2013.41: The Philistines Carry the Ark through Their Land

The brothers Dirck and Wouter Crabeth dominated the art of glass painting in the northern Netherlands during the middle decades of the sixteenth century. They carried out most of the glazing installed from 1555 to 1572 in the great ensemble of painted glass in the Church of Saint John (Sint-Janskerk) in Gouda, and Dirck executed monumental windows for churches in Utrecht, the Hague, Amsterdam, and Delft, among others.¹

Several drawings and small glass panels attest that Dirck Crabeth also produced glazing for more intimate spaces.² A sumptuous and sophisticated work he completed in 1543 for a private house in Leiden is a rare instance of a sixteenth-century domestic decoration from the Netherlands that survives nearly intact and with a known provenance (Fig. 1).³ Set in carved, mullioned frames arrayed on two levels, each of the twelve panes of the Leiden window included a vertical field for a narrative composition, surrounded by a painted Italianate architecture festooned with swags, friezes, vases, reliefs, cavorting boys, and armorial shields. The historiated panels in the upper level, framed in aediculae of columns and pediments, represent episodes from the Book of Samuel, while those in the bottom register, enclosed by the arches of an arcade, illustrate scenes from the life of Saint Paul. Figure 1 reproduces one pane in the upper register. Eight of the twelve original panes survive, and the other four are documented in copies drawn by Gerardus Bos in 1846, when the glass was still in situ. One historiated panel, already removed when Bos copied the window, now belongs to a parish church in Buckinghamshire.⁴

Five drawings by Crabeth that served as models for the biblical illustrations have been identified.⁵ The Philistines Carry the Ark through Their Land, published here for the first time, may be added to the group. Its pen work unmistakably resembles the technique of the other five studies, and its composition corresponds precisely to that of one of the lost glass panels recorded in Bos’s copies (Fig. 2).⁶ Four of the six models measure 256/258 × 190/200 mm, nearly identical to the size of the narrative panels (260 × 200 mm).⁷ Such a composition might have been transferred directly to the support by laying the piece of clear glass over the drawing and tracing the emphatic contours of the model onto its surface.⁸ The handling and figure style of the six studies reflect Crabeth’s debt to the drawings of Jan Swart van Groningen, a prolific designer of small glass panels, who, according to Karel van Mander, was the teacher of Dirck’s older brother Adriaen Pietersz. Crabeth.⁹

The Harvard drawing depicts a tale of punishments that God visited on the Philistines after they defeated the Israelites in battle and took the Ark of the Covenant. At upper left, the idol of Dagon at Ashdod, which fell and smashed when the Ark was left beside it, lies in pieces on the floor (I Samuel 5:1–4). In the foreground, the Philistines carry the Ark through the city of Gath. For this irreverence, the Lord “smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts” (I Samuel 5:8–9). Stricken with these hemorrhoids, the Philistines quickly resolved to return the Ark, and in the distance at right, a cart drawn by two cows carries it toward Beth-shemesh, where the Israelites repossessed it (I Samuel 6:10–13). In the Leiden window, this Old Testament scene of retribution for a sacrilege was paired with a New Testament analogue. The narrative panel directly beneath it in the lower register depicted God’s blinding of Elymas the sorcerer, who contradicted Apostle Paul of Tarsus when he spoke to the Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus, at Paphos (Acts of the Apostles 13:11).

Notes

¹ Xander van Eck, Christiane E. Coebergh-Surie, and Andrea C. Gasten, The Stained-Glass Windows in the Sint Janskerk at Gouda. The Works of Dirck and Wouter Crabeth, vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 2002), pp. 17 and 50–51. Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman, Stained Glass in the Netherlands before 1795, vol. 4, in 2 parts, of The Netherlands in the Corpus vitrearum series. UNESCO–ICOMOS, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi project (Amsterdam, 2011), part 1, pp. 4, 230, 286, 315, and 320–21; part 2, pp. 473–76, 481, 504–30, 540–44, and 546–52. Zsuzsanna Van Ruyven-Zeman et al., De cartons van de Sint-Janskerk in Gouda/The Cartoons of the Sint Janskerk in Gouda (Delft, 2011), pp. 19–20.

² In addition to the glazing and designs for the Leiden house known as “Pax huic domui” (“Peace to this house”) discussed in note 3 below, see the other small panels and drawings in Timothy Husband et al., The Luminous Image: Painted Glass in the Lowlands, 1480–1560 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), cats. 121–23, pp. 205–6, and cats. 127 and 128, pp. 208–11.

³ Dirck Crabeth, Saul and Samuel Feasting in Samuel’s House (Fig. 1), 1543. Painted and silver-stained glass. 109.5 × 64.8 cm. Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 46517 D. This is one of twelve panes from a glazing originally in the house “Pax huic domui” (now Pieterskerkgracht 9) in Leiden. The glazing was presumably commissioned by the owner of the house, Adriaen Dircx. van Crimpen, bailiff and dike-reeve (dykgraaf) of the Rijnland polder board, who belonged to a patrician family from Gouda. The eight surviving panes are in Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, inv. nos. 46517 A–D and 46518 A–D; Chantal Bouchon in J. P. Filedt Kok, W. Halsema-Kubes and W. Th. Kloek, Kunst voor de Beeldenstorm: Noordnederlandse kunst 1525–1580 (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1986), cats. 160.1–8, pp. 284–85; Timothy Husband in Husband et al., cats. 117–20, pp. 198–208 and cat. 125, pp. 207–8; Van Ruyven-Zeman, pp. 485–86. A historiated panel representing the conversion of Saint Paul, which was already missing when G. J. Bos copied the windows in 1846 (see n. 4), belongs to the parish church of Saint Mary the Virgin in Addington, Buckinghamshire, U.K.; Karel G. Boon, The Netherlandish and German Drawings of the XVth and XVIth Centuries of the Frits Lugt Collection (Paris, 1992), vol. 1, under cat. 62, pp. 105–6, repr. vol. 2, p. 268, fig. 49; William Cole, A Catalogue of Netherlandish and North European Roundels in Britain: Great Britain; Summary Catalogue 1, in UNESCO–ICOM Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Project series (Oxford and New York, 1993), cat. 35, p. 5. Boon’s cat. 62 is Crabeth’s model for this panel.

⁴ See note 3 for the surviving panes. The drawings by Gerardus Johannes Bos exist in two series, one in Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal, S 553.1, S 553.2, and S 553.3, and one in the Gemeentearchief, Leiden, 31280–5 (1–3). They were first published by E. Pelinck in “Geschilderde vensters uit 1543 in Leiden,” Oud Holland, vol. 62 (1949): 193–200, and further discussed by Chantal Bouchon in Filedt Kok et al., under cat. 160.1–8, pp. 285–86, and by Timothy Husband in Husband et al., under cats. 117–20, p. 201, and under cats. 124–25, pp. 207–8.

⁵ All are executed in black or dark brown ink over black chalk. Saul and Samuel Feasting in Samuel’s House, Prentenkabinet van der Universiteit, Leiden, PK 2159; Filedt Kok et al., cat. 164, p. 290; Husband et al., cat. 122, pp. 203–6. The Philistines and Israelites Fighting over the Ark, Prentenkabinet van der Universiteit, Leiden, PK 3687; Filedt Kok et al., cat. 165, pp. 290–92; Husband et al., cat. 121, pp. 203–6. Samuel Brought by His Parents to the High Priest Eli, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-T-1992-84; Husband et al., under cats. 121–23, p. 204, repr. fig. 1. Samuel Sacrifices a Lamb to Yaweh, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-T-1992-85; Husband et al., under cats. 121–23, p. 204, repr. fig. 2. The Conversion of Saint Paul, Paris, Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection, 8429; Filedt Kok, under cat. 164, p. 290; Boon, vol. 1, cat. 62, pp. 105–6, repr. vol 3, plate 56; Husband et al., under cats. 121–23, p. 204, repr. fig. 3.

⁶ Gerardus Johannes Bos, after Dirck Crabeth, The Philistines Carry the Ark through Their Land (Fig. 2). Graphite and transparent watercolor. 483 × 351 mm (the whole sheet). Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal, S 553.3; Pelinck, pp. 197–98, repr. p. 197, pl. 3, glass 6.

⁷ The dimensions of the other drawings are: Saul and Samuel Feasting in Samuel’s House, 258 × 202 mm; The Philistines and Israelites Fighting over the Ark, 256 × 198 mm; Samuel Brought by His Parents to the High Priest Eli, 257 × 200 mm; Samuel Sacrifices a Lamb to Yaweh, 256 × 178 mm; and The Conversion of Saint Paul, 239 × 192 mm. In the case of The Conversion of Saint Paul, the only known drawing for a panel in the lower register, the drawing’s dimensions are nearly identical to those of the rectangular panel in Addington, Buckinghamshire (23.8 × 19 cm); Cole, cat. 35, p. 5 (see n. 3). Neither the panel in Addington nor the drawing includes the arched area above the narrative composition. In the surviving windows, the leading frames only the rectangular narrative compositions in the lower register. The architectural elements in the arched area must have been based on other models.

⁸ See Husband in Husband et al., p. 12, for this method of transferring the design to the glass.

⁹ Van Ruyven-Zeman, vol. 2, p. 473. When the Harvard drawing came to light at Christie’s, New York, in January 2005, it was attributed to Jan Swart van Groningen.