Pax with the Death and Assumption of the Virgin

Carved in relief. The handle is carved separately and attached to the reverse of the pax with a dovetail joint.

The relief and handle show some signs of wear.

…; the dealer J. Dirven, Eindhoven, c. 1964; collection Dirven family, Eindhoven, c. 1964;¹¹Oral communication from J. Dirven to F. Scholten, 2004. their sale, Amsterdam (Christie’s), 24 September 2003, no. 665, €32,033, to the museum, with the support of the Rijksmuseum Fonds

ObjectNumber: BK-2003-6

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Rijksmuseum Fonds

In the late Middle Ages a new liturgical instrument, the osculatorium or pax, was developed in response to the custom of exchanging the kiss of peace during Mass.²²J. Braun, Das christliche Altargerät in seinem Sein und in seiner Entwicklung, Munich 1932, pp. 557-72; J. Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700, Oxford 1985, pp. 21-22. A pax – the terms paes, paesbert or paessteen were all used in Middle Dutch – was a small plaque or disc with a handle; it was kissed by the clergy and then passed around among the churchgoers for them to kiss too.³³E. Verwijs and J. Verdam, Middelnederlandsch woordenboek, vol. 6, The Hague 1907, cols. 32-34; H. Gill, ‘Notes on the Leen and the Buildings on its Banks: Including the Churches of Lenton, Radford, Old Basford and Bulwell’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society 20 (1916); F. Scholten, ‘Een Nederlandse ivoren pax uit de late middeleeuwen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 52 (2004), pp. 2-23, esp. p. 4. In the fifteenth century it was customary for the celebrant to kiss the pax and pass it to his clerical brothers around the altar before Communion.⁴⁴P. Barnet (ed.), Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, exh. cat. Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts) 1997, p. 265. It was then the turn of the congregation, although this was not a hard and fast rule.⁵⁵E. Verwijs and J. Verdam, Middelnederlandsch woordenboek, vol. 6, The Hague 1907, cols. 32-33: Ooc en eyst gheen costume dat men alle die meinschen die de messe hooren tpaeys gheeft te cussen. Frequent references to paxes in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sources confirm that the object had become generally accepted in this period and could be made in materials of all kinds – silver gilt, wood, ivory, mother of pearl, glass, pipeclay. It also emerges that owning a pax was not the sole preserve of the clergy; lay people could also have their own paxes.⁶⁶E. Verwijs and J. Verdam, Middelnederlandsch woordenboek, vol. 6, The Hague 1907, cols. 33-34; J. Braun, Das christliche Altargerät in seinem Sein und in seiner Entwicklung, Munich 1932, pp. 562-65; G. de Werd, Klevisches Silber 15.-19. Jahrhundert, exh. cat. Cleves (Museum Haus Koekkoek) 1978, no. 7; F. Scholten, ‘Een Nederlandse ivoren pax uit de late middeleeuwen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 52 (2004), pp. 2-23, esp. pp. 4-6. The pax fell into disuse in the Low Countries in the course of the sixteenth century, in part as a result of the Reformation.⁷⁷F. Scholten, ‘Een Nederlandse ivoren pax uit de late middeleeuwen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 52 (2004), pp. 2-23, esp. pp. 5-6. See also E. Verwijs and J. Verdam, Middelnederlandsch woordenboek, vol. 6, The Hague 1907, col. 32 and J. Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400-1700, Oxford 1985, pp. 71-72. J. Braun, Das christliche Altargerät in seinem Sein und in seiner Entwicklung, Munich 1932, p. 560 points to a case in Seville in 1512, where taking the pax was seen as a disturbance of the Eucharist and was consequently abolished.

This ivory pax is unusual in its size and elaborate ornamentation, since the majority of the ivory paxes made in the later Middle Ages were simply executed objects, often decorated in a stereotypical fashion.⁸⁸Cf. R. Koekkoek, Gotische ivoren in het Catharijneconvent, coll. cat. Utrecht 1987, no. 14. Nowadays this group is often attributed to mass-production workshops in the Low Countries or Northern France. Around 1500, paxes with greater variation in shape, decoration and iconography began to appear. The Rijksmuseum pax reflects this development.

The pax is made from a piece of curved ivory, estimated to be about a quarter of the circumference of a large elephant tusk. It is more than two centimetres thick at the lower edge. Attached to the back with a dovetail joint is a handle with two large round openings and a number of small drilled holes creating the shape of a gothic letter B. On the front the twelve apostles sit and stand around the lifeless body of the Virgin, laid out on her deathbed. Above, she is borne up to heaven by four angels. This part of the image – like the handle, for that matter – shows signs of wear and must have been the most frequently kissed. The scene is set in a three-part late gothic portal, framed with a cable border and decorated with intricate flowerheads. The top is crowned with gothic finials, and two columns flank the whole. The composition was taken directly from a woodcut by Jean d’Ypres (d. 1508) that appears in several late-fifteenth-century Parisian books of hours, including an Heures à l’usage de Rome published by Phillipe Pigouchet (Paris 1488) and an Heures à l’usage de Paris brought out by Antoine Verard (Paris 1500) (fig. a).⁹⁹See A. Blum, Les origines du livre à gravures en France: Les incunables typographiques, Paris/Brussels 1928, fig. 110; C. Engelen, Virga Jesse, exh. cat. Hasselt (Generale Bank) 1989, no. 178; I. Reesing, ‘From Ivory to Pipeclay. The Reproduction of Late Medieval Sculpture in the Low Countries’, in E.M. Kavaler, F. Scholten and J. Woodall (eds.), Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th Century (Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 67), Leiden/Boston 2017, pp. 256-85, fig. 19 and C. Yvard, ‘Translated Images: From Print to Ivory in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century’, in C. Yvard (ed.), Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Content and Context, London 2017, pp. 57-67, esp. figs. 4.1 and 4.2. Yvard cites the manuscript published in Paris by Philippe Pigouchet with the printer Simon Vostre, 22 May 1496, in Munich, Baverische Staatsbibliothek, Inc.c.a. 247 g, f. f3r.

The scenes of the Death and Assumption of the Virgin are a well-considered choice for a pax. The group of apostles, so prominently positioned, can be seen as an image of the earliest religious community, the ones who remained on earth after the Virgin’s death. They stand for the origin of the church and, in their union and spiritual affinity, provide an example for the medieval churchgoers who used the pax to express their own unanimity and love of peace. Mary, moreover, as Virgo facta Ecclesia (Virgin made Church) and her election as the virginal ‘instrument’ of the Incarnation, was regarded as the Bride of Christ.¹⁰¹⁰A. Katzenellenbogen, The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral: Christ, Mary, Ecclesia, Baltimore 1959, pp. 59-60. She thus reflected the loving bond of the church, the congregation of the faithful, with God. From the twelfth century onwards, the bond of love between bridegroom and bride described in the Song of Songs was seen as the union both of God with his Church, and of God and Mary. In the liturgy of the late Middle Ages, too, Mary and the Church were increasingly equated.¹¹¹¹A. Katzenellenbogen, The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral: Christ, Mary, Ecclesia, Baltimore 1959, p. 60. Against this background, the Death and Assumption of the Virgin on the pax are extremely apt. Her assumption, after all, implies her union with Christ, and by analogy with the Mary-Ecclesia metaphor, also the union of Christ and his bride, the Church. Added to the text of Song of Songs 1:1, in which the bride says of her bridegroom: ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth’, the unification idea of the liturgical kiss of peace and the symbolic union of the faithful and God coincide perfectly in the scene on this pax.¹²¹²See ?. Schreiner, ‘“Er küsse mich mit dem Kuss seines Mundes” (Osculetur me osculo oris sui, Cant. 1, 1). Metaphorik, kommunikative und herrschaftliche Funktionen einer symbolischen Handlung’, in H. Ragotzky and H. Wenzel eds.), Höfische Representation's Zeremoniell und die Zeichen, Tübingen 1990, pp. 89-132, esp. pp. 92-95. They thus have a direct theological connection with the mystical union of Christ and the faithful, and with the peace among the faithful themselves. In a Dutch book of hours dating from around 1490 there is a similar association between an image of the Death and Assumption of the Virgin and the kiss.¹³¹³F. Scholten, ‘Een Nederlandse ivoren pax uit de late middeleeuwen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 52 (2004), pp. 2-23, esp. p. 710 and fig. 8; A.S. Korteweg and C.A. Chavannes-Mazel, Schatten van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Acht eeuwen verluchte handschriften, exh. cat. The Hague (Royal Library/Museum Meermanno) 1980, no. 77 (inv. no. 135 E 19). In the reflection written to accompany the miniature of the Death and Assumption of the Virgin, there is a passage that centres on the kiss and the words cussinge, cussende or cussede dominate the text in an almost poetic fashion (fol. 108 recto): Het waren temalen salige cussinge Maria haer sukende kindekijn mede cussende als die ioncfrouwelike moeder in haren maechdeliken schoet waerdelike hantierde haer godlike kindekijn. Maren sellen wi niet ghevoelen ende gheloven dattie cussinge veel saligher was daer die soen god an die rechter side des vaders huden in der saligher toecoemst sijn ghebenediden moeder mede cussede als si op clam den hogen throen der glorien. (‘They were blessed kisses with which Mary kissed her suckling infant when that chaste mother rocked her divine infant in her virginal lap. But shall we not feel and believe that the kisses that the son of God, on the right hand of God the father, gave his holy mother when she ascended to the throne of glory and will give her in the heavenly future were much more blessed yet?’; my italics).

Stylistically, this pax is closely related to a group of ivories made in the Low Countries or Paris around 1500 and in the first decades of the sixteenth century. In many cases, the scenes on these ivories were derived from metal cuts in Parisian books of hours, as Reesing and Yvard have argued.¹⁴¹⁴I. Reesing, ‘From Ivory to Pipeclay. The Reproduction of Late Medieval Sculpture in the Low Countries’, in E.M. Kavaler, F. Scholten and J. Woodall (eds.), Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th Century (Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 67), Leiden/Boston 2017, pp. 256-85 and C. Yvard, ‘Translated Images: From Print to Ivory in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century’, in C. Yvard (ed.), Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Content and Context, London 2017, pp. 57-67. When the effects of the Hundred Years’ War and other aspects had put an end to the heyday of French ivory carving, new centres for this craft grew up in the north.¹⁵¹⁵R.H. Randall, ‘Dutch Ivories of the Fifteenth Century’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 45 (1994), pp. 126-39, esp. pp. 127-28. In the fifteenth century, Flanders was home to workshops where carvers made stereotypical ivory caskets and small Marian altars, primarily for export. The Flemish range also included small diptychs of saints and paxes.¹⁶¹⁶R.H. Randall, ‘Dutch Ivories of the Fifteenth Century’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 45 (1994), pp. 126-39, esp. p. 127. Koch and Randall were the first to identify ten technically and stylistically related ivories in this fifteenth-century northern output, attributing them to one or more workshops in the Northern Netherlands in the third quarter of the fifteenth century that could probably be placed in Utrecht.¹⁷¹⁷R. Koch, ‘An Ivory Diptych from the Waning Middle Ages’, Record of the Art Museum 17 (1958), no. 2, pp. 55-64; R.H. Randall, ‘Dutch Ivories of the Fifteenth Century’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 45 (1994), pp. 126-39. They are small diptychs (or parts of them), paxes and a freestanding statuette of the Virgin and Child. In the meantime, it has been possible to add various pieces to this group and a more precise classification is now needed.¹⁸¹⁸Additions include H. Meurer, ‘Maria mit dem Kind’, Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen in Baden-Württemberg 31 (1994), pp. 254-55; P. Barnet (ed.), Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, exh. cat. Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts) 1997, p. 266, fig. 72a; R. Koekkoek, Gotische ivoren in het Catharijneconvent, coll. cat. Utrecht 1987, no. 16; R. Koekkoek, Gotische ivoren, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent) 1987, no. 67; sale, Amsterdam (Sotheby’s), 20 December 2000, no. 13; J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 798, as German, early sixteenth century. This ivory, from the De Lupus Collection in Brussels (before 1819), is a more elaborate and possibly slightly later variant of a piece in Baltimore showing the Virgin, St John and St Catherine, cf. R.H. Randall, ‘Dutch Ivories of the Fifteenth Century’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 45 (1994), pp. 126-39, fig. 3. The ivories in this group have in common a particular emphasis on the framing of the composition – often exaggeratedly depressed gothic, three-part arches with rayonnant tracery – hatched backgrounds and a scene carved in fairly low relief.¹⁹¹⁹R.H. Randall, ‘Dutch Ivories of the Fifteenth Century’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 45 (1994), pp. 126-39, esp. p. 129.

Some of these characteristics of fifteenth-century northern ivory carving are also found in a group of ivories of a markedly higher artistic standard, with more variation in form, subject and decoration. This more exclusive output was probably produced a generation later and aimed at a growing market for private devotional works among the prosperous urban class and the clergy. The relatively large numbers of these more expensive ivories that survive, including the Amsterdam ivory, attest to the considerable volume of this output, possibly to be situated in Paris or the Franco-Flemish cultural milieu.²⁰²⁰For this group, see I. Reesing, ‘From Ivory to Pipeclay. The Reproduction of Late Medieval Sculpture in the Low Countries’, in E.M. Kavaler, F. Scholten and J. Woodall (eds.), Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th Century (Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 67), Leiden/Boston 2017, pp. 256-85 and C. Yvard, ‘Translated Images: From Print to Ivory in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century’, in C. Yvard (ed.), Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Content and Context, London 2017, pp. 57-67. Examples in e.g. Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, inv. no. F.1; Tardy, Les ivoires. Évolution décorative du 1er siècle à nos jours, Paris 1966, p. 39; M. Kryjanovskaja and L. Faenson, Westeuropäische Elfenbeinarbeiten aus der Ermitage Leningrad XI.-XIX. Jahrhundert, exh. cat. Berlin (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum im Schloss Köpenick) 1974, no. 6 (inv. no. 2923); R. Koekkoek, Gotische ivoren in het Catharijneconvent, coll. cat. Utrecht 1987, nos. 17-18; R. Koekkoek, Gotische ivoren, exh. cat. Utrecht (Museum Catharijneconvent) 1987, nos. 65-66; T. Brandenburg et al., Heilige Anna, grote moeder: De cultus van de Heilige Moeder Anna en haar familie in de Nederlanden en aangrenzende streken, exh. cat. Uden (Museum voor Religieuze Kunst) 1992, no. 53. J. Kappel, Elfenbeinkunst im Grünen Gewölbe zu Dresden. Geschichte einer Sammlung, wissenschaftlicher Bestandskatalog – Statuetten, Figurengruppen, Reliefs, Gefässe, Varia, (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) Dresden 2017, no. V.11 (Pax with St Sebastian). See also Reesing 2017 (this note) and Yvard 2017 (this note) for other examples in this group. The six small ivory figures that support the lid of an open-sided casket with a recumbent transi, preserved at the Museum Schnütgen in Cologne, inv. no. B 160, can be added to the same group on stylistic grounds, see M. Woelk and M. Beer (eds.), Museum Schnütgen: Handbuch zur Sammlung, coll. cat. Cologne 2018, no. 243. Baker identified this memento mori sculpture via an entry in the 1533 estate inventory of the Parisian ivorycarver Chicart Bailly, thus suggesting an origin in that city, see K. Baker, ‘Chicart Bailly and the Specter of Death: Memento Mori in a Sixteenth-Century Estate Inventory’, in S. Perkinson (ed.), The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe, New Haven/London 2017, pp. 107-19. Paxes account for a strikingly large proportion of this output. The use of letters and inscriptions is also a conspicuous feature of this group of ivories.

The style constants of northern ivories come together in a more accomplished manner and on a ‘monumental’ scale in the large Amsterdam pax. The background is hatched, but much more carefully than on the other paxes. The spatial distribution of the figures betrays the hand of a practised ivorycarver, who succeeded in convincingly transferring his print model to the format of a curved relief while at the same time adapting the crowning element to fit the form of a pax and incorporating a small scene of the Assumption of the Virgin. A slightly smaller and simpler pax, doubtless from the same workshop, was in the Spitzer Collection in the late nineteenth century (fig. b),²¹²¹H. D’Allemagne et al., La collection Spitzer, vol. 1, Paris 1890, p. 63, no. 120, h. 15.8 x w. 9.2 cm. Until 2002 this ivory was in the possession of the A. Cesati gallery in Milan, it is now in the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art in Geneva, inv. no. FGA-AD-BA-116. There are some obvious differences, the most important being the absence of the Virgin’s assumption, the shifting of the apostle from the foot of Mary’s bed to the background and the architectural frame. There is also a rectangular opening in the background without any clear function. The handle of this ivory is likewise related: it is in the shape of an openwork gothic flying buttress. and a third example in ivory with a very similar scene of the Death of the Virgin is held in Museo Correr in Venice. It has a provenance dating back to before 1830.²²²²Venice, Museo Correr, inv. no. Cl. XVII, n. 8, see I. Reesing, ‘From Ivory to Pipeclay. The Reproduction of Late Medieval Sculpture in the Low Countries’, in E.M. Kavaler, F. Scholten and J. Woodall (eds.), Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th Century (Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 67), Leiden/Boston 2017, pp. 256-85, esp. p. 275 and notes 72, 73.

Frits Scholten, 2024

Jaarverslag, Amsterdam 2003 (annual report Rijksmuseum), pp. 46-47; F. Scholten, ‘Een Nederlandse ivoren pax uit de Late middeleeuwen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 52 (2004), pp. 2-23; F. Scholten and G. de Werd, Een hogere werkelijkheid: Duitse en Franse beeldhouwkunst 1200-1600 uit het Rijksmuseum Amsterdam/Eine höhere Wirklichkeit, Deutsche und Französische Skulptur 1200-1600 aus dem Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, exh. cat. Cleves (Museum Kurhaus Kleve) 2004-06, no. 66; I. Reesing, ‘From Ivory to Pipeclay. The Reproduction of Late Medieval Sculpture in the Low Countries’, in E.M. Kavaler, F. Scholten and J. Woodall (eds.), Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th Century (Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 67), Leiden/Boston 2017, pp. 256-85, esp. pp. 273, 274 and fig. 18; M. Rijkelijkhuizen, Handleiding voor de determinatie van harde dierlijke materialen. Bot, gewei, ivory, hoorn, schildpad, balein en hoef, Amsterdam 2008, pp. 66-67 and fig. 3.14; F. Scholten, ‘A Late Medieval Ivory of the Immaculate Conception from the Low Countries’, in A. von Hülsen-Esch and D. Taube (eds.), “Luft unter die Flügel...”: Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Kunst: Festschrift für Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen, Hildesheim/Zürich/New York 2010, pp. 186-92; C. Yvard, ‘Translated Images: From Print to Ivory in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century’, in C. Yvard (ed.), Gothic Ivory Sculpture: Content and Context, London 2017, pp. 57-67, esp. pp. 58, 59 and figs. 4.1, 4.2

F. Scholten, 2024, 'anonymous or anonymous, Pax with the Death and Assumption of the Virgin, Low Countries or Paris, c. 1490 - c. 1520', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.377336