Saint John the Evangelist, from a Crucifixion group
possibly Justus Glesker (c.1610/20 - 1678)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1640 - 1680
Materials
Ivory
Measurements
562 x 402 x 187 mm
Place of origin
Germany
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 516589
Summary
A large ivory figure of Saint John the Evangelist, from a Crucifixion group. Saint John depicted as a young man with flowing hair, wearing a loose tunic belted at the waist. He moves forward on his left foot, looking up to his right towards the Cross, his right hand held out in a demonstrative gesture. Placed on a small rocky base. The exceptionally large figure is made from several pieces of ivory. It consists of three vertical sections joined together, with other smaller pieces added, for example around the base. There is a rectangular plugged hole in the back of the head. The figure was probably made by a Northern sculptor who had worked in Italy, possibly the Frankfurt sculptor Justus Glesker (1610/20-1678).
Full description
This large and impressive piece would originally have formed part of a Crucifixion group, with Christ on the Cross in the centre and, on the other side of John the Evangelist, the figure of Mary, mother of Jesus Christ. More figures may have been present. A typical configuration may be seen in a Calvary group attributed to the German ivory carver Justus Glesker (1610/20-1678) in Palazzo Pitti, Florence, in which John the Evangelist stands to the proper left of the Cross, in a pose very similar to that of the Saint John at Anglesey Abbey (Museo degli Argenti, Inv. Bg. Avori 1879, no. 178; Christian Theuerkauff, ‘ Justus Glesker oder Ehrgott Bernhard Bendl? Zu einigen Elfenbeinbildwerken des Barock’, Schriften des Historischen Museums Frankfurt am Main, 13 (1972), pp. 39-76, pp. 73-76, Abb. 7b; Eike D. Schmidt and Maria Sframeli, eds., Diafane passioni. Avori barocchi alle corti europee, exh. cat., Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Livorno 2013, pp. 208-09, no. 59). The figure of Saint John is likely to have been made in Germany, around the middle decades of the seventeenth century. With its statuesque and somewhat theatrical pose, it may be compared to a figure of Lucretia in the Victoria & Albert Museum, dated c. 1650-80 (Inv. A.43-1949. Marjorie Trusted, Victoria and Albert Museum. Baroque and Later Ivories, London 2013, pp. 54-55, no. 34). The dramatic emotionalism of the Anglesey Abbey Saint John is a feature of a group of figures in ivory that have been attributed to the German sculptor Justus Glesker, who as a young man worked in the Netherlands and then in Italy. Calvary groups were something of a specialism for this artist, who made a large scale Crucifixion group in gilded wood for the Cathedral in Bamberg between 1648 and 1653, part of the extensive series of sculptural decorations he undertook for the cathedral, most of which were lost in the nineteenth century (Erich Herzog and Anton Ress, ‘Der Frankfurter Barockbildhauer Justus Glesker’, Schriften des Historischen Museums Frankfurt am Main, 10 (1962), pp. 53-148, pp. 62-88, figs. 9-25; Theuerkauff, ‘Justus Glesker oder Ehrgott Bernhard Bendl’, pp. 40-44, figs. 1, 3-6). As well as the complete ivory Calvary in the Museo degli Argenti, several detached figures in ivory attributed to Glesker once formed part of now dispersed Calvary ensembles. All somewhat smaller than the Anglesey Abbey Saint John, they include a kneeling Mary Magdalen in the V&A (Inv. A.7-1936. Trusted, Baroque and Later Ivories, no.9; Schmidt and Sframeli, Diafane passioni, no. 61), a fainting Virgin Mary (ibid., no. 60) and a pair of standing figures of the Virgin Mary and Saint John (ibid., nos. 63-64). It is possible that the Anglesey Abbey Saint John, a sculpture of great beauty and power, is another work by Glesker. Justus Glesker’s contemporary Joachim von Sandrart (1606-88) in his biography of the sculptor wrote that Glesker as a young man in Italy, especially when living in Rome, ‘drew great benefit from the ancient statues and other works of art’ (‚machte sich an allen Orten/ sonderlich zu Rom/ die Antiche-Statuen und andere Kunst-Werke sehr vernünftig zu Nutzen‘). Sandrart also mentioned that it was Glesker's habit to make maximum use of the available lengths of the ivory tusks that he carved, allowing him to create larger figures. The Anglesey Abbey Saint John is not only an exceptionally large ivory figure, but is also directly based on one of the most famous of all Roman antiquities, the marble statue of the Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican, the pose and gestures of which it reproduces exactly, but in reverse, both therefore factors that might support the attribution to him of the Anglesey Abbey Saint John. The inventory of Justus Glesker’s workshop, made after his death in 1678, recorded a number of ivory sculptures, including a Crucifix, a Saint Sebastian and a Christ as the Man of Sorrows, as well as ivory cups and beakers (Herzog and Ress, ‘Der Frankfurter Barockbildhauer Justus Glesker’, p. 129). None of the ivories that have been attributed to him in recent years are however signed or otherwise documented, meaning that attributions have to be based on stylistic comparisons, including with the large Calvary in Bamberg cathedra, and must therefore be cautious. Jeremy Warren November 2021
Provenance
Urban Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966). Bequeathed in 1966.
Makers and roles
possibly Justus Glesker (c.1610/20 - 1678), sculptor Italo-Flemish School , sculptor
References
Christie, Manson & Woods 1971: The National Trust, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge. Inventory: Furniture, Textiles, Porcelain, Bronzes, Sculpture and Garden Ornaments’, 1971, p. 133.