Carved in relief and originally polychromed. Christ’s missing right hand was originally attached with a mortise-and-tenon joint. Discernible are several nail holes on the reverse, as well as several (workbench?) holes in Christ’s head and the group’s underside.

The polychromy has been removed with a caustic. Some traces of the underlying chalk ground can still be discerned in deep-lying areas. Small breakages can also be observed, with Christ’s right hand missing.

…; from the collection A.P. Hermans-Smits (1822-1897), Eindhoven, with numerous other objects (BK-NM-2001 to -2800), fl. 14,000 for all, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885

Object number: BK-NM-2471

When returning from their yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Mary and Joseph lose track of their twelve-year-old son (Luke 2:41-52). Only on the third day do they manage to find him. All the while, he had been talking to the doctors in the temple, who listened in great amazement to the young boy’s words. In Marian devotion, this event was adopted as one of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin. The present retable group shows Christ as a boy, sitting on an elevated platform encircled by his listeners. The man far right, wearing a hooded habit, can possibly be identified as Joseph. Noteworthy is his resemblance to a Joseph in a (Brabantine?) retable group in the Victoria and Albert Museum.¹¹London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. 375-1890, see P. Williamson, Netherlandish Sculpture 1450-1550, coll. cat. London (Victoria and Albert Museum) 2002, no. 18.

Based on the subject, the present group may have belonged to a retable centring on the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin and/or Christ’s Childhood. In light of the relatively uncommon iconography and miniature scale, this wood-carved depiction could not have functioned as one of the main scenes. Leeuwenberg believed it was a group incorporated in one of the concave figural frames typically encountered in Antwerp retables. Given the relief’s square format and the flat reverse, however, this is improbable. Such characteristics are uncommon for carvings in this location, which are normally smaller in size, possess a convex backside and have the form of a vertical rectangle or follow the curvature of the outer frame.

Most likely the group was incorporated in the retable in some other way. That variations existed is evident from examples such as the Retable of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows in the Sint-Leonarduskerk in Zoutleeuw, built circa 1510 in Brabant (possibly Leuven).²²See M. Buyle and C. Vanthillo, Vlaamse en Brabantse retabels in Belgische monumenten, Brussels 2000, pp. 234-35 (with ill.). Incorporated in the ornamentation surmounting each of the altarpiece’s three main scenes is a smaller retable group. The group with Christ Among the Doctors, likewise square in format, appears in the right retable caisse above the main scene of the Descent from the Cross, which is three times its size. Another option is that the present retable group was displayed in one of the smaller compartments in the bottom register of an altarpiece.

The overall style of the retable group, which bears no quality mark, suggests a Brabantine origin at the onset of the sixteenth century. Leeuwenberg assigned the piece more specifically to Antwerp. The relative simplicity and stereotypical nature of the carving, however, provide insufficient grounds for such a precise determination. Accordingly, a broader localization in Brabant must suffice for the time being.

Bieke van der Mark, 2024

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 148, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, Christ Among the Doctors, Antwerp, c. 1500 - c. 1520', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20015002