Triptych with the Last Supper (centre panel), Adriana van Roon (c. 1450-1527) with St James the Greater (inner left wing), Dirk Pietersz Spangert (c. 1465-1549) with St Mary Magdalen (inner right wing), the coats of arms of Adriana van Roon (outer left wing) and the Spangert house mark (outer right wing)

Entry

This triptych has been missing since April 2004, so it was not possible to subject it to a technical examination in order to determine the working method and thus attempt to identify the artist. Its disappearance is extremely regrettable for several reasons, for it is the earliest dated and best-preserved northern Netherlandish example of a reverse-glass painting. The three panels are also in their original painted frame. The centre panel and wings are all painted on the reverse of a glass panel, with black lines for the contours and incisions in the paint for the inner drawing and the depiction of details. In the final stage gold leaf was used for the gilded passages.⁶

The scene on the centre panel is the Last Supper.⁷ Unlike most depictions of the subject, in which Christ is flanked by six disciples on either side, the figures are seated at a round table with eight disciples on the left and four on the right. Judas with the purse at his belt is in the left foreground. In the immediate foreground is an overturned stool and a dog gnawing on a bone.⁸ The Rijksmuseum glass painting is often associated with the work of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, but the details mentioned above form a departure from Last Supper scenes in woodcuts of his of 1513-14⁹ and c. 1520,¹⁰ and from a drawing attributed to him in Berlin.¹¹ Other details in the Rijksmuseum painting, such as the round table and the disciples, are both similar to and different from the woodcuts and the drawing.¹² For example, the Eucharistic chalice is missing. On the other hand, the dish in the Amsterdam work has small loaves of bread instead of the roast animal in the other scenes.

This is a memorial tablet which must have been commissioned by the donors depicted, who are identifiable from their coats of arms on both the inner and the outer wings. The Haarlem antiquary Adriaan van der Willigen Pz (1810-76), who owned the triptych for a while, established that the nun’s coat contains the arms of Oem van Wyngaarden. Moes then identified her in his Iconographia Batavia as Adriana Oem van Wijngaarden, abbess of the Leeuwenhorst Convent,¹³ an exclusive Cistercian house that existed from 1261 and 1572 and was situated near Noordwijkerhout. There is now far more information about these two figures, thanks to the research into the convent’s accounts published by Geertruida de Moor in 1981. They can be identified as Adriana van Roon (c. 1450-1527) and Dirk Pietersz Spangert (c. 1465-1549).¹⁴

Adriana van Roon is on the left wing with St James the Greater behind her. As a nun she is wearing a white tunic, the hem of which can be seen at the bottom, over which she has a black habit. The white edge of her tunic can also be seen underneath her black hood, the sign of the eternal promise she has made.¹⁵ Adrian’s crosier identifies her as an abbess. Her coat of arms is divided vertically and consists of the coats of the Oem van Wyngaarden family and manor of Rhoon, of which Adrian and her mother were ladies.¹⁶ Adriana entered the Leeuwenhorst Convent in 1460-61, became its cantrix in 1483-84, is documented as prioress in 1493 and abbess in 1497.¹⁷

The male donor on the right wing is accompanied by Mary Magdalen. His alb, stole (the narrow decorated band around his neck) and his tonsure identify him as a priest. The coat of arms on his prie-dieu consists of a black house mark on a silver field. This mark is found in the convent accounts for 1493-94, allowing the donor to be identified as the convent chaplain, Dirk Pietersz Spangert. He was born in Haarlem and was registered as a student of the liberal arts at Louvain University in 1488. In November that year he entered the convent’s service as a schoolmaster. A great deal is known about him. He was admitted to the priesthood by the diocese of Utrecht in 1489. He occupied many positions in the Leeuwenhorst Convent, lived there for a long time, and became the abbess’s notary and adviser on canon law. He made several wills, which show that he was fairly well-off and was a benefactor of the convent.¹⁸

The combination of these two individuals makes it likely that the triptych was commissioned by both of them, and that it had a place in the Leeuwenhorst Convent.¹⁹ Van Bueren has pointed out that this is the only memorial tablet to depict a priest and a nun who were not related to each other. Dirk, however, was Adriana’s personal chaplain. Van Bueren suggested that the triptych might have been painted on the occasion of a long illness of Adriana’s, or on her death in 1527.²⁰ Remarkably, she is depicted on the left wing, an important position on Christ’s right hand that was usually reserved for men.

The triptych was first attributed to Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen in the Rijksmuseum’s collection catalogue of 1903, but was later relegated to being in his manner.²¹ In 1999 Bangs attributed it to Simon Claasz van Waterlant II (c. 1489-1577), a member of a famous family of painters in Haarlem, whose life and career is well documented in the archives.²² Interestingly, Simon Claasz van Waterlant II had close ties to Dirk Pietersz Spangert, as shown among other things by the fact that Spangert commissioned him to polychrome the high altar retable in the convent church between 1532 and 1536, and to paint wings for it.²³ However, Bangs’s attribution has not been accepted in the literature on Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen. It is true that his workshop is known to have designed stained glass, in addition to its output of paintings, woodcuts and embroidery, but the triptych lacks the figure types characteristic of his work, as well as his personal and easily recognisable style of drawing.²⁴ Although the documents published by Bangs show that Simon Claasz van Waterlant II carried out commissions for Dirk Spangert, that is not conclusive evidence that he painted this triptych. In addition, the oeuvre that Bangs proposes for the artist is rather heterogeneous,²⁵ so it would seem better to retain the ‘circle of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen’ attribution until new data come to light.

One unresolved question is whether the production of reverse-glass paintings was a speciality of a painter’s workshop or was associated more with production of stained glass. It is known that dozens of stained-glass windows were donated to the Leeuwenhorst Convent in the early decades of the 16th century.

(Daantje Meuwissen/Jan Piet Filedt Kok)