page_title: Gothic boxwood miniature
section_title: Attribution and dating
hierarchical_section_title: Gothic boxwood miniature / Attribution and dating
context_page_description: Gothic boxwood miniatures are very small Christian wood sculptures produced during the 15th and 16th centuries in the Low Countries, at the end of the Gothic period and during the emerging Northern Renaissance. They consist of highly intricate layers of reliefs, often rendered to nearly microscopic level, and are made from boxwood, which has a fine grain and high density suitable for detailed micro-carving. There are around 150 surviving examples; most are spherical rosary beads, statuettes, skulls, or coffins; some 20 are in the form of polyptychs, including triptych and diptych altarpieces, tabernacles and monstrances. The polyptychs are typically 10–13 cm in height. Most of the beads are 10–15 cm in diameter and designed so they could be held in the palm of a hand, hung from necklaces or belts, or worn as fashionable accessories.
  Boxwood miniatures were highly prized in the early 16th century. Their iconography, form, and utility can be linked to medieval ivory carvings, as well as contemporary illuminated miniatures, altarpieces, panel paintings, sculpture, woodcuts, and engravings.
context_section_description: Only one miniature is explicitly dated, a triptych (WB.232) in the Waddesdon Bequest at the British Museum is inscribed with "1511". A minority bear a coat of arms or other indications of origin or the source of commission. A carving in the Musée de Cluny, Paris, contains the letter "M", and must have been completed before the 1524 inventory of Margaret of Austria. Approximate dates for other examples can be inferred from the inventories of their owners. The rosary beads owned by Henry VIII of England must have been produced between his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1509 and his earliest efforts to separate from her in 1526.
  Most surviving boxwood miniatures are attributed to Northern Renaissance artisans working in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Due to their quality and stylistic similarities to
  the full sized Flemish and Brabantine altarpieces, they were for centuries assumed to originate from Southern Netherlands, however more recent research has found that a majority of the early owners came from the northern provinces of Holland and Zeeland. There are examples from Italy, although according to Wilhelm Bode, "The broad monumental tendency of Italian art, especially in sculpture, seems to exclude a taste for daintily executed small works". German examples include a carving encased in a miniature skull, now in the Art Gallery of Ontario, which contains branchwork (Astwerk) of a type often found in contemporary German sculpture.
  That a majority of the miniatures share technical, stylistic, and thematic similarities, and could be considered as a near homogeneous group was first noted by the art historian Jaap Leeuwenberg. Such stylistic traits include broad and densely populated animated scenes, often placed, in the words of the art historian William Wixom, on "steeply angled ground planes of tiled floors". Other shared features include spatial devices, figures in contemporary dress, and draperies arranged in angular folds. On this basis Leeuwenberg attributed a large number of the objects to Dircksz, around 35–40, although that estimate has been revised down in more recent years.
  The art historians Lisa Ellis and Alexandra Suda estimate that the more complex boxwood miniatures may have taken decades of work to complete, a period equivalent to the entire career of a medieval master carver. Production was organised between different workshops of specialised artisans. Because the miniatures are so intricate, only a small number of workshops were likely involved in their production. Due to this high degree of artistry, art historians presume they were intended as luxury items and status symbols for a high-born and sophisticated European elite; Henry VIII and Catherine, Emperor Charles V and Albert V of Bavaria are known to have owned individual boxwood miniatures.
caption: "Prayer Bead with the Crucifixion and Jesus before Pilate" (open), c. 1500–30. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
exif: {"Image Make": "Nokia", "Image Model": "Lumia 920", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Windows Phone", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "2252", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[52, 21, 33063/1000]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "E", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[4, 53, 477/500]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "0", "GPS GPSAltitude": "0", "GPS GPSMeasureMode": "3", "GPS GPSDOP": "660", "GPS Tag 0xEA1C": "[]", "Image GPSInfo": "25160", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "27506", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10092", "EXIF ExposureTime": "20001/500000", "EXIF FNumber": "2", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "500", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2017:07:14 16:08:47", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2017:07:14 16:08:47", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "580473/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Average", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3552", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2000", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "39/10", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Night", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "12"}