SOUTHERN GERMAN OR AUSTRIAN, EARLY 14TH CENTURY | Corpus Christi

Manoir de la famille De Lebioles Spa, Belgium;
private collection, Belgium;
the present owner

The sculpture is a fragment, and both arms are lost. There are a few further losses, notably to the toes of the proper right foot, to the hair, and some of the high points of the perizonium. There are losses to the (probably original) gilding, polychromy and gesso ground throughout, notably to the top of the head, parts of the face, the upper torso, and the perizonium on the proper left side. There is stable craquelure to the gilding and polychromy throughout. There is some stable splitting to the wood, consistent with the material, in particular a split running down the torso. There is minor evidence of past worming in areas.
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This finely carved Crucified Christ is datable to the early decades of the 14th century, when the type characterised by an 'S-curve' with bent knees was widely repeated in northern European sculpture. While the slender torso and knee-length perizonium relate to a Rhenish Crucifix in the Schnütgen Museum, Cologne (inv. no. A 932), the markedly emaciated stomach finds parallels in works from the Tyrol, indicating a possible Alpine origin (see Söding, op. cit., nos. 4-5).  RELATED LITERATURE
U. Bergmann (ed.), Die Holzskulpturen des Mittelalters (1000-1400), cat. Schnütgen Museum, Cologne, 1989, pp. 261-262, no. 60; U. Söding, Gotische Kruzifixe in Tirol, Berlin and Munich, 2010, pp. 106-111

The present lot is offered with a Radiocarbon dating measurement report prepared by the Institut Royal de Patrimoine Artistique, Brussels, dated 23 April 2018, which states that the wood from the sample dates between AD 1250 and 1300 (90.1% confidence interval).