Alabaster sculpture in Europe, 1300-1650 / edited by Marjan Debaene ; with essays by Jessica Barker, Marjan Debaene, Lloyd de Beer, Judy De Roy, Laurent Fontaine, Sophie Jugie, Wolfram Kloppmann, Aleksandra Lipińska, Carmen Morte García, Sofie Muller, Géaldine Patigny, Stefan Roller, Soetkin Vanhauwaert, Michaela Zöschg.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Debaene, Marjan, editor.

Barker, Jessica (Lecturer in art history), contributor.

M Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), host institution.

Series:

Studies in medieval and early Renaissance art history

Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History (HMSAH)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Alabaster sculpture, Medieval--Europe--Exhibitions.

Alabaster sculpture, Medieval.

Alabaster art objects--Europe--Exhibitions.

Alabaster art objects.

Sculpture--Technique.

Sculpture.

sculpture techniques.

Europe.

Genre:

exhibition catalogs.

Exhibition catalogs

Exhibition catalogs.

Physical Description:

312 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), facsimiles, map, portraits ; 31 x 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; Turnhout : Harvey Miller Publishers, [2022]

Summary:

Alabaster was a popular material in European sculpture, especially from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. Its relative availability and easy to sculpt characteristic made it a highly suitable material for both large monuments and small objects, for mass production and individual works, from England to Spain and France to the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. This material has been the subject of multidisciplinary research in various European countries for several decades. The research combines material analyses with historical and art-historical approaches. This publication, made for the occasion of the large exhibition on the theme at M Leuven opening on October 14th, brings together all renowned specialists on the material and sheds light on the many facets of alabaster, such as its physical and chemical properties as well as its translucency, its whiteness, its softness, and its beautiful sheen, all of which made it a popular material used in different types of sculpture from the middle ages to the baroque, all throughout Europe, ranging from bespoke tombs, funerary monuments and commissioned sculptures and altarpieces to commercially interesting formulas such as English or Mechelen alabaster reliefs.

Contents:

Foreword M Leuven / Peter Bary

Foreword Musée du Louvre / Laurence des Cars

Preface / Marjan Debaene and Sophie Jugie

1. Alabaster as a material for sculpture. Introduction / Sophie Jugie

Rhetoric of alabaster: the material between its affordances and cultural meaning / Aleksandra Lipińska

How to distinguish alabaster from alabaster: tracing the material back from the artwork to the quarry / Wolfram Kloppmann

'Marbre d'alabastre': status of the interdisciplinary research project on marble and alabaster / Jude de Roy, Laurent Fontaine and Géraldine Patigny

2. Funerary sculpture. Introduction / Sophie Jugie

Alabaster as a material for funerary monuments / Jessica Barker

3. Alabaster altarpieces. Introduction / Marjan Debaene and Michaela Zöschg

The Rimini altarpiece and alabaster sculpture in the southern Netherlands, around 1430 / Stefan Roller

English alabaster and the continent / Lloyd de Beer

Alabaster altarpieces in the Iberian peninsula: from Gothic to Baroque / Carmen Morte García

4. Sacred and secular. Introduction / Michaela Zöschg and Marjan Debaene

The head of St John the Baptist in alabaster: the object in context / Soetkin Vanhauwaert

Epilogue: Alabaster mentalis, trinitas terrestris / Sofie Muller.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Catalog of the exhibition 'Alabaster' held at M Leuven in Leuven, Belgium, October 14, 2022 - February 26, 2023.

ISBN:

9781912554928

1912554925

9781912554935

1912554933

OCLC:

1329224213