Address: Breite Brückstraße 260 (later renumbered to Brückstraße 14) in Wesel
Open: Destroyed.
Parking: irrelevant
How to get there by public transport: You can’t. It’s been destroyed.
How good was it? A single, striking panel, destroyed on Kristallnacht in 1938
This is a late addition to my collection of Hansche ceilings. Marc Van Vaeck had mentioned it in his 1997 paper “Beelden van Omhoog”, but it took me a while to track it down from references there and elsewhere.
The first clue was in Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Rees, an 1892 guide to the art of the district, which mentions that among the splendid ceilings that had survived in Wesel, the best was the Judgement of Solomon, by Jan Hansche [sic], in the home of Carl Zaudy at Breite Brückstraße 260.

This led me to a fascinating online article, “Die Bauherrin Margarete Zaudy und ihr Geschäftshaus in der Brückstraße 14 in Wesel“, “The property developer Margarete Zaudy and her department store at Brückstraße 14 in Wesel”, by Volker Kocks, which explains the history of the building and the Jewish family who owned it. It is not explained when or why the address was changed from Breite Brückstraße 260 to Brückstraße 14, but it’s clearly the same building at both addresses. The Hansche ceiling is not mentioned in the article, but to my great joy it is clearly visible in one of the interior photographs of the shop.

The interior of the building was redesigned by German architect Otto Engler in 1910, and again in 1928 by noted Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld, who gave it a striking modernist facade. Sadly this did not last for long; the building was looted and vandalised by a Nazi mob on Kristallnacht in November 1938, and I assume that the Hansche ceiling was destroyed along with most of the contents of the shop. Ironically, when most of Wesel was flattened by Allied bombing in 1945, Brückstraße 14 was one of the few buildings left standing due to the sturdy reconstruction earlier in the century. If the Hansche ceiling had survived Kristallnacht, it would probably have survived the war, unlike the other Hansche ceiling in Wesel which was destroyed with the municipal museum. The site is now occupied by a coffee shop, Freddo Espressobar.
Many of the Zaudy family were killed in the Holocaust. Before times got bad, a History of the Zaudy family had been published in 1925, and it is available on the Internet Archive. It includes a close up photograph of the central part of the Hansche ceiling on page 120:

(in handwriting) Solomon judgement
The Zaudy book also has a description:

Sadly the only record we have of the angels is the rather oblique view from the 1920s photograph. However it’s absolutely clearly a Hansche production; nobody else was doing three-dimensional figures like that. NB that this book says that the stucco dates from 1677. Marc van Vaeck has 1685 in “Beelden van Omhoog”, but I think that the earlier date is more likely; Hansche usually dated and signed his work clearly, and the authors of the 1925 book had actually seen the stucco for real.
I was struck that the Zaudy family, who owned the building from the mid-nineteenth century until the Nazis stole it from them in 1938, were Jewish; and that the Judgement of Solomon is rare among Hansche’s surviving works in being based on an Old Testament story (the only others are in the refectory at Park Abbey in Leuven). I wrote to the city archive in Wesel to ask if they had any information about who might have owned the building in the mid-17th century, but they have nothing, because the whole town was flattened by the Allies in 1945. It is possible that the property had been in Jewish hands since its construction; and there are indications that Hansche’s other ceilings in Wesel, the only Protestant town where he is known to have worked, were commissioned by Catholics, in both cases local religious minorities.
This lost ceiling had one more surprise for me. Looking for other artistic treatments of the Judgement of Solomon, it did not take me long to come across Raphael’s fresco in the Vatican dating from 1518 or 1519, which is clearly the basis for Hansche’s stucco in Wesel – in fact, I don’t think any of his other panels matches their source quite as closely; apart from a couple of the bystanders, every one of Raphael’s human figures can be found in Hansche, in almost the same position. (Though the background is a bit different.)

This is one more piece of evidence that Hansche had spent time in Rome. His citizenship application of 1661 says that his work was well known in Italy, and I think it is very similar to the Algardi stucco wall panels in St John Lateran in Rome. He must have been sufficiently impressed by Raphael’s Judgement of Solomon to make a detailed sketch for later use, either while learning his craft there around 1650, or on a later visit.
Introduction: The amazing stucco ceilings of Jan Christiaan Hansche
(The one that might not be by Hansche in the Gent law library)
The ceilings of Jan Christiaan Hansche, from most to least amazing:
Leuven – Park Abbey | Modave Castle | Gent – Brouwershuis | Antwerp – Sacristy of the Church of St Charles Borromeo | Sint-Pieters-Rode – Horst Castle | Machelen – Beaulieu Castle | Gent – Canfyn House (in storage) | Wesel, Germany (Fischmarkt) (destroyed) | Kleve, Germany (destroyed) | Perk – Church of St Nicholas | Wesel, Germany (Zaudy) (destroyed) | Brussels – Church of the Sablon | Franc-Waret – Church of St Remigius | Aarschot – Schoonhoven Castle | Leuven – Priory of the Vale of St Martin (destroyed, little known)
The ceilings of Jan Christiaan Hansche, from earliest to latest date of creation:
1653: Antwerp – Sacristy of the Church of St Charles Borromeo | 1655: Sint-Pieters-Rode – Horst Castle | 1659: Machelen – Beaulieu Castle | 1666-72: Modave Castle | 1668-70: Perk – Church of St Nicholas | 1669: Franc-Waret – Church of St Remigius | 1670s: Leuven – Priory of the Vale of St Martin (destroyed) | 1671: Aarschot – Schoonhoven Castle | 1672: Wesel, Germany (Fischmarkt) (destroyed) | 1672/79: Leuven – Park Abbey | 1673: Gent – Canfyn House (in storage) | 1673: Gent – Brouwershuis | 1677: Kleve, Germany (destroyed) | 1677 Wesel, Germany (Zaudy) (destroyed) | 1684: Brussels – Church of the Sablon
The ceilings of Jan Christiaan Hansche, from most to least accessible to tourists:
Open to the public: Brussels – Church of the Sablon | Leuven – Park Abbey | Modave Castle | Perk – Church of St Nicholas | Franc-Waret – Church of St Remigius
Not normally open to the public: Antwerp – Sacristy of the Church of St Charles Borromeo | Sint-Pieters-Rode – Horst Castle | Machelen – Beaulieu Castle | Aarschot – Schoonhoven Castle | Gent – Brouwershuis
Not accessible: Gent – Canfyn House (in storage) | Wesel, Germany (Fischmarkt) (destroyed) | Wesel, Germany (Zaudy) (destroyed) | Kleve, Germany (destroyed) | Leuven – Priory of the Vale of St Martin (destroyed, little known)
The ceilings of Jan Christiaan Hansche, from west to east:
Gent – Canfyn House (in storage) | Gent – Brouwershuis | Brussels – Church of the Sablon | Machelen – Beaulieu Castle | Antwerp – Sacristy of the Church of St Charles Borromeo | Perk – Church of St Nicholas | Leuven – Priory of the Vale of St Martin (destroyed, little known) | Leuven – Park Abbey | Sint-Pieters-Rode – Horst Castle | Aarschot – Schoonhoven Castle | Franc-Waret – Church of St Remigius | Modave Castle | Kleve, Germany (destroyed) | Wesel, Germany (Fischmarkt) (destroyed) | Wesel, Germany (Zaudy) (destroyed)