A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

church of St Michael in Antwe rp. 24 Th is tomb seems to have been based on the earlier dynastic tombs of Louis of Male (d. 1384) in St Peter’s in Lille (1455) and of Joanna of Brabant (d. 1406) in the Carmelite Church in Brussels (c. 1458), both now destroy ed. 25 Be cause of high-profile tomb figures such as these, a figure holding a cane or staff diagonally between his two hands may have been invested with dynastic connotations: the pose is re-used in the figure of Anthony of Brabant illustrated in the early-seventeenth-century chronicle of the dukes of Brabant by Adriaan van Baerla nd. 26 The bronze dynastic tomb figures are clean-shaven, but when their poses were re-used by Van Baerland, the more ancient kings, Charlemagne and of course Godfrey the Bearded, were bearded like the Liverpool Knight. Around 1525 or perhaps a little earlier, portraits reveal that beards were also coming back into fashion. So the Knight’s beard might suggest either historicity or, like his hat, the height of fashion. Either way, it is in keeping with a secular, dynastic figure rather than one of the three Magi or a martial saint. Around the neck the Knight wears an elaborate collar which is obviously supposed to be that of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Not only is the collar itself incorrect, but the fleece is actually a live sheep rather than a dead sheep’s skin, suggesting that the craftsman was working from an inadequate description. This peculiar form of the Order of the Golden Fleece was used in some other contemporary sculptures as well: anomalously so in a statue of a woman, the St Helena in the Clemens-Sels-Museum of Neuss, also from the Elsloo group, where it might be an attribute of the Empire, and in a statue of St George in the Church of Mary Magdalene at Goch, not from the Elsloo group, where it might be an attribute of knighthood. Before it is dismissed as a generic rather than a specific identifier, it is worth registering that there is a flake of red paint surviving in a fold in the back of the cloak. This has never been scientifically analysed, or indeed noticed before; it may be the remnants of paint that was stripped in the early nineteenth century – in England polychromy was usually covered up or removed, and this was the case with the collection of woodcarvings at Scarisbrick. Even if the red constitutes the ­remnants of repaint rather than original paint, it may still reproduce the ­original colour. According to the founding statutes of 1431, knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece were required to wear red robes. The statue may, therefore, have resembled a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece rather closely in its painted state. Although clearly not a ­ portrait, it might have been intended to represent a specific knight of the Order or, as in Goch, the collar was intended to convey knighthood. Since the figure lacks the attributes of a martial saint, this Knight appears to be a secular, dynastic figure. A list of Scarisbrick’s purchases survives. Tracing the Knight in this list is not straightforward, but as a very large and elaborate statue it might be expected to have cost considerably more than many of his other purchases. On the basis of price and subject, it may perhaps be identified with the Gothic figure of ‘Rudolf ’ acquired with a monumental St Christopher for the combined high price of £45 in December 18 41. 27 Un like the St Christopher, this Rudolph