English, Nottingham, early 15th century

Private Collection, USA;

New York, Sotheby’s, 2 February 2018, lot 211;

Where acquired.

The present relief portrays the poignant scene of Christ’s entombment. Joseph of Arimathea supports Christ’s head, while Nicodemus attends to His feet. At the center, the Virgin Mary gazes sorrowfully over her son’s lifeless body, and in the foreground Mary Magdalene leans mournfully against the stone slab, her ointment jar resting beside her.

This tableau, along with other scenes from the Passion of Christ, were popular subjects for English alabaster reliefs of the 14th and 15th centuries, though individual depictions often vary in their details.¹ Other versions of this composition are found in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

England dominated the market for carved stone altarpieces throughout much of the 14th and 15th centuries, with Nottingham emerging as a major center of production. Alabaster was quarried near Derby, west of Nottingham, and sculptors made use of the stone's relative softness, which allowed for greater ease and refinement in carving. Although standard compositional schemes were often used and alabaster carvings typically centered on Christian subjects, no two reliefs are exactly the same.²

Following the Protestant Reformation in England and the subsequent dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, the alabaster carving industry declined sharply as commissions dwindled.

¹F. Cheetham, English Medieval Alabasters, Oxford 1984, p. 17.

² Ibid.

RELATED LITERATURE

F. Cheetham, Alabaster Images of Medieval England, Woodbridge 2003, figs. 66 - 70.