Paint and Piety

A forum (the papers of which are published here) was held in Oslo in 2010 to gather ideas, seek advice and, in general, begin to shape the onward decision-making process for a new project known as After the Black Death: Painting and Polychrome Sculpture in Norway, 1350-1550. The forum was the first step towards gaining intellectual access to altarpieces, shrines, sculptures and crucifixes for which little (if any) historical documentary evidence has survived. Significantly, too, the forum was a step toward addressing issues related to visibility. While the frontals and sculpture that pre-date 1350 are, with few exceptions, the products of Norwegian, probably monastic workshops, the majority of objects that post-date the Black Death have no such claim to a unifying cultural tradition. By contrast, the majority are categorized as the products of North German and Netherlandish workshops that were imported to Norway prior to the Reformation. 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