A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

Tours museum label text, ‘Le style et la facture ne laissent aucun doute sur l’attributi on’. 8 In 2000 the New York St Roch was compared to the artistic output of Kalkar, a town located some 50 kilometres north of Roermond between the Rhine and the Me use. 9 In the early sixteenth century Kalkar enjoyed an extra­ordinary congregation of master carvers, notably Henrick Douwerman ( d. 1543/44), Henrick van Holt (d. 1545/46), and Arnt van Tricht (d. 15 70). 10 Th eir workshops produced sculptures for both religious and secular institutions in Kalkar and beyond, reaching the nearby centres of Xanten and Cleves. Specific attributions to hands within this school of carving are complicated by the fact that Douwerman and Van Holt were both trained in Cleves by the same master carver, Dries Holthuys, and that Van Tricht is believed to have worked for Douwerman. In addition, very few commissions linking patron to artist are recorded in town archives. This lack of a systematic recording combined with the rarity of signed and documented works makes identification problematic. While stylistic and technical evidence suggest that the New York St Roch was influenced by Kalkar’s rich artistic output, no comfortable match has been found that would tie the sculpture to a precise origin. The constellation of political nuclei fragmenting northern Europe in the early sixteenth century and the proximity of different sculpture centres impede or at least complicate precise attribution to specific towns, workshops and artists. Furthermore, although the Lower Rhine region was for the most part unaffected by the economic crisis and religious turmoil usually associated with the Reformation, valuable comparisons with surrounding artistic centres are undermined by the iconoclastic fury or Beeldenstorm which decimated sculptural production in 15.3 a 15.3 b Fig. 15.3 Head of St Roch a New York b Tours