The Compassion Of The Father, Alabaster, Southern Netherlands, 1560-1570

The city of Mechelen in Belgium became during the Renaissance the center of an original production of small alabaster sculptures and reliefs.In the context of the Catholic Reformation, most of these reliefs, intended for private devotion,focused on religious iconography. Here, it is the affirmation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity (one God in three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) that is put forward by our sculptor, who sets up an original composition where the radiant background is animated by cherubs bearing the Instruments of the Passion (the Cross, the Whip and the Column of Flagellation).This complex iconography, known as the Compassion of the Father, is a rather rare subject among Malines artists. Escaping serial production to get closer to the best artists put at the service of the most prestigious orders, the specific style of our plate recalls the ornamental details of the clothes, the physiognomies and the muscular treatment of the anatomies in the reliefs of Calvary by Willem van den Broecke (1530-1580) at the Louvre and the Resurrection of Christ from his workshop at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The treatment of the clouds and the circular movement created around the mainfigures recall Christ the Savior of Humanity by Cornelis Floris de Vriendt II at the Rockoxhuis in Antwerp.