A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

in Stramproy ( figs. 1.14-1.15) . The bearded male head carved in the upper part of the staff of the Neeroeteren saint is likewise noteworthy, though its meaning remains elus ive. 52 These saints enjoyed widespread veneration, whereas several of the others represented in the Elsloo oeuvre were revered locally. The bishop saints ­ Monulphus and Gondulphus, for example, are venerated in the area around Maastricht. They are the patron saints of the church of Maasmechelen, which belonged to the provost of the Maastricht chapter of St Serva tius. 53 A part from the pontifical gloves that one of them wears, these saints are identically portrayed, attired in bishop’s vestments and with a church model in one hand ( fig. 4.3). They can only be distinguished from each other by name plates on the (non-original) brackets they stand on. 54 A saint venerated along the more southern part of the Meuse but rare in northern Limburg is Quirinus of Malmedy. The church of Gerdingen near Bree houses a sculpture of this saint which belongs to the Elsloo group (fig. 4.2). The saint is portrayed with the severed top of his skull in his hand and a chained dragon at his feet. Quirinus enjoys an age-old devotion in­ Gerdin gen. 55 It is not clear, though, whether that Quirinus is the Malmedy saint or the Roman soldier Quirinus of Neuss, to whom a nineteenth-century ­ altarpiece is dedicated and who is mentioned in eighteenth- and nineteenth- century documents. Apparently there was confusion about these saints’ iden- tity in this chu rch. 56 In St Lawrence’s Church in Bocholt the figure of St Ambrose, one of the four Latin Fathers of the Church, can be identified by his beehive and bishop’s staff, though he lacks the mitre usually required by the iconographic tradition ( fig. 4.9). The hair is rendered on the crown of the head but at the sides the wood has been cut back: this must be a later modification and may have been made to allow the addition of a headdress. His bare foot and simple attire, as well as several non-original elements such as the upper part of the staff, the base with his name painted on it and the beehive, which is not incorporated into the original base, suggest that the figure originally had a different identity, probably an apostle. Only two complete late-Gothic Marianums survive in situ in Belgium. One is in the church in Zoutleeuw in the province of Flemish Brabant, the other, which belongs to the Elsloo group, is in the Neeroeteren church. The Marianum is a two-sided sculpture with addorsed figures of the Virgin and Child on the crescent moon, and is invariably suspended from the vault above the n ave. 57 A number of Marianums survive in Dutch Limburg which have also been linked to the Master of Elsloo, such as those in Thorn, Horst, Venlo and Neer. In Belgium a number of single-sided sculptures of the Virgin and Child standing on a crescent moon from the Elsloo group may once have been part of a Marianum. There are examples in the churches of Bocholt and ­ Gerdingen and in St James’s Church in Liège, and also in two private collec- ti ons. 58 Th e figures of the Virgin on the Crescent Moon belonging to the Elsloo group display a number of iconographic peculiarities. Some have a caricatural male head representing the moon’s demonic nature beneath the Virgin’s foot; some have a scaly-bodied monster with a woman’s head and torso beneath her 4.9 Fig. 4.9 St Ambrose, Bocholt, St Lawrence’s Church