Carved. The reverse of the globe is flat, the Virgin’s back is lightly tooled. St Mary, the Christ Child and the central part of the crescent moon are carved from one piece of ivory. There are small holes in the heads of the Virgin and the Child to accommodate (missing) aureoles. An attachment hole has been made behind the Virgin and on the reverse on the globe.

The aureoles are missing from the Virgin and the Christ Child, as are a coil of the Virgin’s hair, the spear in the Child’s right hand and probably an apple from the mouth of the serpent. The present pedestal, with tortoiseshell inlay and ebony veneer, is described in the auction catalogue of Peeter Frans van Schorel, Antwerp (J. Grange), 7 June 1774, no. 29, and is most probably original. According to the last owner, an accompanying glazed cabinet was lost in WWII.

…; sale collection Peeter Frans van Schorel, Lord of Wilrijk (1716-1773/78), Antwerp (J. Grange), 7 June 1774, p. 375, no. 29, fl. 400, to ‘Schorel’;¹¹Copy RKD …; collection Van de Velden, date unknown; his son, A. van de Velden, Borgerhout (near Antwerp); from whom, fl. 26,000, to the museum, 1962

Object number: BK-1962-5

This imposing ivory combines two iconographic types. The Virgin is portrayed as ‘Maria Immaculata’, an apocalyptic woman on the globe and a crescent moon, as well as ‘the new Eve’ who prevails over evil as embodied in a serpent, the creature that seduced Eve in paradise.²²E. Mâle, L’art religieux de la fin du XVIe siècle; Étude sure l’iconographie après le concile de Trente: Italie-France-Espagne-Flandres, Paris 1951, pp. 32-40. The Virgin is crushing this serpent, which probably originally held an apple, the symbol of the Fall, in its wide open mouth. With this, she confirms her immaculate conception and freedom from original sin. This new iconography, known as St Mary of Victory, came about in the Counter-Reformation, and was also interpreted more specifically as the Catholic church triumphing over the heresy of Protestantism. The Virgin is usually aided by the Christ Child, ‘the new Adam’, as is the case here with the Child attacking the serpent with a spear, which is now missing.³³The cylindrical notch in his right hand and the interaction between the Child and the serpent confirm that he would originally have held a spear with which to attack the serpent, and was not merely ‘reaching out his hands’ as claimed by Leeuwenberg in J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 256.

The superbly carved ivory was originally attributed unsatisfactorily to Artus Quellinus I (1609-1668) and then to his cousin of the same name, Artus Quellinus II (1625-1700).⁴⁴G. van Bever, Les tailleurs d’yvoires de la Renaissance au XIXe siècle, Brussels 1946, p. 39; Verslagen der Rijksverzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1962, p. 21. In 1971 Theuerkauff was able convincingly to assign the piece to the oeuvre of Mattheus van Beveren (1630-1690).⁵⁵Theuerkauff in E. Rümmler, C. Theuerkauff et al., Europäische Barockplastik am Niederrhein: Grupello und seine Zeit, exh. cat. Düsseldorf (Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf) 1971, no. 195. More recently it has even been identified as a valuable ivory Madonna figure by that master in the considerable art collection of the eighteenth-century Antwerp burgomaster Peeter Frans van Schorel, Lord of Wilrijk.⁶⁶With thanks to Benoît Orban de Xivry, Brussels, for this information. Written communication, 7 February 2006. The extensive description of that work in the 1774 auction catalogue of his collection in fact corresponds in detail with the Amsterdam ivory and the concomitant pedestal, which is partially inlaid with tortoiseshell and veneered in ebony.⁷⁷Sale Antwerp (J. Grange), 7 June 1774, no. 29: La sainte Vierge tenant sur ses bras l’Enfant Jesus. Elle est debout sur un croissant posé sur un globe, & foule aux pieds le serpent qui tenta Eve. Cette figure, qui est aussi de la main de Van Beveren, est bien dessinée, bien drapée, & le nud s’y fait sentir à propos. Elle est d’un seul morceau d’ivoire, & porte 21 po. de haut. Le piedouche sur lequel elle est posse, est de marqueterie d’ébène & d’écaille. (The Holy Virgin holding the Christ Child in her arms. She is standing on crescent moon placed on a globe, & with her feet she crushes the serpent which tempted Eve. This figure, which is also by Van Beveren [as is lot no. 28, an ivory crucifix, is well designed, well draped, and the naked form can be discerned. She is made from a single piece of ivory & has a height of 21 inches. The pedestal on which she stands is veneered with ebony & tortoiseshell. )] At the auction the work made no less than 400 guilders, a sum on a par with that paid for the best paintings of Rubens and higher than any of Anthony van Dyck’s works in the burgomaster’s collection.

Van Beveren, together with Pieter Scheemaekers I (1652-1714), was one of the most prominent pupils of the Antwerp sculptor Pieter Verbruggen I (1615-1686). In 1649 or 1650 Van Beveren enrolled in the guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp.⁸⁸For further biographical details see P. Philippot, D. Coekelberghs, P. Loze and D. Vautier, L’Architecture religieuse et la sculpture baroques dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et la principauté de Liège: 1600-1770, Sprimont 2003, pp. 912-16.
As an independent master, he had concentrated mainly on monumental sculpture in wood and stone. The fact that the sculptor was also a gifted ivory carver, who succeeded in accurately portraying life in his ivories, was mentioned by Jacobus van den Sanden, the secretary of the Antwerp art academy, in his unpublished, three-part manuscript Oud Konst-toneel van Antwerpen of 1770-71.⁹⁹C. Theuerkauff, ‘Anmerkungen zum Werk des Antwerpener Bildhauers Matthieu van Beveren (um 1630-1690)', Oud Holland 89 (1975), pp. 19-62, esp. pp. 19, 42 (with transcriptions of the relevant passages). Interestingly, the afore-mentioned Peeter Frans van Schorel was also closely involved in the art academy in question, and was its director in chief from 1749 to 1756. It is highly likely that Van den Sanden was able to base his praise, in part, on the ivory Madonna owned by his colleague.

Mattheus van Beveren worked in a relatively understated, late-baroque style with pronounced classicist tendencies. In his oeuvre, some development towards an increasingly elegant visual form can be detected. He achieved it among other things by giving his figures rather more relaxed stances and more slender proportions, and clothing them in ever more elegantly draped garb. Theuerkauff based his attribution of the Amsterdam ivory on its great similarity to some of the master’s principal works, including the figure of Virtus on the marble funerary monument for Lamoral Claude-François, count of Thurn und Taxis, in the Église Notre-Dame du Sablon in Brussels, dating from 1678 (fig. a) and the sandstone Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows on Gaspar Boest’s sepulchral monument in Sint-Jacobskerk in Antwerp dating from 1665.¹⁰¹⁰Ssee KIK-IRPA, object no. 62051. Theuerkauff in E. Rümmler, C. Theuerkauff et al., Europäische Barockplastik am Niederrhein: Grupello und seine Zeit, exh. cat. Düsseldorf (Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf) 1971, pp. 262-63 and C. Theuerkauff, ‘Anmerkungen zum Werk des Antwerpener Bildhauers Matthieu van Beveren (um 1630-1690)', Oud Holland 89 (1975), pp. 19-62, esp. pp. 20-23, figs. 4, 15.

The extremely elegant, attenuated Amsterdam Madonna unquestionably qualifies as part of Van Beveren’s more mature work. Theuerkauff originally dated the ivory to circa 1680-90, partly because the type of Christ Child bears a great many similarities to the putti around Van Beveren’s oak pulpit in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk in Dendermonde from 1681-84.¹¹¹¹Theuerkauff in E. Rümmler, C. Theuerkauff et al., Europäische Barockplastik am Niederrhein: Grupello und seine Zeit, exh. cat. Düsseldorf (Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf) 1971, esp. p. 263. However, he later concluded that the ivory could just as well have come about in the previous decade,¹²¹²C. Theuerkauff, ‘Anmerkungen zum Werk des Antwerpener Bildhauers Matthieu van Beveren (um 1630-1690)', Oud Holland 89 (1975), pp. 19-62, esp. pp. 29-30. In comparison, he referred to the crowned figures on the main altar in Sint-Niklaaskerk in Ghent which Van Beveren made in 1677/78, see ibid., fig. 10. emphasizing that dating Van Beveren’s small-scale carvings is a hazardous undertaking. On the one hand, because the dated monumental reference works are not ideal material for comparison on account of their larger size and different materials, on the other hand because Van Beveren often drew on older (print) examples or designs by other masters.¹³¹³Theuerkauff (C. Theuerkauff, ‘Anmerkungen zum Werk des Antwerpener Bildhauers Matthieu van Beveren (um 1630-1690)', Oud Holland 89 (1975), pp. 19-62, esp. note 26) suggested that the Amsterdam ivory was inspired by the painting The Last Judgement of c. 1640-50 in the Uffizi which is attributed to Abraham van Diepenbeeck, though the similarities are slight, see RKD images no. 48743.

With its 58 centimetres this statuette is Mattheus van Beveren’s largest known ivory. Apart from the size, the monumentality of the piece is further reinforced by the Virgin’s exalted presence and the excellent technical execution. The Amsterdam Madonna, together with a more baroque Maria Immaculata in the Museum Krona in Uden (fig. b) and a small memorial for King James II in Windsor Castle which the master made in the final years of his life,¹⁴¹⁴The Maria Immaculata would seem to have been made earlier than the Amsterdam ivory, see L. van Liebergen, ‘Maria Immaculata’, Bulletin van de Vereniging Rembrandt 17 (2007), pp. 20-22. For the King James II memorial see C. Theuerkauff, ‘Anmerkungen zum Werk des Antwerpener Bildhauers Matthieu van Beveren (um 1630-1690)', Oud Holland 89 (1975), pp. 19-62, esp. pp. 45, 49, 53, 56, 58, 61-62, figs. 23, 25. are amongst Van Beveren’s finest works in ivory and belong to the major achievements of Antwerp ivory sculpture.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

Verslagen der Rijksverzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1962, p. 21; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 345, with earlier literature; K. Feuchtmayr and A. Schädler, Georg Petel 1601/2-1634: Gesammelte Aufsätze, Berlin 1973, p. 184; C. Theuerkauff, ‘Anmerkungen zum Werk des Antwerpener Bildhauers Matthieu van Beveren (um 1630-1690)ʼ, Oud Holland 89 (1975), pp. 19-62, esp. pp. 19-23, 29, 30 (note 26), 32, 34, 36, 37, 53, 55, 56, 58 (note 101), 61, 62; E. Dhanens (ed.), De beeldhouwkunst in de eeuw van Rubens in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden en het prinsbisdom Luik, exh. cat. Brussels (Museum voor Oude Kunst) 1977, no. 159, p. 160; C. Theuerkauff, ‘Addenda to the Small-Scale Sculpture of Matthieu van Beveren of Antwerp’, Metropolitan Museum Journal 23 (1988), pp. 125-47, esp. pp. 130-31; F. Scholten, ‘Rombout Verhulsts ivoren Madonna met Christus’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 51 (2003), pp. 102-17, esp. p. 116; L. van Liebergen, ‘Maria Immaculata’, Bulletin van de Vereniging Rembrandt 17 (2007), pp. 20-22, esp. pp. 21-22

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'Mattheus van Beveren, St Mary of Victory, Antwerp, c. 1680 - c. 1690', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200116043