Carved in the round. The reverse, though somewhat flat, is finished. Mary Magdalene leans back slightly to the left, thus following the woodblock’s form. Tremolierung has been applied to the reverse of the base.

Small fractures are discernible in the wood. Two wood pieces have been inserted in the base, front middle and rear left. Glue remnants are discernible on the underside.

…; from the dealer Margaret Burg, London, £ 400 (fl. 4,268), to the museum, 1957; on loan to the Museum voor Religieuze Kunst, Uden, 2005-12

Object number: BK-1957-38

On the basis of her rich attire and uncovered hair, this figure of a praying woman can be identified as Mary Magdalene. Carved in boxwood and completely in the round, the statuette comes from a small Crucifixion altar. These altars traditionally comprised Christ on the cross flanked by standing figures of Mary and St John, but also sometimes included additional figures such as the two thieves crucified simultaneously with Christ, or as in this case, Mary Magdalene. From the late Middle Ages on, this type of Crucifixion house altar – filled with costly cabinet sculptures carved in boxwood or ivory – were very popular items among affluent families in the Low Countries. Made as individual statuettes, typically standing freely on a separately carved Mount Calvary, such figures often became separated from their original context. In Brussels, a boxwood Crucifixion altar dating from circa 1510 survives completely intact, together with its separately carved figures (with donor figures from c. 1560).¹¹Brussels, Art and History Museum, inv. no. 701, see F. Scholten (ed.), Small Wonders: Late-Gothic Boxwood Micro-Carvings from the Low Countries, exh. cat. Toronto (Art Gallery of Ontario)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2016-17, no. 67.

While the present Mary Magdalene remains rooted in the Brabantine late-gothic type, the flowing folds of her robes suggest an origin around the mid-sixteenth century. The same type appears in a similar manner in the Crucifixion scenes of numerous large painted Passion altarpieces, with the Magdalene depicted kneeling in adoration before the crucified figure of Christ or embracing the wood of the cross. A splendid example carved in boxwood, dating from circa 1520 and once belonging to small Crucifixion altar, is preserved at the Musée national de la Renaissance in Ecouen.²²Ecouen, Musée national de la Renaissance, inv. no. ECL 21352, see F. Scholten (ed.), Small Wonders: Late-Gothic Boxwood Micro-Carvings from the Low Countries, exh. cat. Toronto (Art Gallery of Ontario)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2016-17, no. 68. Stylistically, the present Magdalene is akin to boxwood figures of Mary and John from circa 1560 in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, also originally belonging to a small Crucifixion altar.³³New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. nos. 47.3.1 and 47.3.2 see T. Müller, ‘Zur südniederländischen Kleinplastik der Spätrenaissance’, in W. Gramberg et al. (eds.), Festschrift für Erich Meyer sechzigsten Geburtstag: 29. Oktober 1957: Studien zu Werken in den Sammlungen des Museums für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Hamburg 1959, pp. 191-99, esp. figs. 9 and 10. Highly similar are the broad, Flemish facial types, the folds of the voluminous garments, the execution of the hair and the shape of the hands. The noticeably small heads of the New York figures nevertheless betray a different hand.

Leeuwenberg posited that the figure of Mary Magdalene could likewise be identified as the altar’s donor.⁴⁴J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 164. This conclusion appears unfounded, however, given the lack of individual facial characteristics, but also in view of the exceptionality of a donor gazing directly in the beholder’s direction. For instance, the donor figure (identified by an inscription as Brother Cornelis van der Tyt) of a boxwood Crucifixion altar in the Victoria and Albert Museum, looks upward at an angle at the (now lost) corpus Christi.⁵⁵London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. 229-1889, see T. Müller, ‘Zur südniederländischen Kleinplastik der Spätrenaissance’, in W. Gramberg et al. (eds.), Festschrift für Erich Meyer sechzigsten Geburtstag: 29. Oktober 1957: Studien zu Werken in den Sammlungen des Museums für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Hamburg 1959, pp. 191-99, esp. p. 196 and fig. 8; F. Scholten (ed.), Small Wonders: Late-Gothic Boxwood Micro-Carvings from the Low Countries, exh. cat. Toronto (Art Gallery of Ontario)/New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2016-17, no. 87. One parallel, however, for the direction of the figure’s gaze is found on a comparable Magdalene in an oak Crucifixion altar in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum (fig. a).⁶⁶Aachen, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, inv. no. SK 234, see D. Preising and M. Rief, Niederländische Skulpturen von 1130 bis 1600, coll. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2017, no. 25. Like the Amsterdam example, here too the praying figure of Mary Magdalene kneels to the right, with her head and upper torso emphatically turned in the direction of the beholder, instead of looking up at the crucified Christ. This deviation can be explained by the figure’s rather unusual positioning, with the Magdalene kneeling directly in front of the cross instead of adjacent to it: had she been looking up at the cross, one would then see only the back of the head.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 195, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, Mary Magdalene, from a Crucifixion Altar, Southern Netherlands, c. 1550', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035626