Southern Netherlandish, Brabant or Bruges, circa 1480

Private collection, Belgium

This elegant figure representing Saint Margaret, standing on the dragon whom she warded off with the cross, is near-identical in composition to a sculpture in the Gruuthuse-Museum, Bruges (inv. no. O.113.v). Previously described as Bruges or Brabant, circa 1480 (Geelen et al., op. cit.), the Bruges Saint Margaret has recently been presented as an early work by the prominent Brussels sculptor Jan Borman I (active c. 1460- c. 1502, see Debaene, op. cit.). While the attribution to Borman is yet to be supported by scholarly consensus, the refined quality of the Bruges Saint Margaret clearly distinguishes her as the work of an accomplished sculptor. In addition to the present version, there is a copy of the same composition in the collection of the Glasgow Museums (inv. no. 50.45), whose authenticity has been called into question. While it is rare to have near-identical surviving versions of the same composition in Netherlandish wood sculpture, this is not an unknown practice, which also occurs among the Borman group. The fact that the present sculpture, which has recently been the subject of a study at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in Brussels, hails from a private collection in Bruges may however support a possible origin of the Saint Margarets among a workshop in this city.

RELATED LITERATURE

J. Folie (ed.), Flanders in the fifteenth century: art and civilization, exh. cat., Detroit, 1960, pp. 236-237, no. fig. 72; I. Geelen and D. Steyaert, Imitation and Illusion. Applied Brocade in the Art of the Low Countries in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Brussels, 2011, pp. 250-253; M. Debaene (ed.), Borman: A Family of Northern Renaissance Sculptors, exh. cat. M-Museum Leuven, London and Turnhout, 2019, pp. 194-195, no. 40

The present lot is the subject of a C-14 test and report prepared by KIK-IRPA, dated 12 September 2024, which states that the wood from the sample dates between 1304 and 1434 (95,4% confidence interval).