This alabaster sculpture, which is also worked on the back (albeit more crudely), appears to be in a good state of preservation overall and features a lovely antique patina. There are some chips missing from the rear. The index finger is also missing from Christ’s right hand. A metal element fixed into the alabaster in the middle of the Virgin’s back is all that remains of a an anchorage hook. A small circular hole in the back of Mary’s head appears to have been made relatively recently and has been filled in with stucco. Clear signs of colour can be seen on the work, primarily visible in Christ’s crown of thorns and in his wounds. There are also traces of ground for gilding, which still persist on the hems of the clothing. This small sculpture, perhaps intended for private devotional use or for a convent, can be classified among the so-called Vesperbilds and represents the Madonna holding the lifeless body of Christ. Mary, who wears a veil over her head and a large cloak characterised by angular drapery that conceals her anatomy, turns affectionately towards her Son who lies back across her lap. Christ’s lean physique is lined with the accentuated grooves of his rib cage and sternum, while his face, with its marked features, is framed by a carefully groomed beard and thick hair on which the large crown of thorns perches, seemingly accentuating the movement of his head down towards the ground. The moment shown here is the one immediately after his descent from the Cross, when Jesus’s body was returned to his mother before burial. As primarily demonstrated by the fundamental studies of Wilhelm Pinder,¹ this iconography is rooted in the German-speaking area, where the first examples were to be found between the 13th and 14th century.² The prevalent idea is that the Vesperbild - which does not actually show an episode described explicitly in the Gospels - developed in the Rhineland, inspired by the Latin sequences of the Lament of Mary under the cross, such as the Planctus ante nescia and the Tractatus de Planctu.³ The sculpture in question is not discussed in literature and we do not know its provenance. However, we can glean an indication of where it might have come from due to the material it is made from: alabaster. This material was used from central Europe to Scandinavia, England and the Iberian peninsula,⁴ enjoying a notable increase in popularity in that area from the first half of the 14th century onwards as a substitute or equivalent for marble that was easier to work.⁵ The main names associated with sculpting this material certainly include the so-called “Master of the Rimini Altar”, a label that applies to a complex workshop rather than a specific individual and owes its conventional name to a Crucifixion flanked by Apostles, datable to around 1430 and originally housed in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Rimini and now at the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt.⁶ The cultural origin of this production has been convincingly ascribed to the French-Flemish context.⁷ The important achievements of the creator of the sculptures from Rimini and his assistants constitute essential premises for the sculptor of our Vesperbild, who is likely to have moved within a comparable cultural circle, albeit a generation apart. In terms of the iconography, he sticks extremely closely to the arrangement adopted by the workshop of the Master of Rimini for this subject (see the examples at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, or the one at the Museum Wiesbaden, originally from Lorch). Compared to the highly elegant and subtle language of the Frankfurt masterpiece and its most direct derivatives, the author of the work in question expresses himself in a rougher, more angular and more expressively charged, almost violent register. This development is in keeping with the changes that took place in northern European sculpture in around the third quarter of the 15th century. The rigid, paper-like drapery of the clothes, which fall to the ground in sharp folds, can be seen in other alabaster works from the period,⁸ such as a series of apostles at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, ascribed to the Meuse Valley area between northern France and the Netherlands and dating to around 1450- 60.⁹ As regards the Madonna’s veil, a similar development (in broad, flattened layers, with a perfectly rectilinear fold in the centre of her forehead) is displayed by a Weeping Madonna in the collection at the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum (Fränkische Galerie Kronach) in Munich, which originally formed part of a Crucifixion group, together with a Magdalene in the same collection.¹⁰ The most eloquent reference for the physiognomy of the two figures in this small Pietà can be found in the faces of a St Andrew and an apostle who cannot be identified due to his lack of an attribute, now in the Liebieghaus Collection in Frankfurt. The sculptures, believed to be French-Flemish and datable to the third quarter of the 15th century,¹¹ also feature eyes round with surprise, high foreheads, protruding cheekbones and a detailed rendering of their beards and hair in parallel wavy locks. Furthermore, a similar manner of interpreting the figure can also be seen in the rendering of the bodies that, beneath their relaxed and sloping shoulders, are concealed by large cloaks that only barely allow us to glimpse what is underneath. This comparable style therefore allows us to place the Cerruti Vesperbild in the same region as the two pieces now in Frankfurt. 

Stefanie Paulmichl 

¹ Pinder 1920, pp. 145-163; Id. 1922, pp. 3-10.

² On this subject see also Krönig 1967; D. Grobmann, “Imago Pietatis”, in Salzburg 1970, pp. 34-48; Ziegler 1992, p. 20; Forsyth 1995, p. 17; S. Castri, “In virginis gremium repositus. Dall’archetipo del Vesperbild alla Bella Pietà: un excursus, non solo Alpino”, in Trento 2002b, pp. 173-174; Kvapilová, pp. 18-22.

³ In addition to the essays by Pinder, see Ziegler 1992, pp. 28-34.

⁴ Woods 2012, p. 57.

⁵ A. Lipińska, “Alabastrum Effoditur Pulcherrimum and Candissimum. The Influence of Imported Southern Netherlandish Sculpture on the Reception of Alabaster in Central Europe in the Sixteenth Century”, in Anderson 2009, pp. 483-484; Id. 2012, pp. 85-86, 88; Woods 2018, pp. 7-12; K. W. Woods, “Alabaster Sculpture in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands c. 1400 - c. 1530 / Escultura de alabastro en Borgoña y en los Países Bajos de los Habsburgo c. 1400 - c. 1530”, in Morte García 2018, pp. 179-192.

⁶ Legner 1969, pp. 101-168; Maek-Gérard, Beck 1981, pp. 148-174, cats. 71-89; K. W. Woods, “Towards a Morphology of Netherlandish Altarpieces in Alabaster”, in Fajt, Hörsch 2014, pp. 46-48; Id. 2018, pp. 94-122.

⁷ W. Paatz, “Stammbaum der gotischen Alabasterskulptur”, in Braunfels 1956, pp. 130-135.

⁸ Swarzenski 1921, pp. 167-213.

⁹ New York 1968-69, nos. 47-51; Scholten 2011, p. 70.

¹⁰ Swarzenski 1921, pp. 191, 203; Weniger 2014, pp. 74 cat.25, 289 no. A.22, proposing that it may have come from southern Germany and dating it to 1490.

¹¹ Swarzenski 1921, p. 190; Schenkluhn, Beck 1987, pp. 34-37, cats. 13-14.