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  • image SG88

A monk with a vision of the Virgin and Child, stained glass panel, School of Jan de Caumont Netherlandish, 17th century

Clear glass with brown paint yellow stain, blue, red enamel. A yellow stain rim

Height: 290mm
Width: 204mm

Museum number: SG88

On display: Staircase - first to second floor (pre-booked tours only)
All spaces are in No. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields unless identified as in No. 12, Soane's first house. For tours https://www.soane.org/your-visit

Curatorial note

A monk or friar (of the Augustinian or Dominican order?) kneels on the ground, his arms outspread. He wears a long black cloak with a hood and his head is encircled by a striated halo. The young, beardless figure receives a hood or girdle from the Virgin, who is bareheaded and sits on a cloud with the infant Jesus on her lap. The Virgin and Child have striated haloes. On the ground lie a bishop's mitre, a papal tiara, a lily, and a book.

This scene has elements of stories associated with Saints Thomas, Hyacinth and Dominic. St Dominic is sometimes represented as receiving the rosary from the Virgin and Child, while St Thomas was said to receive a girdle from the Virgin. St Hyacinth, a Dominican missionary to Poland, is often shown kneeling before the Virgin.

The faces are finely drawn and modelled. Is there a stigmata on the monk's left hand? The landscape, in shallow perspective, depicts a river, a plain (with cross) and three mountains. The clouds are heavily modelled, rather like those of the School of Jan de Caumont; other characteristics which suggest that school are the use of yellow stain over blue, the bright enamels and the finely drawn fingers. There are similarities also with the German panel of The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary, SG87, in particular the shallow perspective, the rendering of the haloes and the sky. Popham considered the panel to be Flemish, 17th century.

Literature

A. E. Popham’s comments are MS notes in pencil held at Sir John Soane’s Museum, c. 1930
P. V. Maes, ’Oud Leuvens Brandglass in Engeland’, Arca Lovaniensis 1 (1972):189-201
William Cole, ‘Small Panels in the Style of Jan de Caumont in England’, Arca Lovaniensis 18 (1989): 63-94
Catalogue of the Stained Glass in Sir John Soane's Museum, Special Issue of the Journal of Stained Glass 2004, p. 222


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