BLACK STONE FRAGMENT TOURNAI
Southern Netherlands (Tournai?), Mid-15th century, reused as a paving stone in the early modern period

height cm 31,7 (12’’); width cm 26 (10’’); depth cm 10,6 (4’’)

An exquisitely carved relief fragment from a larger monument depicting the four Evangelists. Here we see the lower half of the figure of Saint Matthew, identifiable by a large inscription running along the lower edge beneath his feet, and carved with his name written in French as ‘S * Mathieu’. His right leg is angled forward with the foot visible beneath a simple full-length garment that is worn pulled across the body and gathered over the left shoulder. He lowers his left hand, extending the fingers straight down towards the ground and with his thumb clasped against his palm, holds the thong of a vast vellum scroll positioned on the chamfered right-hand edge of the block.
It follows a strong stylistic tradition that dominated relief-carved stone sculpture in France and evinced by examples such as fragments of the architectural dais carved c. 1376 to decorate the tomb of king Charles V and now in the musée du Louvre, Paris, (illustrated in Les fastes du Gothique; Le siècle de Charles V, Paris, 1981, cat. 75, p. 130). The carved text of Matthew’s name and of the dedicatory inscription decorating the scroll on the right-hand edge of the block, which are dateable to the mid-15th century,

PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, London.
Sam Fogg Gallery.