Virgin and Child

Carved in the round and originally polychromed. Markings made by a workbench vice can be discerned on the sculpture’s underside. On the reverse, two wrought-iron rings have been attached, one above the other.

The polychromy has been removed. Both of the Christ Child’s feet and his left arm are missing, as are several points of the Virgin’s crown.

…; donated to the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap, Amsterdam, by A.J. Enschedé, Haarlem, 1859; on loan to the museum, since 1885

ObjectNumber: BK-KOG-652

Credit line: On loan from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap

At the time this neo-gothic Virgin and Child was presented to the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap (KOG) in 1859, there was no doubt regarding its authenticity as a work from the late Middle Ages. A far more recent date, however, is suggested by the sharply carved faces of both Mary and the Christ Child, atypical for this period, as well as the smooth, polished surface of the wood and the preference for decorative details, such as the small gems forming a floral pattern on Mary’s crown. Viewed in this light, the damage present at the time of the sculpture’s donation to the museum – an old photo (fig. a) shows that the polychromy was already highly abraded, and that several points on Mary’s crown, the Christ Child’s left hand and two feet were also missing – was very likely intentionally made to evoke a much earlier origin. With these observations in mind, the description of this work as recorded in the inventory book of the KOG – ‘From a monastery outside Haarlem, found between the House of Cleves and the former Bridgettine monastery in the area of Hoogerwaard’ – must be deemed unreliable.¹¹‘Afkomstig uit een klooster buiten Haarlem, gevonden tusschen het huis ter Kleef en het gewezen reguliersklooster in het land Hoogerwaard’. The words following the comma were crossed out for reasons unknown.

This by no means diminishes the fact that the nineteenth-century maker managed to capture the essence of a late-medieval sculpture, thereby achieving a high level of refinement. He likely copied or drew his inspiration from an original work produced in the early sixteenth century in the Northern Netherlands and more specifically Utrecht. This lost or as yet unidentified model can perhaps be attributed to the Master of the Utrecht Stone Female Head (active c. 1490-1530). The schematic treatment of the folds of Mary’s robe, as well as her full-round face, high forehead and half-closed eyes, are highly comparable to a Maria Lactans in the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht, assigned to the same woodcarver’s oeuvre.²²Inv. no. ABM bh318, see M. van Vlierden et al., Hout- en steensculptuur van Museum Catharijneconvent, ca. 1200-1600, coll. cat. Utrecht 2004, p. 191 (ill.). Moreover, the Christ Child on the front panel of a bellows preserved in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, attributed again to the same master, also holds a goldfinch in his hands and is being supported by his mother in more or less the same manner.³³M. Leeflang et al., Middeleeuwse beelden uit Utrecht 1430-1530/Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Utrecht, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2012-13, fig. on p. 285. Lastly, a sculpture of Christ as Salvator Mundi in the collection of the Rijksmuseum (BK-1964-1), also attributed to this sculptor, has virtually the same dimensions as the present Virgin and Child and is also carved entirely in the round standing on an octagonal plinth. These agreements possibly stem from a standardized methodology applied in the Utrecht workshop. In the late Middle Ages, sculptures of this size carved in the round often formed the crowning element on retables. Positioned in the centre as freestanding figures – sometimes mounted on a pinnacle – they towered above the rest of the altarpiece, sometimes flanked by two saintly figures appearing at a lower level. The type of wood (pear) used for the present version again implies a different date and/or origin. Retable sculptures from the late-medieval Northern Netherlands were almost invariably carved from oak, with boxwood the material of choice for smaller-scale statuettes.

One very suitable candidate for the authorship of this nineteenth-century sculpture is Nikolaus Elscheidt (1835-1874).⁴⁴Dr Reinhard Karrenbrock (Munich) supports this attribution, see written correspondence, 3 April 2013. Viewed as one of the most gifted neo-gothic sculptors from the Rhineland,⁵⁵F. Witte, Tausend Jahre deutscher Kunst am Rhein, vol. 5, Quellen zur Rheinischen Kunstgeschichte, Berlin/Leipzig 1932, p. 307, cited by A. von Euw in H. Westermann-Angerhausen et al., Alexander Schnütgen, Colligite fragmenta ne pereant: Gedenkschrift des Kölner Schnütgen-Museums zum 150. Geburtstag seines Gründers, Cologne 1993, p. 178, note 8. Bloch in L. Grisebach and K. Renger, Festschrift für Otto von Simson zum 65. Geburtstag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, p. 515. Elscheidt was a protégé of Alexander Schnütgen (1843-1918), the Domkapitular of Cologne Cathedral who founded the Schnütgen Museum in Cologne and whose important collection of medieval art forms the basis of the museum. Elscheidt produced several monumental statues for German churches. Where he excelled, however, was in the making of more modestly scaled sculptures, carved in both bare and polychromed hardwood, chiefly in the style of fourteenth-century Cologne High Gothic.⁶⁶For Elscheidt see P. Bloch, Skulpturen des 19. Jahrhunderts im Rheinland, Düsseldorf 1975, pp. 33ff; P. Bloch in L. Grisebach and K. Renger, Festschrift für Otto von Simson zum 65. Geburtstag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, pp. 505-15; G. Jászai, ‘Über eine neuentdeckte Madonnen-Statuette des Kölner Bildhauers Nikolaus Elscheidt’, Westfalen 71 (1993), pp. 242-45; P. Bloch in H. Westermann-Angerhausen et al., Alexander Schnütgen, Colligite fragmenta ne pereant: Gedenkschrift des Kölner Schnütgen-Museums zum 150. Geburtstag seines Gründers, Cologne 1993, pp. 163-75; Von Euw in ibid., pp. 177-82. A Lamentation group convincingly attributed to Elscheidt, today held in a private German collection, confirms that the sculptor’s interest was by no means limited to the fourteenth century, as it has clearly been copied from a retable group by the Cologne sculptor Master Tilman (active 1487-d. 1515) of circa 1500 in the Rijksmuseum’s collection (BK-NM-12389).⁷⁷For this sculpture, see R. Karrenbrock and H. Westermann-Angerhausen, ‘Neugotik und ihre Vorbilder: Eine unbekannte Beweinungsgruppe des Nikolaus Elscheidt’, Kölner Museums-Bulletin 1996, no. 2, pp. 17-31. A Virgin and Child preserved in the Museum van den Bergh in Antwerp, catalogued and dated by the museum as Southern Netherlandish, circa 1510-20, is perhaps also an example of Elscheidt’s production.⁸⁸J. De Coo (ed.), Catalogus 2: Beeldhouwkunst, plaketten, antiek, coll. cat. Antwerp (Museum Mayer van den Bergh) 1969, no. 2280. With thanks to Frits Scholten. This implies that the Amsterdam Virgin may not be the only work Elscheidt executed in an early-sixteenth-century Netherlandish style.

This tentative attribution of the present Virgin and Child is chiefly founded on the highly defined details, the somewhat expressionless faces, the incongruous, horizontally layered, bowl-shaped drapery folds in front of Mary’s lap, and the silky soft surface of the finished wood. In spite of the early-sixteenth-century Northern Netherlandish style it evokes, this work is strikingly similar to several small Virgin figures carved by Elscheidt around 1870, in imitation of the so-called Mailänder Madonna in Cologne Cathedral of circa 1320.⁹⁹Cf. P. Bloch in L. Grisebach and K. Renger, Festschrift für Otto von Simson zum 65. Geburtstag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, figs. 1, 2 and figs. 4-6; P. Bloch in H. Westermann-Angerhausen et al., Alexander Schnütgen, Colligite fragmenta ne pereant: Gedenkschrift des Kölner Schnütgen-Museums zum 150. Geburtstag seines Gründers, Cologne 1993, p. 171, fig. 8; G. Jászai, ‘Über eine neuentdeckte Madonnen-Statuette des Kölner Bildhauers Nikolaus Elscheidt’, Westfalen 71 (1993), pp. 242-45, fig. 1. If the attribution is correct, then this specific Virgin and Child – given the terminus ante quem of its donation to the KOG (1859) – is one of Elscheidt’s earliest known works. Another sculpture attributed to his name and dating from the same period is a Virgin Enthroned from a small house altar, today preserved in the Schnütgen Museum.¹⁰¹⁰P. Bloch in L. Grisebach and K. Renger, Festschrift für Otto von Simson zum 65. Geburtstag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, p. 512 and fig. 8.

From an early stage, many of Elscheidt’s sculptures were interpreted as authentic medieval works, only to be later unmasked as forgeries. The Amsterdam Virgin and Child, by contrast, is the only instance when a sculpture might have been intentionally damaged to create the illusion of an earlier origin, perhaps by the sculptor himself or a later owner. Elscheidt was posthumously accused of having modified the appearance of his works by suspending them over a candle.¹¹¹¹S. Beissel, Gefälschte Kunstwerke, Freiburg im Breisgau 1909, p. 117. None of his works, however, display evidence of such a ploy. Schnütgen stated that his protégé never willingly endeavoured to make forgeries.¹²¹²For Schnütgen’s statements on this matter, see P. Bloch in H. Westermann-Angerhausen et al., Alexander Schnütgen, Colligite fragmenta ne pereant: Gedenkschrift des Kölner Schnütgen-Museums zum 150. Geburtstag seines Gründers, Cologne 1993, p. 167. Bloch, who also rules out any purposeful wrongdoing, nevertheless acknowledges that, in those cases where Elscheidt’s clientele believed they were dealing with an authentic piece of medieval sculpture, he may have occasionally failed to provide a definite clarification.¹³¹³P. Bloch, Skulpturen des 19. Jahrhunderts im Rheinland, Düsseldorf 1975, p. 35 and P. Bloch in L. Grisebach and K. Renger, Festschrift für Otto von Simson zum 65. Geburtstag, Frankfurt am Main 1977, pp. 513-14.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 920; D.P.R.A. Bouvy, ‘Review of J. Leeuwenberg, Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1973’, Simiolus 7 (1974), pp. 103-06, esp. p. 104

B. van der Mark, 2020, 'possibly Nikolaus Elscheidt, Virgin and Child, Cologne, in or before 1859', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), (under construction) European Sculpture, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.25703