These collected essays on medieval painting and polychrome sculpture draw on a spectrum of vantage points and methodologies for studying the phenomena of painting over c.450 years. The papers are based on discussions held in Oslo in 2010 on topics related to medieval objects in Scandinavian collections.
The aim of these discussions was to generate a multifaceted overview of current scholarship devoted to medieval paint and painting, and its changing faces and meanings. The sum of the individual contributions is a panorama of the sort that has come to characterise the interactions and rich discourse between conservators, conservation scientists and historians. The resulting knowledge base has become a theoretical and practical underpinning for a project known as ‘After the Black Death: Painting and Polychrome Sculpture in Norway, 1350–1550’ , which is based in Conservation Studies at the University of Oslo.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction:
The medieval collection of the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo: a tradition of scholarship Erla Hohler and Noëlle L.W. Streeton
Part I. Locating the sacred
The longue durée of ‘Romanesque’ altar decorations: frontals, canopies, and altar sculptures Justin Kroesen
The presence of the sacred: relics in medieval wooden statues of Scandinavia Lena Liepe
A perspective on medieval perception of Norwegian church art Kaja Kollandsrud
Distribution of reliquaries and relics in the bishopric of Hólar, c. 1320 Jón Viðar Sigurðsson
Part II. Artistic production in the thirteenth century
The Sedes Sapientiae of the van den Peereboom donation to the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels. Materials and techniques of a polychrome sculpture from the beginning of the thirteenth century Emmanuelle Mercier and Jana Sanyova
Possible English influence on Danish polychrome wooden sculpture of the thirteenth century Ebbe Nyborg
Part III. Objects and the English church
The tester over the tomb of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, Westminster Abbey Abigail Granville
Investigating medieval polychromy of West Country rood screens Eddie Sinclair
Reflections and translations – carving and painting rood screens Spike Bucklow
Part IV. Material histories for late medieval and early modern painting - conservation and the history of art
The so-called ‘Leka group’: new information based on examinations of four triptychs Tone M. Olstad
The altarpiece from Vardø church, Finnmark: technological and art historical context Daniela Pawel
Bernard van Orley’s The Marriage of the Virgin and Christ Among the Doctors: technical examination and the search for context Carol Christiansen and John Hand
Reviews
The book, which is an attractive volume with colour images throughout, covers a lot of ground, temporally, geographically and thematically. [...] This volume allows access to English speaking audiences for material often tackled in German and French. It is also a welcome taster of the fruits of research set to come from the researches of the Painting and Polychrome Sculpture in Norway, 1350-1550 project in coming years.
ICON News - July 2014
The relatively small format of this book belies its ample content. [...] Its content centres on the considerable advantages to be gained by actively pooling different specialist-centred methods of object research, particularly as found in the relatively new field of "technical art history", a combination of traditional academic art-curatorship and conservation in both its scientific and practical forms. [...] On the whole, each of the essays delivers an interesting perspective on recent advances in research methods, albeit in the very specific geographical and chronological context of the publication.
The Art Newspaper - No. 262, November 2014
Interesting and stimulating [...] this rich collection of essays manages to fulfill the objective of the conference 'to gain a multifaceted overview of current scholarship devoted to medieval paint, painting and its contexts,' and manages to provide the reader with insights into some lesser known works and locations of medieval paint and piety.
Art and Christianity - No. 80, Winter 2014
