A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

261 260 *   Conservator-restorer and art historian, Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, Brussels. **  Art historian PhD candidate, Université libre de Bruxelles. 14 The Virgin and Child on the Crescent Moon from St James’s Church in Liège and Sculpture Polychromy in the Low Countries at the Time of the ‘ Master of Elsloo’: a Typological Approach Emmanuelle Mercier * and Delphine Steyaert ** Introduction The aim of the international research on the large group of sculptures attributed to the Master of Elsloo was to combine style analysis with the technical examina- tion of the wooden sculptures and their polychromy. When we started our study of the polychromy in 2010, we could have imagined a title for this article such as ‘ The Polychromy of the Sculptures Attributed to the Master of Elsloo’, or even more ambitiously, ‘Sculptures Attributed to the Master of Elsloo: Polychromy as an Aid to Attribution’. Unfortunately, we soon realised that the sculptures’ state of conservation was such that polychromy was not going to provide an important field of exploration in this comparative study, and therefore our main focus became the execution of the sculpted parts. Indeed, today most of the sculptures of the Elsloo group are either in bare wood or have a neo-Gothic polychromy that was applied after every trace of the older paint layers had been removed. More rare are the sculptures that retain part of their original polychromy. The Crucified Christ of Ellikom, for example, still has a large part if its original polychromy under several layers of overpaint (fig. 13 .1). 1 On a St Quirinus from Gerdinge n (fig. 4.2), which has been overpainted several times, we were able to examine a few traces of the original polychromy under the microscope. Another statue on which fragments of the original polychromy can be observed is the Blessing Christ from a Belgian private collection (fig. 6. 28). 2 Nonetheless, in this desolate landscape one sculpture stands out by virtue of its magnificence and near-intact material condition: the Virgin and Child on the Crescent Moon in St James’s Church in Liège (fig. 14.1). Not only does it still bear an original polychromy of exceptional richness, it also has a painted date: 1525. Since the Elsloo group provides almost no material for comparison, the Virgin’s polychromy was compared with other contemporary examples, mostly from the Meuse region and Brabant. The Virgin’s Polychromy Standing on a crescent m oon, 3 he r left leg thrust slightly forward, the Virgin presents the Child, naked and half-lying on a piece of cloth. She wears a Fig. 14.1 Virgin and Child on the Crescent Moon, Liège, St James’s Church