The central plate comprises two separate elements, each cast in a stone mould and joined on the underside by means of a tin bracing (lead?). At some point, the whole was additionally reinforced with (now lost) clamps, of which the holes are still discernible. The engraved areas of the plate’s front were polychromed with lampblack and vermillion, possibly originally supplemented with blue and white.
Alloy leaded high-zinc brass; copper with low impurities (Cu 70.80%; Zn 24.66%; Sn 0.27%; Pb 2.92%; Sb 0.75%; As 0.11%; Fe 0.12%; Ni 0.10%)

The trefoil’s apex has broken off, as has the top left corner of the inverted triangle (restored). Traces of the original polychromy in lampblack and vermillion can still be discerned in the recessed areas of the plate’s front.

Commissioned by or for Gijsbert Willemsz Raet (d. 1511), and placed on his grave in the Jeruzalemkapel, Gouda, c. 1511; transferred to the Heilige Geest Weeshuis, Gouda, 1586; acquired by David van der Kellen Jr, Amsterdam, March 1864; acquired with the Van der Kellen collection, February 1874¹¹O. ter Kuile, Koper en brons (Catalogi van de verzameling kunstnijverheid van het Rijksmuseum van Amsterdam, vol. 1), coll. cat. Amsterdam 1986, p. VIII.

Object number: BK-NM-32-1

Gijsbert Willemsz Raet, vicar of the St Andreas altar in the Sint-Janskerk in Gouda, died on 27 May 1511. Several decades before, circa 1479, Raet founded the Jeruzalemkapel in that same city as a token of thanks after safely returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In 1505, he donated the chapel to the Broeders des Gemenen Levens (Brethren of the Common Life). At his own request, Raet was buried in the chapel beneath a gravestone slab made of Namur or Tournai stone, inlaid with elaborately decorated brass plates. In 1586, the chapel was designated as the chaplain’s chamber, at which time the gravestone was moved to the adjacent Heilige Geest Weeshuis (Holy Spirit Orphanage). Having survived partly intact, the stone slab was moved back to the Jeruzalemkapel in 2010 (fig. a).²²On loan term loan from the Museum Gouda, inv. no. 02147. The border inscription lining the gravestone’s perimeter states the name of the deceased and the date of his death.³³O. ter Kuile, Koper en brons (Catalogi van de verzameling kunstnijverheid van het Rijksmuseum van Amsterdam, vol. 1), coll. cat. Amsterdam 1986, p. 40: Anno d(omi)ni xvc die / xxvii maiji obiit (rabi)lis d(omi)nus Ghijsbert (...) (fun)dator h(uius) capelle c(uius) a(n)i(m)a Req(ui)escat in pace. In the nineteenth century, the five brass plates were transferred to the Rijksmuseum.

The five brasses from Raet’s gravestone consist of a large central plate and four smaller ornamental corner plates. The central brass (shown here) has the form of an inverted triangle resting on its point, intersected by a gothic trefoil surmounted by crockets and rosettes. An inscription band lines the form’s perimeter, which encloses the scene of an angel holding two escutcheons while standing on an underground with stylized plants. The right-hand escutcheon shows on one side the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem with the Jerusalem cross above it, and adjacent to this, St Catherine’s wheel pierced by two swords. Depicted on the left-hand escutcheon is a chalice flanked by two palm branches. The Latin marginal inscription, written in Gothic minuscule, reads: In tenebris stra vi lectulum meum Et rursum post tenebras spero lucem (In darkness I have made my bed and after darkness I expect again light).⁴⁴Job 17:12-13. The four ornamental corner brasses are square in form and positioned standing on a vortex, with the sides articulated as accolades from which small foliate ornamentation emerges. Each corner plate contains a symbol of one of the four evangelists, holding a banderole bearing the saint’s name: the lion of St Mark (marcs) (upper left, BK-NM-32-3, the bull of St Luke (lucas) (upper right, BK-NM-32-5), the eagle of St John (iohes) (lower left, BK-NM-32-4), and the kneeling angel of St Matthew (matheus) (lower right, BK-NM-32-2).

All five brasses were originally furnished with a polychromy in vermilion and lampblack, possibly supplemented with blue and white,⁵⁵These two colours are described by D. van der Kellen (Le Moyen-âge et la renaissance dans les Pays-Bas, The Hague 1865-78), no trace thereof can be discerned today. thus achieving a strong colouristic effect in combination with the yellowish tint of the polished brass and the gravestone’s dark-grey tone. The crosshatching in the deeper-lying sections of the plates served to facilitate the paint’s adhesion to the brass underground.

This kind of metal inlay work was once a specialty of brass founders in the Southern Netherlands, specifically in the cities of Bruges, Ghent and Mechelen.⁶⁶J.W. Steyaert et al., Late Gothic Sculpture: The Burgundian Netherlands, exh. cat. Ghent (Museum of Fine Arts) 1994, nos. 45, 46, 48. While Ter Kuile presumed that Raet’s gravestone was made in the Northern Netherlands, possibly even from Gouda, this is a far from certain conclusion. The similarity of the standing angel to figures on a Bruges gravestone dating from the 1460s, however, suggests Raet more likely turned to a specialist from Flanders for the making of his gravestone.⁷⁷Cf. J.W. Steyaert et al., Late Gothic Sculpture: The Burgundian Netherlands, exh. cat. Ghent (Museum of Fine Arts) 1994, pp. 207 (figs. 45, 45a), 208, 209.

Frits Scholten, 2024

D. van der Kellen, Le Moyen-âge et la renaissance dans les Pays-Bas, The Hague 1865-78, nos. 38, 38a; C.J. de Lange van Wijngaerden, Geschiedenis en beschrijving der stad van der Goude, vol. 3, Gouda 1879, pp. 143-44; A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor geschiedenis en kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1915, no. 216; J. Belonje and F.A. Greenhill, ‘Some Brasses in Germany and the Low Countries’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society 10 (1968), part 6, pp. 445-49; E.G.G. Bos, Vijf eeuwen koper en brons (Rijksmuseum, Facetten der Verzameling 13), Amsterdam 1973, fig. 39; O. ter Kuile, Koper en brons (Catalogi van de verzameling kunstnijverheid van het Rijksmuseum van Amsterdam, vol. 1), coll. cat. Amsterdam 1986, no. 40

F. Scholten, 2024, 'anonymous, Angel, Central Plate from the Gravestone of Gijsbert Willemsz Raet (d. 1511), Low Countries, c. 1511', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20082660