A masterly hand: interdisciplinary research on the Late-Medieval sculptor(s) Master of Elsloo in an international perspective : proceedings of the conference held at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in Brussels, 20-21 October 2011

Abstract

In 1940 the art historian J.J.M. Timmers introduced the name 'Master of Elsloo' to describe the anonymous creator of a late-Gothic wooden statue of St Anne with the Virgin and Child in St Augustine's Church in Elsloo, a town in Limburg in the present-day Netherlands. In the following decades many other stylistically-related statues came to be associated with the St Anne. As a result, the Master of Elsloo's oeuvre grew to include at least two-hundred works. Until recently, studies of these sculptures and their maker(s) have been almost exclusively stylistic in approach. Yet the works of the 'Master of Elsloo' evoke many questions that require thorough investigation. Questions about the identity of the woodcarver or, more likely, the woodcarvers grouped under the sobriquet of 'Master of Elsloo', their artistic roots, their period and place of activity, and the organisation of their work in the workshop or shops.