A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

213 Vincent Cattersel 10 212 back on the workbench, to which it was attached by pronged clamps at top and bottom. As a rule, few if any traces remain on the top, as the excess wood was removed when the statue was finished. But on the bottom, many apparently randomly placed marks were found. Each pair indicates that the sculpture was tilted to facilitate the work. The use of this workbench system can be recog- nised by paired, rectangular or square holes, most often visible on the bottom of the sculpture. An example is the Ellikom apostle with the closed book held in his left ha nd, 37 w here the mean distance between the paired holes, which corresponds to the distance between the two prongs of the clamp, is about 3 centimetres (fig. 10.10). The same marks were found on two other Ellikom apostles, one James the Less, the other unidentified, suggesting that all three were produced using the same workbench clamp and therefore in the same works hop. 38 A similar system has been identified on the apostles from ­ Neeroeteren. On four of these the average distance between the two points of the workbench clamp is about 4.5 centimet res. 39 C omparing the shape of these traces to other sculptures in the Elsoo group, there appears to be one match: the Bishop Saint from Siersdorf. Could this mean that the same workbench was used to carve these Neeroeteren apostles and the Siersdorf Bishop Saint and that therefore they were made in the same worksh op? 40 On the backs of the three apostles and Christ the Saviour from the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht a similar pair of holes, one above the other, can be seen just below the shoulder blades. Similar pairs of holes have been found on the back of the St Andrew in the Cleveland Museum of Art and the ­Apostle from St Michael’s Church in Bree. Given the sculptures’ dimensions (about 70  cm) and iconography, they may once have been part of the same ensem ble. 41 Polychromy Of the seventy-seven sculptures involved in this research, twenty-two are poly- chro med. 42 O nly one statue, the Virgin and Child on the Crescent Moon in St James’s Church in Liège, has a complete and visible original polychro my. 43 The Crucified Christ from Ellikom retains nearly all its original polychromy but this is only partially visible because of overpa int. 44 Th e other twenty have a rather recent painting, mostly neo-Gothic, with occasional vestiges of earlier paint beneath. Fifty-five are now without paint. Most of these if not all, have had their paint removed, although it is difficult to determine whether what has been removed was original polychromy or later painting. On the paint-stripped sculptures only minor traces of a ground layer and paint (original or from a later painting) could be found, mainly in the deeper parts of the drapery and in the woodgrain. Different methods have been used to remove the paint. In some cases hand tools seem to have been wielded in a rather cavalier fashion. The St Christopher from Bree might be an example. The crow’s feet at the corner of the left eye have almost completely vanished and the figure appears to lack detail in other places as well. 45 M ost of these sculptures have probably been stripped with solvent – and so thoroughly, moreover, that further exam- ination of the remains was pointless. This begs the question of why so few sculptures in this group survive with original polychromy. Perhaps the loss of paint, repeated overpainting, or the choice of leaving a sculpture unpainted, Fig. 10.9 Mary, Ellikom, Church of St Harlindis and St Relindis, drilled hole and concentric holes of the additional metal pin on the underside Fig. 10.10 Apostle, Ellikom, Church of St Harlindis and St Relindis, traces of workbench clamps on the underside 10.9 10.10