit of salvation. With this in mind, the sculpture refers to the theological concept of Christ and Mary as the ‘new’ Adam and Eve.¹¹For Christ as the ‘new’ Adam and Mary as the ‘new’ Eve, see O. Schmitt (ed.), Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, vol. 1, Stuttgart 1937, pp. 158-67; E. Guldan, Eva und Maria: Eine Antithese als Bildmotiv, Graz-Cologne 1966, pp. 27-36.

In a broad sense, the style of the present statuette recalls that of Netherlandish woodcarving from the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The small punched hand on the reverse – the quality mark applied by the Antwerp woodcarvers’ guild in the late Middle Ages – suggests a more definite attribution to this Brabantine city, were it not that its style conveys so little of the sculpture produced there.²²The work displays only a few highly superficial similarities to a ‘family’ of Virgin figures, which Steyeart situated in Antwerp based on sound arguments, including a Virgin and Child from ca. 1470-80 in the Carmelite convent of Brussels, see J.W. Steyaert et al., Late Gothic Sculpture: The Burgundian Netherlands, exh. cat. Ghent (Museum of Fine Arts) 1994, pp. 162-64. The heavy, rippling folds of the Virgin’s robes are in fact more characteristic of Brussels woodcarving around 1500. Closer parallels to her facial type and the overall composition, however, can be found in the Northern Netherlands. Prior to the discovery of the Antwerp mark, this work was therefore classified as a northern work.³³A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor geschiedenis en kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1904, no. 71. The Virgin’s facial type, complete with narrow chin and downward-gazing eyes, is reminiscent of several comparable figures from Utrecht, including two Virgin statuettes in the Museum Catharijneconvent,⁴⁴Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, inv. nos. ABM bh339 and ABM bh340, 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, p. 263 (ills.). each belonging to a group with the Virgin and Child with St Anne (St Anne Trinity). Furthermore, the Christ Child’s pose and the manner in which his mother supports him, appears in an almost identical form in an Utrecht (?) Virgin and Child, dated circa 1475, in the same museum.⁵⁵Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, inv. no ABM bh295, see M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent, ca. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, pp. 213-24. Witsen Elias – familiar with the Antwerp mark on the Amsterdam figure – noted the similarity to a somewhat comparable Virgin and Child on the choir stalls in the Martinikerk in Bolsward (Friesland), on which basis he concluded that the maker certainly originated from the Southern Netherlands (Brabant, or more precisely, Antwerp).⁶⁶J.S. Witsen Elias, De Nederlandse koorbanken tijdens Gothiek en Renaissance, Amsterdam 1937, p. 71. This was rejected by Bouvy, see D.P.R.A. Bouvy, Middeleeuwsche beeldhouwkunst in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, Amsterdam 1947, pp. 115-16.

One hypothetical explanation for the mix of Brussels and Utrecht influences displayed in this statuette could be the thriving artistic exchange that arose between these two cities in the late Middle Ages. Yet even this would fail to clarify the presence of the Antwerp guild mark. Besides this perceived stylistic discrepancy, however, another matter concerns the authenticity of the Amsterdam figure. The Virgin’s face appears strikingly modern, as does the manner – atypical by any medieval standard – in which the locks of hair descending down her back merge together in elegantly formed points. Also problematic is the illogical division of the mantle, with two distinct areas of schematic, V-shaped folds draping down both sides of the left leg. All points to the present Virgin and Child being a forgery from the neo-gothic era, furnished with a falsified guild mark and bathed in lye to age the wood. If accurate, the purported provenance of the abbey at Koudewater – dissolved in 1713 – may also be dismissed. This implies the statuette came into the Bridgettine nuns’ possession only after they moved to Uden, from where it was acquired by the Nederlandsch Museum in 1875, together with numerous other sculptures.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 140, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, Virgin and Child, Netherlands, before 1875', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20014994