Small-scale altarpieces comprising carved scenes on the interior and painted wings were produced in the Netherlands during the late Gothic period for individual worship. However, because of their mobility and mostly private ownership few have survived through history. This complete ‘house altar’, which was made in Brussels in the late 15th century, is an extremely rare and fine example of its kind. A recent survey of Southern Netherlandish small-scale retables lists as few as five extant examples with the Lamentation as the central motif. Among these only the present work remains in private hands.
The Diamond retable is exceptional for the emphasis it places on the intimate and devotional nature of its setting within a private interior. Forming a highly empathetic portrayal of the scene, the Lamentation group is rendered with unique gestures and expressions, and imbued with an individuality that characterized Brabant sculpture prior to the more standardized imagery in later decades. Further interest is provided by the 16th century addition of female donors and memento mori skulls, which were painted on the wings, and which attest not only to the enduring veneration of the retable, but a possible conversion into a memorial context.
Given its outstanding rarity and art-historical significance, it is not surprising that the retable was lauded as one of the masterpieces of the sculptor's art and it was noted that such pieces are seldom seen outside the great museums of the world1 when it was acquired for the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art in 1921. In fact, few major museums today preserve a Netherlandish small-scale altarpiece as complete as the Diamond Lamentation.
THE DIAMOND LAMENTATION
‘In the 15th century there was a distinct shift in private worship towards contemplations of the Passion of Christ, and the faithful were directed to meditate not only on Christ’s suffering but also on that of the Virgin at her Son’s death.’
During the course of the 15th century, Netherlandish art developed an increasing interest in depicting the Passion of Christ. Many of the great multi-figure altarpieces, so-called retables, made in the Brabant at this time employed the Passion as their narrative, provoking an emotional reaction from the worshipper. Through sculptural storytelling, viewers were invited to empathize not only with the suffering of Christ, but also with that of his mother, Mary, and his closest followers. It is such a response that the profoundly moving depiction of the Lamentation over Christ’s body at the center of this small-scale altar seeks to elicit. As part of a Passion narrative which begins with Christ Carrying the Cross painted on the left wing, and ends with his Resurrection painted on the right wing, the sculpted Lamentation forms the retable’s focal point.
In contrast to the crowded scenes of larger retables in which figures are narrowly arranged, the figures here are evenly spaced and symmetrical, inviting a devotional rather than immersive reading. The center of the group shows the kneeling Virgin in a Pietà motif, with the body of Christ draped over her lap, already stiff with rigor mortis. To the group’s left is Saint John the Evangelist, and to its right Mary Magdalene, holding a jar of ointment. Behind are the two standing figures of the other Maries, flanked by Joseph of Arimathea (or Longinus) and Nicodemus. At the back of the scene hover two diminutive angels, figures rarely seen in Lamentation groups, whose gestures of mourning underscore the introspective atmosphere. The scene’s individualized depiction of the Lamentation is simultaneously iconic and realistic. With the attributes of the male saints – the crown of thorns and the lance – there is an emphasis on the instruments of the Passion, which typically occurs in a symbolic context. The principal figures, however, are imbued with emotive gestures and expressions, which make their experience of grief intensely palpable for the viewer. Saint John’s gesture of burying his grief-stricken face in his left hand has been noted as perhaps unique in surviving Brabant Lamentations.2 His pain is mirrored by the Maries behind him, whose faces and praying gestures are affected with sorrow. With an expression of quiet contemplation, the Virgin places her right hand gently on Christ’s chest whilst holding up his arm with her left hand, seemingly attempting to revive his lifeless corpse. Another rare iconography is found in Mary Magdalene’s lifting of Christ’s shroud. It is at once a practical act, and a symbolic one, as it foreshadows Christ’s entombment and ultimate resurrection.
‘HOUSE ALTARS’ – FORM AND FUNCTION
It is tempting to propose a link between this intimate, familial portrayal of the Lamentation and a private context of the altarpiece within a family home. Traditionally referred to as ‘house altars’, small-scale retables produced in the Southern Netherlands around 1500 are composed of a central caisse containing a sculpted scene and painted wings, which could be closed. Their sizes vary from small and easily portable to those that, like the present example, measure around a meter in height and were therefore almost certainly installed in a fixed position. Since few of the surviving ‘house altars’ can be traced to their original location, there is some debate in the scholarship as to how domestic their function really was. Based on rare historical documentation and evidence from contemporary visual arts, it has long been assumed that such small-scale retables were installed for worship in private homes, and perhaps even in bedrooms.3 In his survey of Southern Netherlandish small-scale retables, however, Niklas Gliesmann has called such an exclusively domestic context into question, arguing instead that these works were frequently created for members of monastic communities and probably also found in ecclesiastical settings, for example as part of a family chapel. Rejecting the term ‘house altar’, Gliesmann further points out that small-scale retables were made in the same workshops as their large-scale, multi-level counterparts which surmounted altars in churches.4
Passion scenes involving women, such as the Lamentation, appear to have been particularly popular motifs for devotional aids among female monastic orders.5 The presence of female donors on the wings of the present retable (discussed below), indicate that this moving rendition of the scene was likely created for such a context – whether in a nun’s chamber, or a more public space within a convent. Given the appropriate nature of the motif for such altars, it is surprising that only a handful of small-scale retables centered by the Lamentation have survived. This rarity must owe at least in part to the generally scarce survival of these works because of their relative mobility and therefore their loss over time.
The Lamentation in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (fig. 1), is the only known sculptural retable that follows the same iconographic scheme as the present altar, with the central scene flanked by painted depictions of the Road to Calvary and the Resurrection.6 While it is stylistically not comparable, having been made in Antwerp around 1520, the existence of the Utrecht retable suggests that this sequence of motifs may have been a common iconography. Two further ‘house altars’ of early 16th century Antwerp origin show the Lamentation; one in the Kasteel van Gaasbeek,7 and another, of which only the caisse survives, in The Church of St Moritz in Mittenwalde.8 A fourth Antwerp retable with the Lamentation, in the Vleeshuis, cannot be counted strictly among the group, as its central scene is composed of an assemblage of figures which probably originated from a larger altarpiece.9 Finally, there exists a Lamentation altar with extensive 19th century restorations in the Church of St Dymphna in Geel, which is localised to Brussels and dated to the final third of the 15th century.10 The Diamond retable is therefore the earliest of the complete examples, and arguably the most art-historically significant known Lamentation retable.
STYLISTIC ANALYSIS: SCULPTURE
Before Antwerp became the most prolific center of Southern Netherlandish altarpiece production in the early 16th century, it was in Brussels that workshops reached the zenith of retable art. Influenced by painters such as Rogier van der Weyden (circa 1399-1464), Brussels sculpture of the late 15th century was marked by realism and psychological sensitivity, in contrast to the more homogenized works after 1500.11 The dating of the present altar is based largely on a comparison of its figural style with that of the Villa Altarpiece in the Art and History Museum, Brussels (fig. 2). Commissioned by Claudio Villa and his wife Gentina for their family chapel in the Church of the Dominicans in Chieri in northern Italy, this magnificent altarpiece showing scenes from the Passion is a prime example of the Brussels style around 1470-1480. Like the present retable, the Lamentation scene in the Villa Altarpiece includes a Pietà motif (fig. 3). The figure of Saint John to the left of this group compares particularly well in both pose and appearance to the Saint John from the Diamond Lamentation. The facial type and veil of the present Virgin, on the other hand, find a parallel in the Virgin from the Crucifixion of the Villa Altarpiece. Another comparison for the Saint John can be made with the same figure in the Lamentation scene of the Passion Altarpiece of Ternant, a Brussels work of around 1460 (fig. 4). The Entombment scene of Ternant shows the female mourners with the same emotive gestures as the two Maries in the Diamond retable (fig. 5).12 In addition, Gliesmann points out a stylistic affinity with a Hispano-Flemish shrine with the Lamentation (circa 1480) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,13 whose figure of Saint John supports the head of Christ in a manner analogous to the present work. The mourning angels, with slender bodies and voluminous hair, compare closely to those in a Brussels Passion retable of circa 1490 in the Musée des Arts decoratifs in Paris.14 Showing the influence of Rogier van der Weyden, a prototype for the angel with his head in his hands is found in the painter’s Crucifixion triptych (circa 1445) in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.15
THE PAINTED WINGS
The decorative unity of both the sculpted and the painted tracery adorning the Diamond retable indicates that the wings must be original to the altarpiece. A facture in late 15th-century Brussels, contemporary with the sculpture, is substantiated by iconographic and stylistic aspects, which place the scenes of Christ Carrying the Cross and The Resurrection painted on the inner wings within the immediate orbit of Rogier van der Weyden. Lynn Jacobs has observed a striking similarity of the Carrying of the Cross to works by Vrancke van der Stockt (d. 1495?), who succeeded Rogier as town painter of Brussels after Rogier’s death in 1464.16 The Resurrection appears to be ultimately derived from the Resurrection scene in the background of one of the panels in van der Weyden’s Miraflores Altarpiece (fig. 6).
The donor portraits in the form of kneeling nuns painted over the Passion scenes on the inner wings, and the grisaille memento mori skulls on the exterior, are intriguing later additions to the retable. While Gliesmann implies a possible dating of these additions as late as the 17th century, based on the style of the figures’ habit, Jacobs has dated them to the 16th century, only a few decades after the altar’s creation.17 In the early 16th century there was a blossoming interest in memento mori imagery, as exemplified on the exterior of a triptych by the Master of Frankfurt (1460-circa 1533),18 which displays similar banderoles as in the present work, as well as the phrase ‘cogita mori’ (‘consider your death’). A plausible hypothesis in favour of a 16th century dating is that the donor figures and memento mori motifs were added after the first owner of the retable died. This patron is likely to have been a member of a female monastic order, as is indicated by the appearance of the donors as adoring nuns. The retable would thus have taken on a specific memorial function, which would have underscored the poignancy of its central image, the Lamentation over the dead Christ. As such, the Diamond retable represents a valuable testament to the status and function of small-scale altarpieces, probably within a monastic context.
THE PROVENANCE
The documented history of the Lamentation retable can be traced back as far as 1921, when it was acquired by The Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art. In 1920 the Museum’s director, L. Earle Rowe, and its principal patron and benefactor, Eliza Greene Metcalf Radeke (1885-1931), began a business relationship with the Durlacher Bros., art dealers in London. Sourced from the dealer and collector F.W. Lippmann, this altarpiece was offered to the Museum via the Durlachers’ American representative in September 1921, and formally purchased in October as part of a small group of artworks for the sum of 14,000 US dollars. By December of that year, the new acquisitions were exhibited at the museum and reviewed in a newspaper article entitled Masterpieces of Renaissance Art Acquired by School of Design, which featured a prominent photograph of the Lamentation retable. As one of the ‘masterpieces of the sculptor’s art’, the altarpiece was honoured with a lengthy description, which recognized its importance as ‘a beautiful example of Flemish art of that period’.19 In the 1940s the museum began to deaccession artworks that were deemed less relevant to the collection’s mission. The altarpiece was eventually sold to the prominent New York art dealer and collector, Ruth Blumka, in 1956. It remained in her family’s collection until its sale to Hester Diamond in 2004.
Formerly owned by a museum, the Diamond Lamentation is a museum piece in the truest sense. As a complete Southern Netherlandish small-scale retable from the late 15th century, it is a remarkable survival of a caliber matched by few works in major international collections. The retable is preserved in an excellent condition, with much of the original gilding and polychromy of the sculpture intact. Its painted alterations in later history provide a fascinating window into monastic worship around 1500 and the significance of female devotion. Lastly, the deeply sympathetic portrayal of the Lamentation, which reflects the sophistication of Brussels sculptors of this time, remains as potent for viewers today as it would have been for the late medieval worshipper.
RELATED LITERATURE
Lynn F. Jacobs, Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces, 1380-1550: Medieval tastes and mass marketing, Cambridge, 1998;
Marjan Buyle and Christine Vanthillo, Retables Flamands et Brabançons dans les monuments belges, Brussels, 2000;
Antoinette Huysmans (ed.), La sculpture des Pays-Bas méridionaux et de la Principauté de Liège XVe et XVIe siècles, cat. Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, 2000;
Sophie Guillot de Suduiraut (ed.), Retables brabançons des XVe et XVIe siècles, Paris, 2002;
Paul Williamson, Netherlandish Sculpture 1450-1550, cat. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2002
1. Newspaper article dated December 4, 1921, probably from the Providence Journal
2. Lynn F. Jacobs, private report on the Diamond retable, November 2005;
3. Gliesmann, op. cit., p. 136
4. Williamson, op. cit., p. 104
5. Gliesmann, op. cit., pp. 42-53
6. Williamson, op. cit., p. 105
7. Gliesmann, op. cit., no. 27
8. Ibid., no. 29
9. Ibid., no. 26
10. Ibid., no. 28
11. Ibid., no. 58
12. See Jacobs, op. cit. 1998, pp. 26-28
13. Guillot de Suduiraut, op. cit., pp. 259-269
14. Inv. no. 55.85, Cloisters Collection
15. Inv. no. PE 156
16. Inv. no. Gemäldegalerie, 901
17. Jacobs, private report, 2005
18. Gliesmann, op. cit., p. 137; Jacobs, private report, 2005
19. Crucifixion Triptych in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, inv. no. 715
20. Newspaper article dated December 4, 1921, probably from the Providence Journal