Carved in relief and partly gilded with red accents.

The right bottom corner had broken off and was later restored. The relief is mounted in a (replaced?) ebony-veneered, oak frame.

…; donated by Wttewael to the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap, Amsterdam, 1862; on loan to the museum, since 1885

Object number: BK-KOG-1255-C

Credit line: On loan from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap

The alabaster-carving industry in Mechelen originated with the arrival of a small group of artists, employed by Margaret of Austria, governess of the Netherlands at the onset of the sixteenth century. These artists worked primarily in the new antyckse renaissance style imported from Italy. Most important among them where the sculptors Conrat Meit (1485-1550/51) from Worms and Jean Mone (c. 1485-?1554) from Metz, whose presence in the city stimulated local sculptors to shift their efforts in the direction of the new formal idiom and simultaneously the material alabaster. Lipinska maintains that for those artists originally trained in wood, the move to the new, relatively soft stone type alabaster was minor.¹¹A. Lipinska, ‘“Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen”: Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe’, Simiolus 32 (2006), pp. 231-58, esp. p. 238.

As a result, a veritable industry in this kind of sculpture began to flourish in the sixteenth century, destined for a market that encompassed much of north-western Europe. Besides the Low Countries, Mechelen alabaster reliefs and altars were exported to places as far away as Poland, the Baltic States and Scandinavia.²²M. Rydbeck, ‘Nederländska husaltaren från skånska kyrkor: Renässansskulptur i Skåne’, Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademiens Handlingar 71 (Antikvariska studier 4), Stockholm 1950, pp. 28-40; A. Lipinska, ‘“Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen”: Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe’, Simiolus 32 (2006), pp. 231-58; A. Lipinska, Wewnetrzne swiatlo: Poludniowoniderlandzka rzezba alabastrowa w Europie Srodkowo-Wschodniej, Wroclaw 2007; 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. The more luxurious versions of these house altars comprised both larger and smaller alabaster reliefs, mounted in ornately carved wooden frames decorated with pressed-gesso patterns. The Rijksmuseum possesses two such altars (BK-BR-515; BK-NM-2918). This so-called cleynstekerswerk centred on small carved tablets featuring mythological and biblical scenes in a virtually unlimited number of variations produced serially well into the first half of the seventeenth century. With dimensions up to 20 x 20 centimetres in scale, these small alabaster reliefs were typically supplied with decorative frames edged with pressed papier-mâché mâché. To enliven the scenes and the frames, polychromers added highlights in gold. Even today, many of these objects still bear the monograms and house marks left by their makers, conveying the competition among artists but also serving as a kind of quality guaranty.

The same applies to the present relief, which bears the monogram ‘HVH’ on the inclined cartouche below the scene in a possible reference to a member of the Verhulst family of Mechelen.³³Cf. G. Derveaux-Van Ussel, Tentoonstelling van Engels en Mechels albasten beeldhouwwerk, exh. cat. Brussels (Royal Museums of Art and History) 1967, p. 57 and A. Lipinska et al., Matter of Light and Flesh: Alabaster in the Netherlandish Sculpture of the 16th and 17th Centuries, exh. cat. Gdansk (National Museum) 2011, no. 44, for an ‘IVH’ monogram, possibly belonging to the cleynsteker Jacob Verhulst. Crowning this rather simply executed relief with the Nativity with the Adoration of the Shepherds is a band of clouds with two small angels facing each other, jointly holding a banderole, and two cherubim at the outer ends. The style, austere execution and monogram argue for a dating of the relief in the early decades of the seventeenth century, therefore placing it in the late phase of Mechelen production.

The relief is a pendant of an alabaster Adoration of the Magi (BK-KOG-1255-D) likewise bearing the ‘HVH’ monogram. The Rijksmuseum also has a second set of alabasters in its collection, a variant of these reliefs executed by a different hand (BK-KOG-1255-A and -B). Conveying an element of luxury, simple scenes such as this still appeared quite commonly in inventories of possessions of the seventeenth century, where they are typically listed as alabaster bordjes (panels/small boards).⁴⁴J. Loughman and M. Montias, Public and Private Spaces: Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Houses, Zwolle 2000, pp. 39, 40, 54, 55, 57-59, 89, 97, 132-34.

Frits Scholten, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 187, with earlier literature; M.K. Wustrack, Die Mechelner Alabaster-Manufaktur des 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt am Main/Bern 1982, no. 234

F. Scholten, 2024, 'anonymous, The Nativity with the Adoration of the Shepherds, Mechelen, c. 1600 - c. 1620', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035616