The Oxburgh Retable: Christ before Pilate
Flemish (Antwerp) School
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1525 - 1530
Materials
Polychromed oak
Order this imageCollection
Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk
NT 1209874.13
Summary
Polychromed oak sculpture of composite altarpiece, lower left, The Oxburgh Retable: Christ before Pilate (lacking the figure of Christ, but with two False Witnesses from the Christ before Caiaphas), the ‘hand’ mark of Antwerp is stamped and its ‘burcht’, or castle (guaranteeing the quality of the polychromy), appears between the feet of the left figure. The Latin inscriptions on the scrolls:... INSTRUCTRE ... and ... DEI in TRIDUS..../appear to be the words of the two false witnesses against Christ before the high priest: “The [fellow] said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days” (Matthew, XXIV.61). Yet the throne on which the judge sits, and the Roman soldier to the left of him, clearly designate him as Pilate, whereas the judge in the compartment on the other side is clearly the High Priest.
Provenance
Made for an unknown location; reputedly acquired by Sir Henry Bedingfeld, 6th Bt (1800-62) in Bruges, where his sister was a nun for nearly fifty years but possibly really obtained (like some of his furniture) by him from the Belgian woodcarver (responsible for the added figures?) and dealer, Malfait, to replace the upper part of the neo-Gothic tabernacle originally installed in the Chapel when it was built (1835-37); or even by Sir Henry Bedingfeld, 7th Bt (1830-1902), since the widow of the 8th Bt - yet another Sir Henry (1860-1941) - claimed that her husband remembered its arrival at King’s Lynn [which has caused Christa Grössinger (op.cit.infra, p.171) to say that it was bought in King’s Lynn in the 1860s - this seems the most probable, since it seems unlikely that the 6th Bt, who had only had the tabernacle made less than thirty years before his death, should have swept it away so soon; it is still visible in Matilda Bedingfeld’s watercolour of the interior of the Chapel, done shortly before her marriage to Captain Neville in 1855]; thence, by descent, in situ, until bought by the National Trust in 1982, with the aid of grants from the National Art Collections Fund, The National Heritage Memorial Fund, and the Victoria & Albert Museum-administered purchase support fund
Makers and roles
Flemish (Antwerp) School, artist
References
The Burlington Magazine, Kim Woods - Some C16 Antwerp carved wooden altarpieces in England, The Burlington Magazine March 1999 pp144-155., Apollo Annual Magazine , Ian McClure and Renate Woudhuyen - The Oxburgh Chapel Altarpiece, NT Historic Houses and Collections Apollo Annual Magazine 1994 pp20-23. The Oxburgh Altarpiece, John Maddison - The Oxburgh Altarpiece, NACF Annual Review 1984 pp145-6.