The statuette was pressed in a mould, with two pieces of stone pressed into the reverse for extra weight. On the underside, a grid pattern was incised in the clay. A securing hole made in the clay can be discerned on the horizontal support in the middle of the statuette’s reverse. A thin, grey, semi-transparent coating was applied to the surface, perhaps to seal any porosity in the clay. Covering this is a layer of white ground, possibly composed of chalk with a relatively high percentage of animal glue. The Virgin’s flesh tone has a red underlayer, producing a warmer tone. This layer is absent on the Christ figure. The brown fleck under the Virgin’s left eye was added deliberately and probably intended as a tear. Christ’s hair and beard were painted with a thick, dark red layer (iron oxide), covered by a brown glaze. Discernible on the base are a number of fragmentary layers of green paint, built up from light to dark over a thick dark red layer identical to that of the Virgin’s face. The gilding was applied over an orange bole on the chalk ground; the gilding on the Virgin’s head appears more highly polished and shinier than elsewhere (the result of constant touching?). The gilding on her robe is silver leaf with a brown glaze.¹¹Polychromy analysis by A. Lorne and I. Reesing, 13 April 2012.

The polychromy is partly old (17th or 18th century?) and partly original. The statuette was overpainted at some point, with part of this overpainting later removed. Traces of white overpainting were found on the Virgin’s garments, Christ’s body and the base. The blue of the loincloth and the Virgin’s cloak is a later overpainting.

…; collection Professor Dr H.O. Goldschmidt (1920-2009), Eindhoven, date unknown; donated to the museum by his heirs, Mr H. Goldschmidt, Tilburg and Mrs M.A.B. Goldschmidt, Wassenaar, in lieu of inheritance tax, 2011

Object number: BK-2011-22

Credit line: Gift of the Goldschmidt-Pol Collection

Discoveries of countless fragments, shards and moulds in Utrecht (near the Tolsteegpoort and elsewhere) and in other Dutch towns provide sufficient proof there was a mass-production of reliefs and figures in pipeclay (terra alba). Intact examples of medieval sculpture in pipeclay are much rarer and survive chiefly in the form of small figurines for private devotions. Larger pieces, like this Pietà, are very rare and almost entirely absent from Dutch museum collections. Just three reliefs and one freestanding statuette are found in the literature.²²Utrecht, Centraal Museum, inv. no. 11790d (Virgin and Child); Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, inv. no. 1054b (The Swoon of the Virgin); Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, inv. no. 640 (Entombment); Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. BK-1972-156 (The Swoon of the Virgin).

Unlike the reliefs, the present Pietà can be regarded as a work conceived in its own right, possibly forming the central element of a small altarpiece. If so, it would have been used for in a domestic setting or in the seclusion of a monastery or convent cell. The statuette has an old, well-preserved (and partly original) polychromy. Of technical interest are the two stone pieces on the reverse – pressed into the still wet clay and integrally fired with the statuette – added for extra weight.

A second Pietà in Valenciennes, based on the same model, deviates only slightly from the present work.³³Valenciennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. no. S.89.34. With thanks to Bieke van der Mark, who brought this piece to my attention. Most noteworthy is the finished reverse, making it a work conceived in the round. Measuring 2 centimetres deeper than the Amsterdam Pietà, the Valenciennes piece has a significantly lower base, resulting in a height difference of more than 5 centimetres. The surface is heavily stained, with little original polychromy remaining.

Although excavations and research have established that so-called beeldendruckers (statue-squeezers) or heyligenbackers (saint-firers), as the makers of pipeclay figures were known, were not confined to Utrecht in the Middle Ages, it is likely that this Pietà was made in that city. This is suggested by its marked similarity to a fragment of a pipeclay mould for another Pietà, unearthed in Utrecht at the Tolsteegpoort,⁴⁴Utrecht, Centraal Museum, inv. no. 1998, see J. Klinckaert, De verzamelingen van het Centraal Museum Utrecht, vol. 3, Beeldhouwkunst tot 1850, coll. cat. Utrecht 1997, no. 241. and a Utrecht pipeclay Entombment in a church in Segovia, Spain. The work’s style and composition are also closely allied to wooden Pietà images generally identified as ‘Stichts-Hollands’ and dated to the third or last quarter of the fifteenth century.⁵⁵D.P.R.A. Bouvy, Middeleeuwsche beeldhouwkunst in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, Amsterdam 1947, p. 155 and fig. 169; P. van Dael et al., Hout- en steensculptuur. Beeldhouwkunst 1200-1800 in de collectie van het Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1994, no. 56.

Frits Scholten, 2024

A.C. Oellers et al., In gotischer Gesellschaft. Spätmittelalterliche Skulpturen aus einer niederländischen Privatsammlung, exh. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 1998, no. 52; F. Scholten, ‘Acquisitions: Medieval Sculpture from the Goldschmidt-Pol Collection and from Other Donors’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 59 (2011), no. 4, pp. 414-35, esp. pp. 430-31; F. Scholten, ‘A European Panorama’, in F. Scholten (ed.), 1100-1600, Amsterdam 2015, pp. 6-35, esp. p. 15, fig. 9

F. Scholten, 2024, 'anonymous, Pietà, Utrecht, c. 1450 - c. 1475', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200536059