The Oxburgh Retable: The Execution of Saint Barbara
Flemish (Antwerp) School
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1500 - 1529
Materials
Oil on panel
Place of origin
Antwerp
Order this imageCollection
Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk
NT 1209874.9
Summary
Oil painting on panel, right flank of tabernacle of composite altarpiece, The Oxburgh Retable: The Execution of Saint Barbara, Flemish (Antwerp) School, early 16th century. Previously called Saint Catherine, but the three-windowed structure in the Baptism scene, and the body of her tormentor being borne off by devils above the scene of her Execution – rather than her own being borne by angels to Mount Sinai – denote the saint as Barbara.
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.