Two standing figures, of the grieving Virgin and Saint John, are from a Crucifixion group, with the Virgin placed to left of the cross, and John to the right. The Virgin sways away from the cross in an attitude of grief, clutching at her robe with left hand, right held to her breast. She wears a rich dress, dark red with a delicate painted flower pattern and gilded border; over this, a heavily gilded cloak with painted border; the cloak was originally dark blue inside, but this pigment is largely lost. Saint John stands facing and looking up to the cross, as if moving forward (his right foot peeks out from below the robe at far right), his hands held in supplication. He is more or less in profile to the viewer, and wears a rich robe, heavily gilded and with painted patterns simulating silk; over this is a cloak, fastened at the neck, richly gilded. Like the Virgin’s cloak, this was blue inside, but is now mostly lost, presumably stripped off for some reason.

Each figure is flattened at the back, suggesting they might have been placed originally against some form of background, although there is no evidence of any fixing hooks or rings at the back. There are holes in bottom of bases for holding figures. The figures are set on hexagonal bases; the Virgin’s has piece out at front right, John a piece out at left.

These sensitive and well-carved statues would originally have stood on either side of a cross bearing the crucified Christ, in a grouping known as a Calvary group, from the hill upon which Christ was crucified. The hill is often symbolically depicted by means of a small mound at the base of the cross, usually with the skull of Adam. A very large complete Calvary group in the Philadelphia Museum of Art gives a good sense of the likely original context for the Houston figures.¹

There is relatively little stylistic development, from the latter decades of the fifteenth through to the early sixteenth century, in these types of figurative groups, which depend from the figures developed by fifteenth-century painters such as Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden. Although the Houston figures are likely to be a little later, there are especially striking similarities between this pair of figures and their counterparts on the brass Paschal Candelabrum in the church of Zoutleeuw (Léau) in Flemish Brabant, made by Renier van Thienen in 1482–83.²

The figures may have been made in the northwestern Hainaut region or Tournai, situated to the southwest of Brussels, close to today’s border with France. The figure of the Virgin in an early sixteenth-century Calvary in the parish church in Marpent has some parallels with the Houston Virgin, illustrating the influence of Brussels as it extended into the Hainaut region, to the southwest of the city. These similarities include the way in which the Virgin leans outward as she faints with grief, and the drapery gathered under her left arm.³ There is a similar emotionally charged figure of the Virgin in the church of Saint-Pierre in Antoing in Hainaut.⁴ It has, however, also been suggested that the figure of the Virgin is characteristic of Brussels work around 1500,⁵ with a comparison of the forms of the Virgin’s drapery with those of a figure of Saint Anne with the Virgin and the Christ Child, formerly in the Gumprecht collection, Berlin, stamped “BRVESEL” on the front of the socle.⁶

One of the distinctive features of the Saint John is the way in which the saint appears to walk toward the cross. There is a figure of Saint John in the Detroit Institute of Arts, attributed to Tournai, early sixteenth century, in polychromed oak.⁷ In the Detroit figure, considerably larger than the Houston Saint John, the saint is shown in a dynamic walking pose. There is a similar figure in the church of Saint-Pierre in Isières, in Hainaut, dated c. 1530.⁸

The other unusual feature of the two figures is their polychromy which, if original, would be more elaborate than anything normally found on sculpture of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries from the Southern Netherlands. The Virgin’s dress is embellished with delicate floral pattern painting, whereas the painted pattern on Saint John’s robe is clearly intended to simulate the rich silk brocades exported from Florence to the Low Countries.

—Jeremy Warren