Carved in relief and partly gilded.

A vertical fracture traverses the medallion parallel to the staff. The surface has sustained minor damage in some of the more protrusive areas. The profiled stucco frame encircling the tondo is non-original, as is the modern stone plaque on which the tondo has been mounted. The four cherubim in the corners may have accompanied the tondo in its original setting.

…; sale collection Willem Hekking Jr (1825-1904, Haarlem), Amsterdam (J. Schulman), 16-18 February 1897, no. 647 (as Le Christ portant sa croix), fl. 172, to the museum

Object number: BK-NM-10867

St John the Baptist stands before a large tree while preaching his sermon to numerous figures gathered around him. In the Christian tradition seen as the prophet who prepares the way for Christ, John foretells the coming of the Messiah – expressed on the tondo by the fingers of his right hand pointing towards heaven – and beseeches his listeners to repent their sins and be baptized. The theme became more prevalent during the period of the Reformation, possibly to be interpreted as an allusion to so-called hagepreken (hedge sermons), church services held in the open air outside the cities’ jurisdiction, as members of the Protestant faith were forbidden to worship openly.

Based on a superficial stylistic agreement with the wooden reliefs adorning church pulpits in Delft, The Hague and Den Bosch, Pit described the present tondo as a work from the Northern Netherlands, carved circa 1550.¹¹A. Pit, ‘De verzameling Hollandsch beeldhouwwerk in het Nederlandsch Museum, te Amsterdam’, Bulletin van den Nederlandschen Oudheidkundigen Bond 1 (1899-1900), pp. 148-54, esp. p. 150. Leeuwenberg’s unsubstantiated localization of the relief in the Southern Netherlands holds more ground, even if dated relatively late (c. 1600).²²J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 196. Scholten subsequently proposed a more specific provenance in Antwerp, citing stylistic characteristics such as the ‘long, mannerist figures in robes with numerous sickle-shaped folds and clear volumes, the straight facial profiles, bent backs and […] a great mastery of composition and spatial organization.³³lange, gemaniëreerde figuren in gewaden met veel sikkelvormige plooien en duidelijke volumes, rechte gezichtsprofielen, gebogen ruggen en (…) een zeer grote beheersing van compositie en ruimtelijke organisatie; Scholten in G.W.C. van Wezel, De Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk en de grafkapel voor Oranje-Nassau te Breda, Zwolle 2003, p. 185. He also noted parallels to the seven Avender stone tondi on the Van Renesse tomb monument in the Grote Kerk of Breda (fig. a).⁴⁴H.A. Tummers et al., Bestendige vergankelijkheid: Het gerestaureerde grafmonument voor Frederik van Renesse in de Grote Kerk te Breda, Zeist 2004, figs. 23-29. Cf. especially the seated figure on the right of the tondo representing Christ among the Teachers (ibidem. fig. 25) with those seated in the foreground of the Amsterdam tondo. Although traditionally attributed to the sculptor Jean Mone (c. 1485-?1554), Scholten describes the wall tomb in Breda as an early work of Cornelis Floris II (1513/14-1575), ‘that still leans towards the style of Mone and Antwerp Mannerism and was made before the sculptor developed his own characteristic signature’.⁵⁵dat nog aanleunt tegen de stijl van Mone en het Antwerpse maniërisme en werd gemaakt voordat de beeldhouwer zijn eigen karakteristieke handschrift had ontwikkeld; that Floris’s work was well received in Breda is confirmed by the fact that five later tomb monuments in the same church can be attributed with certainty to his workshop. Tummers, though persistent in his belief that Jean Mone was the leading designer of the Van Renesse monument, accepts Scholten’s attribution of various elements to Cornelis Floris, including the tondi, as these indeed display a more mannerist style when compared to similar reliefs by Mone, such as those on the altar retables in Halle and Brussels.⁶⁶H.A. Tummers et al., Bestendige vergankelijkheid: Het gerestaureerde grafmonument voor Frederik van Renesse in de Grote Kerk te Breda, Zeist 2004, pp. 14-15.

Floris and his followers frequently incorporated tondi filled with relief-carved biblical scenes or heraldic coats of arms in their designs for architecture, choir screens, retables and tomb monuments.⁷⁷For numerous illustrated examples, see A. Huysmans, Cornelis Floris 1514-1575: Beeldhouwer, architect, ontwerper, Brussels 1996, and 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. In terms of composition and execution, the Amsterdam medallion fails to meet the quality standard one would expect from the master himself. On the basis of the stylistic characteristics noted above, however, it can be attributed to an assistant working in Floris’s shop or an Antwerp follower. For the figure of St John the Baptist, with his elongated body and contrapposto stance, the sculptor may very well have been inspired by the Christ figure in the alabaster Ascension reliefs produced in Floris’s atelier, such as found on the choir screen in Tournai Cathedral (fig. b) and the epitaphs of Adolf and Anton von Schauenburg in Cologne Cathedral.⁸⁸A. Huysmans, Cornelis Floris 1514-1575: Beeldhouwer, architect, ontwerper, Brussels 1996, pp. 97-99, ills. 228-31 and pp. 111-13, figs. 252-56. Notably, neither the Christ figure nor the composition is an invention of Floris himself: both were more or less standard elements in European art from the late fifteenth century on, with variants by a wide range of artists, including Martin Schongauer (c. 1430-1491), Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570) and Titian (c. 1488/90-1576). Whether or not in direct imitation of Floris’s work, these figures make their appearance on numerous Southern Netherlandish Ascension reliefs, e.g. those of Willem van den Broecke (1530-1580) at Lübeck and Augsburg, and Robert Coppens (c. 1550-1618) in Schwerin Cathedral.⁹⁹A. 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, pp. 84-86, figs. 60, 65; F. Schlie, Die Kunst- und Geschichts-Denkmäler des Grossherzogthums Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Schwerin 1899, vol. 2, pp. 558-60. For other, chiefly anonymous examples, cf. 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, figs. 81, 87, 88, 144, 170, 172-76. In the foreground of these compositions, one invariably encounters sleeping soldiers; this motif is also repeated on the John the Baptist tondo in the form of the reclining figures front left and right, while the tree’s foliage recalls the clouds encircling the resurrected Christ.¹⁰¹⁰Cf. the composition of the Amsterdam tondo with the tondos on the anonymous epitaph from Floris’s workshop in the Grote Kerk of Breda (A. Huysmans, Cornelis Floris 1514-1575: Beeldhouwer, architect, ontwerper, Brussels 1996, fig. 235; Scholten in G.W.C. van Wezel, De Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk en de grafkapel voor Oranje-Nassau te Breda, Zwolle 2003, p. 187) and on the Adoration retable in Pécs Cathedral (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, pp. 279-83).

What function the Amsterdam tondo originally served is not known. Its dimensions are virtually equal to those of the medallions on the aforementioned Renesse wall tomb and more or less the same as several other Southern Netherlandish alabaster tondi surviving in their original context or reconstructed as such.¹¹¹¹Cf. e.g. the tondi crowning the epitaph of Hans Wolff and Katharina Pfinzig formerly in Saint-Elizabeth’s Church in Wraclow, and the alabaster altarpiece in Pécs Cathedral, Hungary (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, pp. 238-42 and pp. 279-83). In tomb art, however, the theme of John the Baptist preaching is uncommon. The tondo therefore more likely belonged to a retable (dedicated to John the Baptist) or church pulpit. For the latter, a scene of this nature would have been ideally suited.¹²¹²Cf. the wooden relief on the mid-16th-century pulpit in the Sint-Janskathedraal in Den Bosch, to which a sounding board and baldachin were added after the iconoclasm of 1566, see C.J.A.C. Peeters, De Sint Janskathedraal te ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Hague 1985, pp. 358-59. The sandstone cherubim adorning the corners of the modern, rectangular plaque on which the tondo has been mounted display remnants of polychromy and gilding. These heads may have belonged to the original monumental ensemble, just as those on the Van Renesse tomb monument, where similar heads are incorporated in the frieze.¹³¹³H.A. Tummers et al., Bestendige vergankelijkheid: Het gerestaureerde grafmonument voor Frederik van Renesse in de Grote Kerk te Breda, Zeist 2004, pp. 6, 8. Cherubim can also be seen in the engraving of Gerrit van Assendelft’s wall tomb in the Grote Kerk in The Hague (see RP-P-OB-31.617) and the epitaph for Canon Louchard in Saint-Omer (A. Huysmans, Cornelis Floris 1514-1575: Beeldhouwer, architect, ontwerper, Brussels 1996, p. 192, fig. 232). The top corners of a stylistically related, round-arched relief which also derives from the Willem Hekking Jr collection (fig. c),¹⁴¹⁴Sale collection Willem Hekking Jr (1825-1904, Haarlem), Amsterdam (J. Schulman), 16-18 February 1897, no. 646 (as La Nativité). are adorned with two highly similar cherubim. As both objects were formerly held in the same nineteenth-century collection, it can be deemed very probable that the cherubim, and possibly also the reliefs, originally belonged to the same ensemble.

Titia de Haseth Möller and Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 196, with earlier literature; Scholten in G.W.C. van Wezel, De Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk en de grafkapel voor Oranje-Nassau te Breda, Zwolle 2003, p. 185

T. de Haseth Möller and B. van der Mark, 2024, 'circle of Cornelis (II) Floris, St John the Baptist Preaching, Antwerp, c. 1540 - c. 1560', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035627