A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

The final element of the art-historical research on the Elsloo production was the analysis of style. The large number of attributions and the great stylistic diversity make this very complex and prompt the question of how many sculp- tors or workshops were at work and on what basis they can be distinguished. These questions and some of the results of the style-comparative study will be highlighted elsewhere in this publicat ion. 59 This article was intended to present the methodology used in the KIK-IRPA research project on the so-called Master of Elsloo, from the selection of the sculptures to be studied and the fieldwork in the Limburg churches to the situating of the sculptures in their historical context and the iconographic interpretation of them. The results of the various parts of the research will be dealt with at greater length in other articles in this publication. Acknowledgements I would like to warmly thank the owners of the sculptures we have examined for their support of the project and the hospitality they extended. I am also indebted to the helpful staff of the various archival institutions I visited, as well as to all those who contributed to a better understanding of a piece of local history. Notes 1 F or a detailed overview of the literature on the Master of Elsloo, see Peter te Poel, article 1 in this volume. 2 The use of the terms ‘Elsloo sculpture’ and ‘Elsloo group’ is discussed in the Introduction and Acknowledgements and the Conclusion. 3 Lemmens and De Werd 1974; Peter te Poel, article 1 in this volume. 4 S int-Truiden 1990: cat. no. 70 and inv. nos. 48, 104, 407. 5 On these sculptures, see the Inventory at the back of the book; Sint-Truiden 1990: cat. no. 67 and inv. nos. 89, 93, 132, 386, 232. On the two sculptures of St Roch, see also Didier 1992: 117. The provenance of the Antwerp St Roch and also the relationship between the two figures of St Roch need further investigation. 6 W e were also given the opportunity to study and/or photograph a number of sculptures abroad, for example in the Church of St John the Baptist in Siersdorf, the Museum Catharijne­ convent in Utrecht, the Louvre, and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille. 7 T he map shows all the locations in Belgium and selected locations in the Netherlands and Germany in which there are churches containing Elsloo sculptures. Also indicated are old river courses (schematic representations based on Bonn 2010: 142, 146 and Aachen 1996: 127) and modern national borders. For various other historical maps of this r egion, see Bonn 2010: 143-151. 8 O n this matter, see also Didier 1992: 123-124. For a map showing the distribu- tion of the works attributed to Jan van Steffeswert, see Te Poel 2000: 16. 9 On these works, see Maastricht 2000: nos. 24, 70, 71, 5.