A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

wore the Order of the Golden Fleece, for in 1511, Duke Charles sent the craftsmen a real collar of the Order as a mo del. 34 T he sculptor of the Liverpool Knight presumably did not have this advantage. It is possible that only five of these statues were ever made: Alexandre Henne and Alphonse Wauters suggest that work was broken off in 1516, that a master carpenter was given three statues for the Broodhuis in 1517 and that work resumed only in 1 521. 35 Ev en though incomplete, the Coudenberg dynastic scheme was presumably open to view and could have inspired similar projects, how- ever modest. Whether a commemorative statue like those at Neufra or one associated with dynastic propaganda like the schemes at the Coudenberg or The Hague, the Scarisbrick Knight must surely be a secular statue rather than a martial saint or one of the three Magi. The circumstances of its commission remain entirely unknown, however. Despite the acrimonious war between the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands and independent Guelders during the early six- teenth century, the Elsloo sculptors received commissions from both sides of the political divide. The Liverpool Knight – and indeed the Samson and the Lion – could have been intended for patrons from the Burgundian ­ Netherlands or Guelders. Dynastic statues in Guelders might have served to reinforce the authority of Charles of Egmond (r. 1492-1538), the first ­ unchallenged ruler for thirty years. The house of Guelders was very keen on genealogy to prove continuity of succession. An inscription above the gate of the Valkhof castle in Nijmegen (demolished in 1796) named the illustrious predecessors of the dukes of Guelders from Julius Caesar through to Arnold of Egmond (1410-1473) and Catherine of Cleves (1417-1476) and finally Duke Adolf of Egmond (1438-1477), Charles’s father, who was a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Charles erected a tomb to his mother Catherine of ­ Bourbon in St Stephen’s in Nijme gen. 36 Th ere is, however, no actual evidence for dynastic statues here or in any of the other quarters of Guelders and, by definition, members of the Order of the Golden Fleece tended to side with the House of Burgundy. The pro-Burgundian branch of the Egmond family included Charles’s own father Adolf; William of Egmond (1412-1483), Adolf ’s uncle and opponent; John (1438-1516), son of William and first Count of Egmond; and Floris of Egmond (1469-1539) and John II Count of Egmond (1499-1528), both grandsons of Willi am. 37 Th e counts of Hornes, who ruled the territory on the west bank of the River Meuse were also staunch supporters of the Burgundian and Habsburg regimes and several family members were knights of the Golden Fleece, notably Maximilian of Hornes, Lord of Gaasbeek ( d. 1542), and Jacob III, Count of Hornes (d. 1531), whose first wife Marguerite de Croy (d. 1514) was a close friend of Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), overseer of the Balienhof proj ect. 38 Ja cob’s marriage also signalled a recovery in the ­ family fortunes. The family residences at Horn and Weert were pillaged by iconoclasts in the sixteenth century, however, and there appears to be no ­ evidence for a dynastic project. The commission of the Scarisbrick Knight ­ cannot currently be traced with any certainty to any of these individuals.