Southern Netherlandish, Malines, 17th century

Galerie Kugel, TEFAF, 2003

The production of small-scale retables incorporating alabaster reliefs peaked in Malines between 1550 and 1570. Although traditionally referred to as domestic altarpieces, Aleksandra Lipinska (op. cit., pp. 107-108) has pointed out that their use was wide-ranging and not necessarily limited to private devotion.

While altarpieces of this kind were produced serially for a flourishing market during these decades, few extant examples are found in private hands today. This very fine and near-complete retable therefore represents a rare survival. Its general composition corresponds to most other examples of its type, with a wooden framework decorated with ornamental grotesques in gilt stucco housing a large alabaster relief at the centre, and a smaller relief in the supersection which in this example depicts a domestic scene. Often there is a further relief with God the Father in the surmounting lunette.

The larger central relief depicts the scene from the Old Testament the Manna from Heaven. The composition of the piece seems to derive from a woodcut by Bernard Salomon in the Quadrins historiques de l’Exode (EXODE XVI) which depicts Moses with his staff pointing toward the miracle falling from the sky. Bernard Salomon’s imagery influenced illustrators and engravers in Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy, where Lyonese prints were widely circulated. Such influence crossed between artistic disciplines and can be seen on a variety of objects throughout the 16^th and 17^th centuries from Limoges enamels (see a beautiful example at the Louvre inv. no. OA 11018) to the present relief. The present relief adds a female figure to the scene, leaning against a basket in the centre of the composition.

The present altarpiece’s elaborate stucco decoration, achieved using the stamping technique, shows Renaissance style grotesques which are usually attributed to the influence of the Antwerp master Cornelis II Floris (1514-1575). A retable with incredibly similar stuccowork, featuring the same modelled columns flanking the central relief, was sold by Mirabaud Mercier on the 25^th April 2024 as lot 107.

RELATED LITERATURE

A. Huysmans (ed.), La sculpture des Pays-Bas méridionaux et de la Principauté de Liège, XVe et XVI^e siècles, cat. Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels, 1999, pp. 226-231;

A. Lipinska, Moving Sculptures: Southern Netherlandish Alabasters from the 16th to 17th centuries in Central and Northern Europe, Leiden, 2015, pp. 96-113 and figs. 82-84;

M. Debaene (ed.), Alabaster Sculpture in Europe 1300-1650, exh. cat. M Leuven, 2022, pp. 206-207, no. 71.