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European Silver in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen

Catalogue raisonné of over 350 works from across Europe

JOHANNES BOGAERT (1626-73)

Ciborium

1670

Silver gilt | 58.0 x 20.9 x 20.9 cm (whole object) | RCIN 51283

The ciborium stands on a broad foot with a lobed rim, chased with a figure of Christ with the Lamb, and three saints (Catherine, Longinus and Cornelius), each in a mandorla, surrounded by symbols of the Passion, with a border of acanthus. The foot flares out from the knopped stem which is cast with cherub heads and further symbols of the Passion. The lower body of the cup has an outer sleeve, embossed and chased with ears of wheat and fruiting vines, beneath a plain rim. The domed cover is chased with scenes of the Passion (Judas with thirty pieces of silver, the Last Supper and the Supper at Emmaus), beneath a crown formed of four cast winged cherub heads, supporting a finial in the form of a crucifix, the rim cast with vines. The rim of the cup is engraved with a crown, Garter and Royal crest.

Johannes Bogaert and his father Thomas (1597-1653) are best known for their Catholic church plate. Although Catholicism was not practised openly in the Netherlands after 1648, so-called clandestine churches, usually located in private houses, were tolerated. Some of these clandestine churches, although unremarkable from outside, were highly decorated within, by artists such as Gerard von Honthorst and Abraham Bloemart, for example.  Having no official status, the churches had little income but relied on donations from the priests themselves or from members of the congregation to supply the necessary items of silver to celebrate mass. Thomas Bogaert (1597-1653), is known to have supplied more than 100 items of ecclesiastical plate to forty Catholic 'missions' (so-called because they had no official parishes attached to them) over a wide area of North and South Holland, Utrecht, Overijssel and Gelderland. Johannes continued working in his father's workshop producing liturgical silver and developing the designs of his father. Westerink's analysis of his surviving works suggests a preponderance of candlesticks and monstrances but also ciboria, and smaller objects (Westerink p.51).

The largest communities of Catholics were found in Utrecht and Haarlem but by the second half of the 17th century Amsterdam had around 26 clandestine churches in the city as well as a number of private chapels belonging to wealthy Catholic families who could maintain their own space to celebrate mass.  Johannes Bogaert provided plate to several of these including a monstrance for the Posthoorn church hidden within the basement of a house on the Prinsengracht canal.  The form derives from chalices created by Thomas Bogaert with similar decoration to the foot.

As van Eck has pointed out, much of the church plate supplied to the clandestine churches made obvious reference to the order to which the church belonged – usually featuring St Francis, St Augustine or one of the Jesuit saints where appropriate. The parish churches were often less conspicuously aligned with a particular order and the saints represented on the plate were often associated with the local parish.

Rim of foot struck with city marks of Amsterdam (1670) and maker's mark of Johannes Bogaert; rim of the cup engraved with crown, Garter and royal crest.


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