The Resurrection

Carved and polychromed. The reverse is flat and the sarcophagus is incised. Christ’s missing right arm was attached with a mortise-and-tenon joint. Between his legs are three holes arranged vertically, which have been stopped up. On the left side there are a number of small nicks or notches made with a tool. There are three holes at the bottom on the reverse. The hem of Christ’s cloak is decorated with an imitation press brocade design.

Part of the left side of the sarcophagus has been lost. Almost all of Christ’s right arm, the staff in his left hand and part of the cloak on the left are missing. The sleeping soldier has lost his legs. The original polychromy and gilding have survived in places.

...; collection Jan Bertram van Stolk (1854-1927), Musée van Stolk, Haarlem, first recorded in 1912;¹¹J.B. van Stolk, Catalogue des sculptures, tableaux, tapis etc. Formant la collection d’objets d’art du Musée van Stolk, coll. cat. Haarlem (Musée van Stolk) 1912, no. 577. his sale, Amsterdam (Frederik Muller), 8-9 May 1928, no. 136;...; from the dealer M.J. Schretlen (1890-1972), Amsterdam, fl. 3,400, to the museum, 1946

ObjectNumber: BK-15623

Christ stands in triumph on the lid of the tomb from which he has just risen. He made a gesture of blessing with the hand of his missing right arm and in his left he held a staff with a cross and a banner, now lost. On the left, behind the sarcophagus, sits an angel dressed in a gilded alb with minuscule black stripes. The soldier on the right is oblivious to the miracle that is happening right beside him and sleeps on undisturbed, leaning on the tomb. He wears a breastplate over a jerkin with slashed puff sleeves and a helmet-shaped cap. The soldier has been reduced here to a caricature, and the features of Christ and the angel are likewise far from distinguished. Nevertheless, Christ’s tall figure lends a certain stateliness to the fragmentary group. The sleeping soldier’s legs are missing and the sarcophagus would have extended further on the left side. The original polychromy is still intact to a significant extent.

At the beginning of the last century, the fragment belonged to the very wealthy art lover Jan Bertram van Stolk (1854-1927). In 1911 he opened a museum for his collection of late-medieval art in Haarlem, in which he displayed the statue as a sixteenth-century Flemish work.²²J.B. van Stolk, Catalogue des sculptures, tableaux, tapis etc. Formant la collection d’objets d’art du Musée van Stolk, coll. cat. Haarlem (Musée van Stolk) 1912, no. 577. In 1928, the year after Stolk’s death, his collection was sold at auction by Frederik Muller in Amsterdam. The purchaser of the fragment at the sale is unknown, but in 1946 it surfaced with the art dealer M.J. Schretlen in Amsterdam, from whom the Rijksmuseum bought it as a probably Antwerp piece dating from around 1500.³³Verslagen omtrent ‘s Rijks verzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst (1946), p. 14. In 1949 Timmers was the first to correctly place the group in the Northern Netherlands.⁴⁴J.J.M. Timmers, Houten beelden. De houtsculptuur in de Noordelijke Nederlanden tijdens de late middeleeuwen, Amsterdam/Antwerp 1949, p. 58. The blocky design and the figures’ almost comical expressions, more specifically point to the County of Holland.⁵⁵J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, p. 81.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 50, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, The Resurrection, Northern Netherlands, c. 1510', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.24318