Art Centres in the Lower Rhine and the Maasland Revisited: Research Potential of a Methodological Reorientation of Medieval Art History (original) (raw)

The medieval wooden sculptures in the Lower Rhine and the Maasland region have been the focus of much art historical interest. Various inventory and exhibition projects in the twentieth century comprehensively recorded and arranged the numerous works available in the region and assigned them to different known or unknown artists or art landscape groups of works, according to the status of the respective research claim. Important here are such renowned names as Master Arnt Beeldesnider, Dries Holthuys, the Master of Elsloo, Jan van Steffeswert and Hendrick Douwermann, who afforded a hierarchical systematisation, including possible students and successors. However, numerous fragments and sculptures cannot be integrated into previously ordered systems and so receive less attention. The basis for a revision of the Lower Rhine and Maasland medieval wooden sculptures lies in the application of large-scale research efforts toward medieval wooden sculpture and panel painting in the Mecklenb...