Lot 507 | Lower Rhine Region | Vesper portrait

LOWER RHINE REGION
ca. 1500
Title: Vesper portrait.
Mary, kneeling with her left leg, carrying the body of Christ.
Technique: Lime wood. Overlaid with brown stain, covering the remains of the old mount.
Height: 86cm.

Literature:
Collection of medieval sculptures by Rhenish, Swabian and Flanders carvers of the XIVth to XVIth centuries founded between 1892 and 1895 by Dr. Franz Bock. Photographs by Ludwig Bosten, sculptor, Aachen in August 1894, Tf. 12.

Provenance:
Collection of Canon Franz Bock, Aachen;
1899 as bequest to the Suermondt-Museum Aachen, Inv. SK11;
sold after 1910;
Collection Hubert Lüttgens and descendants, Aachen.

Mary, seated on a rock, kneels with her left leg on the ground and holds the corpse of her son with this leg and her right thigh diagonally in front of her body. She supports Christ's upper left arm with her left hand and his head with her right. The fashion of her garment with its square neckline corresponds to that of the early 16th century. Under her bonnet one recognises the spreading full hair, which is covered by a bonnet. The face is marked by her pain.
The type of the vesper image, with the half-sitting, half-kneeling Mother of God holding the body of her son diagonally in front of her body is widespread. Stylistically, the figure was already classified as Lower Rhenish in the Suermondt Museum in the early 20th century. This could well be true, although the lime wood material suggests that it was created further south.

We are grateful to Guido De Werd, Cologne, for his help in cataloguing the present lot.