Church Monuments Society

An appropriate Monument of the Month for Christmas is the sculpted stone mural monument to an unknown Dutch canon of c.1510-20. It features in the centre the kneeling half-figure of a canon, who looks up at the Virgin and Child above. He is flanked by St James the Greater on the left and St Barbara on the right.

This type of monument is known in Dutch as an epitaaf and in German as an Epitaph but also Memorialbild. It is defined as a sculpted or painted, wall-mounted memorial that includes the name and date of death of the deceased while it may also feature a depiction of the person commemorated and a religious or allegorical scene. Ironically this particular memorial in Utrecht no longer includes an epitaph (i.e. inscription) in the English sense of the word: in its present condition it is just a fragment with traces of polychromy, but no text or heraldry. Consequently we do not know the identity of the canon commemorated here as nothing remains by which we can identify him.

The memorial may have come from the Mariakerk, which was founded as a collegiate church in the heart of Utrecht in the eleventh century and demolished in 1813-16 at the orders of Napoleon after the chapter had been lifted in 1811. Paintings and drawings by the artist Pieter Jansz. Saenredam remind us of the imposing romanesque church that we have lost (fig. 1).

The wall memorial (fig. 2) is carved from Baumberg limestone (or sandstone?) and measures 80.5 x 73.5 x 10.4 cm. It is attributed to the workshop of the so-called Master of the Utrecht Stone Female Head, an anonymous sculptor active in Utrecht between c.1490 and c.1525 who owes his (or her) sobriquet to a fragment of a sculpted Madonna now in the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht (fig. 3). This master probably headed a large workshop in Utrecht whose high-quality sculptures with a keen eye for detail can be found across Europe. Characteristic are the lavish clothes with heavy pleats worn by its figures; the round egg-shaped heads with slanted eyes and almond-shaped eyelids; and the widely spaced strands of hair.

These characteristics are also evident in the canon’s wall memorial. St James the Greater on the left is recognisable by his pilgrim’s hat with scallop shell (the well-known pilgrim’s token from Santiago de Compostela) along with the scrip and staff in his left hand (fig. 4). With his right hand he appears to introduce the kneeling canon before him, which may indicate that St James was the name saint of the deceased. St Barbara in her exuberant dress and headgear on the right can be identified by the large tower behind her (fig. 5). The upper register shows the half-length figure of the Virgin Mary, who is breastfeeding a large naked Christ Child (fig. 6): this type of of Madonna is known as a virgo lactans. The motif of the crescent moon is derived from the Book of Revelation: its description of a ‘woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet’ (Rev. 12: 1) is usually interpreted as a reference to the Virgin Mary.

As CMS co-founder Harry Tummer explains in his 2023 monograph on Dutch monuments to canons, an epitaaf was usually placed near a grave. There is often an accompanying inscription that refers to the actual burial, e.g. with the words ‘hic sepultus’ (here lies buried). In his 2011 study of wall-mounted memorials in the Burgundian Netherlands Douglas Brine claims that the epitaaf was the memorial of choice among canons. Tummers does not quite support this conclusion but he does observe that there are a large number of extant (if often fragmentary) examples in Utrecht.

The epitaaf now in the Centraal Museum has survived quite well overall, despite the loss of its inscription. St Barbara has lost her right hand and there are varying degrees of damage to the faces of all five figures: a sign that the sculpture was targetted by iconoclasts in 1566. Despite this damage, however, the high quality of this 500-year-old sculpture remains obvious.

Sophie Oosterwijk

Some further reading:

Centraal Museum online description at https://collectie.centraalmuseum.nl/details/collection/342.

Medieval Memoria Online (MeMO) ID 494 at https://memodatabase.hum.uu.nl/memo-is/detail/index?detailId=494&detailType=MemorialObject&browse=What%3F%40Memorial+objects%25Elements+present+on+objects%40Portraits&offset=40&max=10.

Douglas Brine, Pious Memories: The Wall-Mounted Memorial in the Burgundian Netherlands, Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History 13 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011).

 Harry Tummers, Kanunniken en hun grafmonumenten in Nederland (Canons and their tomb monuments in the Netherlands), Nijmeegse Kunsthistorische Studies XXX (Lierderholthuis: SPA uitgevers, 2023), esp. pp. 26-45 and fig. 26, and p. 171, nr 6.

Gallery

• Fig. 1. Pieter Jansz. Saenredam (1597-1665), Mariaplaats (St Mary’s Square) with the Mariakerk (St Mary’s church) on the right and the towers of the Buurkerk and Utrecht Cathedral in the background (1662), oil on panel, 109.5 x 139.5 cm, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
• Fig. 2. ?Workshop of the Master of the Utrecht Stone Female Head (active c.1490-c.1525), Epitaph of an unknown canon with the Virgin and Child and Saints James the Greater and Barbara (c.1510-20), 80.5 cm high, collection Centraal Museum Utrecht. Photo Ernst Moritz (public domain).
• Fig. 3. ?Workshop of the Master of the Utrecht Stone Female Head (active c.1490-c.1525), Virgin and Child (fragment) (c.1500-1525), limestone with traces of polychromy, 36 cm high, Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht. Copyright Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht; photo Ruben de Heer, at https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meester_van_de_Utrechtse_Stenen_Vrouwenkop.
• Fig. 4. ?Workshop of the Master of the Utrecht Stone Female Head (active c.1490-c.1525), Virgin and Child (fragment) (c.1500-1525): detail of St James the Greater and an unknown canon. Collection Centraal Museum Utrecht. Photo Ernst Moritz (public domain).
• Fig. 5. ?Workshop of the Master of the Utrecht Stone Female Head (active c.1490-c.1525), Virgin and Child (fragment) (c.1500-1525): detail of St Barbara. Collection Centraal Museum Utrecht. Photo Ernst Moritz (public domain).
• Fig. 6. ?Workshop of the Master of the Utrecht Stone Female Head (active c.1490-c.1525), Virgin and Child (fragment) (c.1500-1525): detail of the Virgin and Child. Collection Centraal Museum Utrecht. Photo Ernst Moritz (public domain).