Gothic boxwood miniature
There are around 150 surviving examples; most are spherical rosary beads (known as prayer nuts), statuettes, skulls, or coffins; some 20 are in the form of polyptychs, including triptych and diptych altarpieces, tabernacles and monstrances.
Their iconography, form, and utility can be linked to medieval ivory carvings, as well as contemporary illuminated miniatures, altarpieces, panel paintings, sculpture, woodcuts, and engravings.
[5] Because of their rarity and the difficulty in discerning their intricacy from reproductions, boxwood miniatures have not been as widely studied as other forms of Netherlandish visual art.
[10] Designs were overseen by master craftsmen who must have had access to prints and woodcuts of contemporary works of art, and who were apparently influenced by diptych and triptych panel paintings.
[11] Boxwood grows slowly, and the trunk remains fairly narrow, a fact that limits the size of any carvings made from any single piece.
Polychromy reduced the legibility of the carvings, "quite apart from the difficulty of effectively coloring such tiny and complex scenes" as the art historian Frits Scholten has noted.
[14] The woodcutters carved a single block of boxwood into a sphere, cut it in half, hollowed it out, and attached a fastening hinge and carrying loops.
[21] An example of this layering technique is in the "Last Judgement" prayer bead (AGO 29365) attributed to Adam Dircksz and now located at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where some thirty minuscule, individually carved spikes are set into the ceiling vault and around Christ to suggest rays of light.
[26] Describing these intricacies, the art historian Eve Kahn writes that the works can be so rich that "individual feathers are visible on angel wings, and dragon skins are textured with thick scales.
[30] The rosary beads owned by Henry VIII of England must have been produced between his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1509 and his earliest efforts to separate from her in 1526.
[28] Most surviving boxwood miniatures are attributed to Northern Renaissance artisans working in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
[31] Due to their quality and stylistic similarities to the full-sized Flemish and Brabantine altarpieces, they were for centuries assumed to originate from Southern Netherlands.
[32] There are examples from Italy, although according to Wilhelm Bode, "The broad monumental tendency of Italian art, especially in sculpture, seems to exclude a taste for daintily executed small works.
[34] That a majority of the miniatures share technical, stylistic, and thematic similarities, and could be considered as a near homogeneous group was first noted by the art historian Jaap Leeuwenberg.
[35] Such stylistic traits include broad and densely populated animated scenes, often placed, in the words of the art historian William Wixom, on "steeply angled ground planes of tiled floors.
[37] Due to this high degree of artistry, art historians presume they were intended as luxury items and status symbols for a high-born and sophisticated European elite;[38] Henry VIII and Catherine,[39] Emperor Charles V[40] and Albert V of Bavaria[15] are known to have owned individual boxwood miniatures.
[55][opinion] The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York broadly categorises the miniatures into two groups, those with simple reliefs and those with complex designs.
[59] Owing to the commonality of materials, production techniques, and the general absence of paint application, the miniatures had similar original colouring.
[12] They are mostly the same shape (deliberately designed to resemble apples),[61] decorated with carved openwork Gothic tracery and flower heads, and of a size suitable for holding in the palm of a hand.
"[14] The interiors range considerably in complexity and detail, with the more simple consisting of a low relief cut into a disc that has been rounded off at the back.
[73] The shape of a prayer nut likely carried deep significance; with the outer sheath representing Christ's human flesh; the bead stand, his cross; and the interior reliefs, his divinity.
[76] However, Scholten questions their use for private religious devotion, noting how their diminutive scale made them impractical for meditation, as their imagery was not discernible without a magnifying glass or strong spectacles.
Their iconography often follows contemporary larger scale panel altarpieces,[80] with depictions of Christ carrying the Cross, and the Entry into Jerusalem as common subjects.
[34] The altarpieces typically consist of three major elements; an architectural housing, interior reliefs, and a base or predella which could be fixed or detachable.
[81] They usually contain folding wings, carved in low relief, with smaller figures and scenes around the borders of the central pictorial space.
[29] The reliefs are usually positioned on a horizontal plane, allowing a long space between the tops of the figures and the ends of rounded overhead arches.
[92] When the American financier J. P. Morgan purchased Baron Albert Oppenheim's collection in 1906, he acquired four boxwood miniatures, including a triptych with the Crucifixion and Resurrection, and a prayer nut showing the Carrying of the Cross, all of which are now in the MET.
[95] Objects of this scale are difficult to view with the naked eye, and, even when held in hand, the true level of intricacy is not easily recognized.
Meaningful reproduction can only be achieved by computer modeling, where a series of photographs at various focal depths are stacked to attain consistent sharpness.
