Lost and Found

Dr Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman, Corpus Vitrearum, The Netherlands

There is very little monumental stained glass from the first half of the sixteenth century in the Netherlands, but rather more from the second half, as documented in the most recent volume of the Dutch Corpus Vitrearum.¹

The most famous example of late Renaissance glass is the glazing scheme that fills the Sint Janskerk in Gouda, for which the original cartoons survive.² Yet miracles can happen. In this case, the miracle occurred on 22 of February this year, when I received an email from my colleague Dr. Christina Wais-Wolf of the Austrian committee of Corpus Vitrearum. She was writing catalogue texts for long-forgotten panels of glass in the depot of the Museum für angewandte Kunst/MAK in Vienna, in anticipation of their being exhibited this spring at the Bergbau- und Gotikmuseum in Leogang (Salzburg). With her email she sent images of two stained-glass panels representing Philip the Fair and Johanna of Castile with their patron saints (figs. 1–2), asking for confirmation of their newly established provenance, the former St.-Nicolaasgasthuis, a hospital for the poor.³ An 18th-century drawing of these panels published in the most recent volume of the Dutch Corpus Vitrearum played a crucial role identifying their provenance (fig. 3).⁴

 

The Hague was the seat of the counts of Holland, and it was there that the St.-Nicolaasgasthuis was founded, probably in c.1355, by Willem V, Count of Holland and Zeeland. In 1505, a large hall was added to the hospital, which was used as an infirmary, and where masses were also celebrated. The hall was decorated with stained glass donated by the nobility, now all but lost. The most important donation was the largest window in the east, given in 1505 by Philip the Fair, 34th Count of Holland and Zeeland (d.1506);⁵ this is also the only window at the hospital for which a visual source survives. The drawing in question has been attributed to Theodoor Verrijk (1734–1786), who also made a signed drawing of another lost window in The Hague; both were commissioned by the antiquarian Laurens de Witte van Citters (1781–1862) for the earliest collection of prints of the county of Zeeland, the Zelandia Illustrata. The drawings were later transferred to the Gemeentearchief in The Hague.

Verrijk’s drawing shows a window that by the 18th century was no longer intact, with fragments of glass in the tracery: two small-scale arms of Philip and the turbaned head of a bearded man. The images of the kneeling donors accompanied by their patron saints in the drawing and the glass correspond: Philip the Fair faces to the viewer’s right, with St Philip the apostle, and Johanna of Castile is depicted in a similar way, facing her husband and protected by St John the apostle. They are both crowned and clad in purple mantles with ermine linings. In the glass, the figures are placed against a blue-tapestry background and surrounded by architecture that is a mixture of late Gothic and Renaissance. The rendering of the architecture in the drawing is not entirely correct however, evincing differences from the glass. The most notable difference is the addition in the drawing of two shields for each figure, attached to the couple’s bodies: Philip bears the arms of Burgundy and Spain, and Johanna those of Castile and Aragon, whereas the originals show their garments unadorned.

 

One wonders if the slightly awkward composition, with the large coat of arms of Philip the Fair between the figures, represents the original layout of the window. The Museum für angewandte Kunst/MAK has in fact a third panel in its depot, representing a large coat of arms of Philip the Fair, though this exhibits various discrepancies from the drawing, in the shield, the surrounding chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece, helm, crest, and mantling.⁶ The nonsense text fragment in the banderole above the shield in the drawing, which is missing from the panel in Vienna, was in any event either misread by Verrijk, or was already illegible by that time. It should have contained Philip’s motto ‘Qui vouldra’ (‘He who wants’).

 

These three panels with the figures and the coat of arms can be identified as having the same provenance, the St.-Nicolaasgasthuis. In the early 19th century, the institution was wrestling with financial problems, and any remaining glass was sold off at that time. In 1843, these three panels must have been in the collection of a certain J. von Siebold in Leiden: they are mentioned that year in the correspondence of an intermediary with the churchwarden of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, Jean Marie van Maanen. The latter was looking everywhere for old stained glass to enrich his church, which already possessed three windows from 1555 and a few later ones. In the correspondence, the provenance of the glass is mentioned, but no subject matter. The fact that the panels were considered ‘older than the Gouda windows’ justified their high price, 500 guilders. Van Maanen had to decide quickly, as an art dealer was supposedly offering an even higher price. In the event the dealer won, and the panels left the country to end up in Vienna. According to the inventory of the MAK, they were acquired for the museum in 1871 from a certain Professor Klein.

 

As no other stained glass from 1505 is preserved in the Netherlands, let alone in The Hague, it is difficult to say whether the panels from the St.-Nicolaasgasthuis were made in a local workshop or somewhere else in the Northern or Southern Netherlands. However, documentary evidence suggests that the role played by The Hague in the production of stained glass in the earliest period may have been underestimated.⁷  After the move of the court of the counts of Holland in the second half of the 14th century from Henegouwen (Hainaut) in the Southern Netherlands to The Hague, court life flourished. Documents inform us of regular donations of stained glass made by successive counts for churches and chapels in The Hague and its surroundings, all now sadly lost. Two names connected with the execution of important commissions stand out in the documents. ‘Daniel, de glaesmaker in den Hage’ is documented between 1432 and 1444 working for donors such as Philip the Good (for the St.-Antoniuskapel in The Hague), or the mighty nobleman Frank van Borselen (for the St.-Jacobskerk (Grote Kerk), among others, in the same city). The accounts of van Borselen, Lord of Voorne and, until his marriage in 1433 to Jacoba van Beieren, Stadholder of Holland and Zeeland, mention no fewer than sixty-four window donations. All of these were commissioned from glass-painters in The Hague, first from the Daniel named above, and in the years 1453–68 from Zweer van Opbueren, Wesselsz. The window by the latter glass-painter in the Dominican church in The Hague from 1456/57 is also lost, but one fine example of his work survives, in the Wunderblutkirche St. Nikolai, a pilgrimage church in Bad Wilsnack (Brandenburg).⁸ Written sources tell of the continuing involvement of glass-painters in The Hague in the decoration of churches and the counts’ castle. In 1539, a fire destroyed the St.-Jacobskerk (Grote Kerk) and with it an unknown number of windows, including the work of Daniel mentioned above. The redecoration of this parish church in the 1540s was done jointly by glass-painters from The Hague and from outside the city. In light of the above, there is enough reason to believe that the counts’ seat had sufficiently skilled glass-painters at its disposal to entrust Philip the Fair’s commission to a local artist. It is to the authorship of our anonymous glass-painter that we owe nothing less than the earliest surviving stained glass in the Netherlands, alas removed and no longer in the country, but with a known provenance, documented date, and documented sitters.

Philip the Fair, 34th Count of Holland and Zeeland, was also represented elsewhere in Dutch stained glass, as is evidenced by graphic and written sources. Following the joyeuse entrée of 1494 in Reimerswaal in Zeeland, during which Philip the Fair was presented by his father Emperor Maximilian as the future Count of Zeeland, Maximilian donated money for three windows in the choir of the St.-Pieterskerk in the (now submerged) city of Reimerswaal. The central image of a Crucifixion was accompanied by images of Maximilian and his deceased wife Mary of Burgundy (on the left) and those of Philip the Fair and his sister Margaret of Austria (on the right). The images of these individuals stressed the continuity between the ruling houses of Burgundy and Habsburg, and therefore the legitimacy of the new sovereign.⁹ The same idea lies behind the window donated by Maximilian in Amsterdam known to us via an engraving (fig. 4). Maximilian is here represented with his two spouses, the deceased Mary of Burgundy and Bianca Sforza on the left, and Philip the Fair with Johanna of Castile on the right, in company of their children, the future Charles V and Ferdinand I in the front and the four daughters at the back. The gift is linked to Maximilian’s visit to Amsterdam in 1508 as guardian to Charles, after the untimely death of the latter’s father.¹⁰ Philip the Fair would be represented once more in the 16th century in stained glass, as part of the seriesThe 36 Counts and Countesses of Holland and Zeeland (fig. 5). These windows were made in 1587–88 by Willem Tybaut for the militiamen in Leiden, for their former seat, the St.-Jorisdoelen.¹¹

Thus of the various windows documented for the Northern Netherlands connected with Philip the Fair and his spouse Johanna of Castile, only one example survives, albeit in Vienna. The rediscovery of these panels from 1505 is of great importance for the history of Netherlandish stained glass: it is also a discovery that I wanted to share with the readers of Vidimus. The panels are on view until 31 October 2025 at the Bergbau- und Gotikmuseum Leogang (Salzburg), as part of an exhibition of medieval art from the archbishopric of Salzburg that also features fine medieval panels from St. Lorenzen ob Katsch, seen together for the first time in more than a century, and hidden treasures from the Museum für angewandte Kunst/MAK in Vienna, the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and the Esterházy Collection in Budapest. For further information (in German), see https://www.museum-leogang.at/bergbau-und-gotikmuseum/sonderausstellungen/.

Footnotes

1. Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman, Stained Glass in the Netherlands before 1795, 2 vols, Corpus Vitrearum The Netherlands, IV, Amsterdam, 2011. Apart from two heavily restored windows from the 1540s in the St.-Jacobskerk (Grote Kerk) in The Hague, one of which was given by Emperor Charles V (II, pp. 550–53), and the fragmentary glazing of the Herenkoor in the Grote Kerk in Breda (pp. II, 680–84), all extant fragments from this period are dispersed and housed in local museums, such as those in Utrecht (from the Jacobikerk and Janskerk, I, pp. 237–40) and The Hague (from the Grote Kerk, II, pp. 553–56). These fragments all date from the second quarter of the 16th century, apart from those in the museum in Zutphen, which has fragments dating to the early 16th century (from the St.-Walburgiskerk, I, pp. 193–98).[↩]
2. Ibid., II, pp. 507–43; and Z. van Ruyven-Zeman et al., De cartons van de Sint-Janskerk in Gouda. The Cartoons of the Sint-Janskerk in Gouda, Delft, 2011.[↩]
3. I would like to thank Christina Wais-Wolf for sharing this information, as well as her catalogue entries of these panels. Thanks are also due to Françoise Gatouillat, for identifying the provenance of the panels after Christina launched an inquiry among colleagues of the French and Belgian Corpus Vitrearum.[↩]
4. Van Ruyven-Zeman 2011, fig. VIII.75 and pp. 558–59, where the following information on the gasthuis and the documentation of its glazing is described in more detail, and published sources in Dutch are given.[↩]
5. The Hague, Nationaal Archief: Grafelijkheidsrekenkamer, Rekeningen, inv. 339, f.131v (1505, donation from Philip the Fair of 36 Flemish pounds for a window). More often, Philip gave windows for the Northern Netherlands, the most expensive one being the now-lost transept window for the St.-Bavokerk in Haarlem in 1497, which cost 150 pounds.[↩]
6. The panel, c.111 × 57cm, is in a bad state of preservation and is not included in the exhibition in Leogang. Vienna, Museum für angewandte Kunst/MAK, Inv.-Nr. Gl. 840.[↩]
7. See the section ‘Monumental Stained Glass in The Hague: Lost Glass and Artists’ in van Ruyven-Zeman 2011, pp. 465–70.[↩]
8. U Bednarz et al., Die mittelalterlichen Glasmalereien in Berlin-Brandenburg, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Deutschland, XXII, Berlin, 2010, window nVIII.[↩]
9. Van Ruyven-Zeman 2011, II, pp. 628–29.[↩]
10. Ibid., I, pp. 311–12. The date 1484 on the engraving is erroneous.[↩]
11. Ibid., II, pp. 567–72. Only one third of the series is preserved in stained glass, in the Museum De Lakenhal, but not the image of Philip the Fair. All the cartoons are in the Regionaal Archief Leiden.[↩]