A BRASS FIGURE OF ST. LEONARD

Details

A BRASS FIGURE OF ST. LEONARD
BY RENIER VAN THIENEN, FLEMISH, CIRCA 1482-1483

Wearing the robes of the Benedictine order, holding a tome in his right hand and a Crozier in his left hand, his right foot protruding from beneath his robes -----13¼in. (33.6cm.) high, traces of dark lacquer

Provenance

Church of Saint-Léonard, Léau, Belgium
John Edward Taylor; Christie's, London, July 1912, lot 190
Dutch private collection; Finoelst, July 3, 1924
The Ernest Brummer Collection; Galerie Koller and Spink & Son, Zurich, October 16, 1979, lot 108

Literature

Wauters, to come, 1887, p. 62 (as Aert de Maelder)
Frederiks, to come, 1943, p. 124 (as Van Thienen)
Detroit Institute of Arts, Flanders in the Fifteenth Century (exhibition catalogue), Detroit, MI, 1960, p. 268 and 271

Lot Essay

Few facts are known about the life of St. Leonard, the patron saint of prisoners. He is thought to have been a hermit who in the 6th century founded a Benedictine monastery at Noblac (now Saint-Léonard), near Limoges.

Renier van Thienen (active in Brussels from 1465 to 1494, died before 1498) is best known for his elaborate and imposing Pascal Candelabrum for the large choir of the Church of Saint-Leonard in Lieu, Belgium. Church documents show that van Thienen was paid 285 Rhenish florins between 1482 and 1483 for this masterwork. A lighting fixture for the chapel of Saint-Leonard in the same church was also commissioned from the famous metal caster. The present statuette is the only extant work from this fixture and a rare example by this master in a private collection.