Virgin and Child Flanked by Two Shield-Bearers, Fragment of a Frieze from a Chimney-Piece

Entry

This relief is one of a group of typical Utrecht carved (fragments of) stone chimney-piece friezes dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.¹ In other towns these lintels were usually plain or very simply decorated, but in Utrecht they were often elaborately ornamented with figurative reliefs, which were then polychromed. The rise in their popularity was probably prompted by the construction work on Utrecht Cathedral, which was adorned with a great deal of decorative and figurative carving.² The chimney-pieces in the larger rooms of mansions sometimes assumed huge proportions. The finest example came from Huis Zoudenbalch in Donkerstraat, Utrecht, but is now in Huize Hiëronymus on Maliesingel in the same city.³ The Centraal Museum in Utrecht has a contemporaneous Utrecht chimney-piece that is likewise still complete.⁴ The frieze there is supported on either side by two jambs that go down to the floor.

Chimney-piece friezes usually contain three medallions with a saint in the centre, flanked by escutcheons that are sometimes held by supporters (shield bearers). The Virgin is represented most frequently, as in this frieze. She appears as a half-length figure in an aureole above the crescent moon, with the Christ child in her arms. The child plays with a rosary, a globe and a dove. The two outer medallions contain images of supporters in imaginary costumes. The men hold the escutcheons up before them on a strap and are capering like puppets. The left-hand escutcheon (heraldic right) with three fleur de lis is so common that without polychromy it cannot be linked to a particular family. The one on the right (heraldic left) with three keys and three rosettes is rare and probably belonged to the Lam family, which has been traced to the southeast of Utrecht.⁵ Between the medallions and the late gothic blind tracery, there is an angel with a harp on the left and an angel playing a triangle (‘klingijzer’) on the right. The heads of St John the Baptist on a platter in the small medallions below them may indicate a connection with the Order of the Knights of St John. The moulded border below is decorated with rosettes.

Stylistically, the frieze is typical of Utrecht carving of the early sixteenth century. The shallow but flowing folds of the Virgin’s cloak and the treatment of her waving hair, which fall in broad, individual tresses over her shoulders, are similar to figures of the Virgin in three pieces in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht: a frieze and an epitaph by the Master of the Utrecht Stone Female Head (active c. 1490-c. 1530),⁶ and an epitaph by another anonymous Utrecht artist.⁷ In terms of the Virgin’s facial type, her large crown, the rounded folds of her robes and the playful attitude of the infant Christ, the Amsterdam frieze is most like the latter piece, which is said to have come from the cloister of the former Mariakerk in Utrecht.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024