The Crowning with Thorns, from a series of reliefs with stories from the Life and Passion of Jesus Christ
Malines (Mechelen) Alabaster School (fl.16th-17th century)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
circa 1600
Materials
Alabaster
Measurements
225 x 200 mm
Order this imageCollection
Mount Stewart, County Down
NT 1655922.2
Summary
Sculpture, alabaster; the Crowning with Thorns; Mecheln (Malines); c. 1600. A small alabaster relief from a group of seven (NT 1655922) depicting scenes from the life and Passion of Jesus Christ, made in the southern Netherlands. The scene depicted here shows Jesus Christ being crowned with thorns and mocked as the ‘King of the Jews’, before being taken away for Crucifixion. The seven reliefs were kept with other small religious sculptures in the bedroom of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry.
Full description
A small alabaster panel depicting the Crowning of Christ with thorns, from the story of Christ’s Passion. The scene is set within an arcaded courtyard, with Christ seated at right dressed in a robe and wearing a makeshift crown of thorns that has been placed on his head. A soldier kneels in mock homage and proffers to Christ a sceptre made from reeds, whilst two other soldiers torment Christ, hitting him on the head with clubs. At left stand two priests wearing turbans. The relief is unpainted but has been embellished with selective gilding, on the arcades and the floor at bottom, on the clubs, and extensively to enliven and give definition to the background and the clothes of the protagonists. A stepped ledge at bottom. Some restoration to the gilding especially the ledge and the clubs. Mounted in its original frame, black-painted, with an inner frieze of stamped gesso work with arabesque decoration, gilded. The Crowning of Thorns was one of several episodes before Christ was put to death, when he was humiliated, not only by the crowds but also by the high priests who had brought him before Pontius Pilate, and by Pilate’s Roman soldiers. It precedes the scene known as ‘Ecce Homo’ (‘See the man’) when Christ is paraded before the raging mob and mockingly presented as the ‘King of the Jews’. The scene is described by three of the Evangelists, Matthew (27: 27-31), Mark (15: 16-20) and John (19: 2-3). The relief is one of a group of seven reliefs at Mount Stewart, probably acquired by Edith, 7th Marchioness of Londonderry and displayed in her bedroom, ‘Genoa’, arranged upon a velvet panel in the form of a cross. The 1950 inventory of Mount Stewart records just six reliefs, so it is possible that the seventh was acquired some time in the 1950s. The alabaster reliefs are part of a small collection of devotional objects kept in a corner of Genoa. In their arrangement by Lady Londonderry, the alabaster panels do not follow any liturgical order, but they all illustrate scenes from the Life and Passion of Christ: The Holy Family, with Saint Anne (NT 1655922.3) Agony in the Garden (NT 1666922.5) Betrayal of Christ (NT 1655922.4) Crowning with Thorns (NT 1655922.2) Crucifixion (NT 1655922.7) Entombment (NT 1655922.6) Pentecost (NT 1655922.1) The Mount Stewart reliefs are products of a prolific industry in alabaster carving in the southern Netherlands, that had its main centre in the city of Mechelen (Malines), and was active from c. 1550-1630. Alabaster is a form of gypsum. It has long been popular as a material for sculpture, for its relative softness and ease of carving, its attractive translucency and whiteness and its cheapness compared to marble. In England, from the twelfth through to the sixteenth centuries, alabaster carvings were produced in vast numbers by workshops based mainly in the English Midlands. The most common products of the English workshops were figurative panels, usually religious in subject matter, which formed the basis of large multi-panel altarpieces or else were used in smaller single-panel devotional altars. English alabasters were exported widely throughout Europe before the Protestant Reformation, which in England brought a sudden end to this trade. The gap in the market this created from around 1540 was quickly compensated for by the development of an important school of alabaster sculpture in the Southern Netherlands, especially in the towns of Mechelen (Malines) and Antwerp. The Mechelen alabaster workshops, which operated from around 1550 to 1630, became much more important later in the sixteenth century, as Antwerp went through severe economic crises. As well as altarpieces, these workshops specialised in making large numbers of small reliefs, often in series and generally smaller than the English alabasters, but replicating many of their subjects, albeit in a more modern late Renaissance style. The reliefs were made in enormous numbers by the artisans, who were known as ‘cleynstekers’ (carvers of small works) or ‘albastwerkers’ (alabaster workers). Sometimes the small panels were incorporated into larger altarpieces, such as the Entombment, set into the upper section of an altarpiece from c. 1550-60 in the Victoria & Albert Museum (Inv. 587-1883; Williamson 2002, pp. 150-51, cat. 50). But they were much more commonly individually framed, with the the frames incorporating decorative friezes stamped and gilded gesso. The reliefs themselves were invariably also partly gilded, so when they were freshly made they must have been spectacular in appearance, even though they were rather mass-made products, mostly modest in quality. Prints must have provided the sources for many of the images, although there is also some evidence that designs were produced in some of the Mechelen workshops. The seven Mechelen reliefs at Mount Stewart have been gathered from different sources and are certainly the products of more than one workshop. Mechelen alabasters quite often bear workshop marks which have allowed a number of these reliefs to be identified as the products of named workshops. No marks are however visible on any of the Mount Stewart reliefs. The carving of the Crowning with Thorns relief at Mount Stewart is reasonable in quality. The image in the alabaster relief is based, with some variations, on a woodcut in the Little Passion by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) published in 1511. This was perhaps the single most influential print series published in the sixteenth century, with copies, many of them pirated, and derivations being made in large numbers. Another Mechelen relief based on the Little Passion image is in a private collection in Paris (Bès de Berc 2003, pp. 139-40). Jeremy Warren August 2022
Provenance
Probably acquired by Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry (1878-1959); by descent to Lady Mairi Bury (1921-2009); accepted by HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the National Trust, 2013.
Makers and roles
Malines (Mechelen) Alabaster School (fl.16th-17th century), sculptor
References
Mount Stewart 1950: Inventory and Valuation of the Contents of Mount Stewart, Newtownards, County Down, the property of the Marchioness Dowager of Londonderry, D.B.E. Prepared for the purpose of insurance by H. Clifford-Smith, M.A. F.S.A. 1950, p. 43. Jansen 1964: Ad Jansen, ‘Mechelse Albasten‘, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen, 68 (1964), pp. 111-191. Derveaux-van Ussel 1967: Ghislaine Derveaux-van Ussel, ed., Mechelner Alabaster, exh. cat., Städtsiches Museum, Trier 1967 Derveaux-van Ussel 1967a: Ghislaine Derveaux-van Ussel, Exposition de Sculptures anglaises et malinoises d’Albâtre, exh. cat., Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels 1967. Williamson 2002 : Paul Williamson, Netherlandish Sculpture 1450-1550. London 2002 Bès de Berc 2003: Guy Bès de Berc, Sculptures d’albâtre de Malines. Les reliefs de dévotion, fin XVIème début XVIIème siècle, Saint Armel 2003. Lipinska 2015 : Aleksandra Lipińska, Moving Sculptures. Southern Netherlandish Alabasters from the 16th to 17th centuries in Central and Northern Europe, Leiden 2015.