Getting started with the collection:
Jean Mone (follower of),
Virgin and Child Seated on Clouds with St John the Baptist and an Angel
Mechelen, c. 1540
Technical notes
Carved in relief.
Condition
The heads of the angel and John the Baptist have broken off and been re-glued. The relief has been mounted in a (19th-century) black-lacquered, velvet-lined box that could originally be closed via two small shutters.
Provenance
…; from the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden, The Hague, transferred to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885
ObjectNumber: BK-NM-7496
Entry
The alabaster-carving industry in Mechelen originated with the arrival of a small group of artists, employed by Margaret of Austria, governess of the Netherlands at the onset of the sixteenth century. These artists worked primarily in the new antyckse renaissance style imported from Italy. Most important among them where the sculptors Conrat Meit (1485-1550/51) from Worms and Jean Mone (c. 1485-?1554) from Metz, whose presence in the city stimulated local sculptors to shift their efforts in the direction of the new formal idiom and simultaneously the material alabaster. Lipinska maintains that for those artists originally trained in wood, the move to the new, relatively soft stone type alabaster was minor.1A. Lipinska, ‘“Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen”: Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe’, Simiolus 32 (2006), pp. 231-58, esp. p. 238.
As a result, a veritable industry in this kind of sculpture began to flourish in the sixteenth century, destined for a market that encompassed much of north-western Europe. Besides the Low Countries, Mechelen alabaster reliefs and altars were exported to places as far away as Poland, the Baltic States and Scandinavia.2M. Rydbeck, ‘Nederländska husaltaren från skånska kyrkor: Renässansskulptur i Skåne’, Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens Handlingar 71 (Antikvariska studier 4), Stockholm 1950, pp. 28-40; A. Lipinska, ‘“Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen”: Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe’, Simiolus 32 (2006), pp. 231-58; A. Lipinska, Wewnetrzne swiatlo: Poludniowoniderlandzka rzezba alabastrowa w Europie Srodkowo-Wschodniej, Wroclaw 2007; A. Lipinska, Moving Sculptures: Southern Netherlandish Alabasters from the 16th to 17th Centuries in Central and Northern Europe (Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History 11), Leiden/Boston 2015. The more luxurious versions of these house altars comprised both larger and smaller alabaster reliefs, mounted in ornately carved wooden frames decorated with pressed-gesso patterns. The Rijksmuseum possesses two such altars (BK-BR-515; BK-NM-2918). However, the majority of this so-called cleynstekerswerk centred on small carved tablets featuring mythological and biblical scenes in a virtually unlimited number of variations produced serially well into the first half of the seventeenth century. With dimensions up to 20 x 20 centimetres, these small alabaster reliefs were typically supplied with decorative frames edged with pressed papier-mâché. To enliven the scenes and the frames, polychromers added highlights in gold. Even today, many of these objects still bear the monograms and house marks left by their makers, conveying the competition among artists but also serving as a kind of quality guarantee.
The present relief is a work belonging to the early phase of Mechelen production. Mary, in particular, clearly reflects the influence of one of the ‘pioneers’ of Renaissance alabaster sculpture in the Low Countries, Jean Mone (c. 1485-?1554). This is evident in details such as the flowingly arched headdress, a motif Mone likely adopted from Bartolomé Ordóñez (c. 1480-1520) during the former’s Spanish period. Two figures similar to Mary in the present relief are the Mary in Mone’s Entombment in Brussels (Royal Museums of Fine Arts)3 Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, inv. no. 473, see KIK-IRPA, object no. 20037517. and a Mary on the altar in the Sint-Martinuskerk in Halle (1533).4Lipinska in J. Kriegseisen, A. Lipinska et al., Matter of Light and Flesh: Alabaster in the Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th and 17th Centuries, exh. cat. Gdansk (National Museum) 2011, p. 174 (with ill.). Also the youthful head type of Christ and St John, recalls Mone’s style.
In style and iconography, the Amsterdam relief is similar to three other alabasters, one of which is signed at the reverse by the cleynsteker Gilles Remijs (private collection, Belgium).5See KIK-IRPA, object no. 10060038. The other two works are preserved in the Gruuthuse Museum in Bruges and the Museum het Vleeshuis in Antwerp, respectively.6A. Lipinska, Wewnetrzne swiatlo: Poludniowoniderlandzka rzezba alabastrowa w Europie Srodkowo-Wschodniej, Wroclaw 2007, figs. 172-74. In all three examples, the Virgin appears seated on a group of clouds surrounded by angels, cherubs, and in most cases, St John the Baptist. Although its surface is somewhat abraded, the present piece is qualitatively the strongest of the four reliefs, both compositionally – with the flowing lines of the drapery folds transitioning into the clouds almost organically – and in terms of the figures’ poses and anatomy.
A seminal work for the dating of these alabasters is a walnut relief of the Virgin and Child, depicted in the clouds and surrounded by angels, that has a small cartellino inscribed with the year 1536. While this relief also falls stylistically in line with Mone’s work, it displays an even greater affinity to the Utrecht sculptor Colijn de Nole (1530-1553/59).7Art market, Germany, 2013. This suggests that alabaster reliefs of this nature were likely to have emerged around the same time, circa 1540. The ultimate source of inspiration for these representations were Italian engravings or drawings after Raphael, such as Marcantonio Raimondi’s Virgin and Child Seated on Clouds in Aureole (RP-P-OB-11.748), after Raphael’s Madonna of Foligno,8Vatican Museums, inv. no. 40329. Garvagh Madonna,9London, The National Gallery, inv. no. NG744. or Alba Madonna.10Washington, National Gallery of Art, inv. no. 1937.1.24.
Lastly, mention must also be made of a painted representation of Caritas, floating on a cloud, in a scene of the Crucifixion from the workshop of Bernard van Orley, court painter to Margaret of Austria (1487/91-1541), Governess of the Habsburg Netherlands.11Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, inv. no. 1629 (OK). Caritas, here personified by Margaret herself, is depicted in a pose and headdress clearly corresponding to those of the Madonna in the present alabaster relief.12Cf. D. Eichberger, Leben mit Kunst, Wirken durch Kunst, Sammelwesen und Hofkunst unter Margarete von Österreich, Regentin der Niederlande, Turnhout 2002, pp. 49-50, fig. 18. This agreement suggests that the relief’s maker had access to Van Orley’s invention, a finding further pointing to an origin in the immediate circle of the court sculptor Jan Mone.
Frits Scholten, 2024
Literature
J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 179, with earlier literature; M.K. Wustrack, Die Mechelner Alabaster-Manufaktur des 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt am Main/Bern 1982, no. 513; J. Kriegseisen, A. Lipińska et al., Matter of Light and Flesh: Alabaster in the Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th and 17th Centuries, exh. cat. Gdańsk (National Museum) 2011, no. 20
Citation
F. Scholten, 2024, 'follower of Jean Mone and , Virgin and Child Seated on Clouds with St John the Baptist and an Angel, Mechelen, c. 1540', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24460
(accessed 18 February 2025 20:41:47).Footnotes
- 1A. Lipinska, ‘“Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen”: Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe’, Simiolus 32 (2006), pp. 231-58, esp. p. 238.
- 2M. Rydbeck, ‘Nederländska husaltaren från skånska kyrkor: Renässansskulptur i Skåne’, Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens Handlingar 71 (Antikvariska studier 4), Stockholm 1950, pp. 28-40; A. Lipinska, ‘“Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen”: Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe’, Simiolus 32 (2006), pp. 231-58; A. Lipinska, Wewnetrzne swiatlo: Poludniowoniderlandzka rzezba alabastrowa w Europie Srodkowo-Wschodniej, Wroclaw 2007; A. Lipinska, Moving Sculptures: Southern Netherlandish Alabasters from the 16th to 17th Centuries in Central and Northern Europe (Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History 11), Leiden/Boston 2015.
- 3Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, inv. no. 473, see KIK-IRPA, object no. 20037517.
- 4Lipinska in J. Kriegseisen, A. Lipinska et al., Matter of Light and Flesh: Alabaster in the Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th and 17th Centuries, exh. cat. Gdansk (National Museum) 2011, p. 174 (with ill.).
- 5See KIK-IRPA, object no. 10060038.
- 6A. Lipinska, Wewnetrzne swiatlo: Poludniowoniderlandzka rzezba alabastrowa w Europie Srodkowo-Wschodniej, Wroclaw 2007, figs. 172-74.
- 7Art market, Germany, 2013.
- 8Vatican Museums, inv. no. 40329.
- 9London, The National Gallery, inv. no. NG744.
- 10Washington, National Gallery of Art, inv. no. 1937.1.24.
- 11Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, inv. no. 1629 (OK).
- 12Cf. D. Eichberger, Leben mit Kunst, Wirken durch Kunst, Sammelwesen und Hofkunst unter Margarete von Österreich, Regentin der Niederlande, Turnhout 2002, pp. 49-50, fig. 18.