A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

­ ranging from the fairly simple to the extremely detailed, with diverse tools and techniques being employed to produce texture. Only two sculptures have a more or less complete contemporary polychromy; on other works only traces remain, or the sculpture has been completely overpainted. Laboratory analysis of the remaining polychromy showed the use of madder lake, obtained from waste from the textile industry, for instance, and, notably, the application on two works of ‘part gold’ or Zwischgold , a cheaper substitute for gold leaf ­ produced by beating gold and silver leaf together. Part gold seems to have been relatively little used in the Low Countries but was more common in the German regions and elsewhere. Both sgraffito and applied brocade are among the polychromy techniques used on the Elsloo sculptures. The virtually intact polychromy of the Virgin and Child on the Crescent Moon in Liège, which bears the date 1525, was shown to have significant similarities with the poly- chromy of Brabantine retables and Mechelen statuettes from around 1500 but also to include elements that are associated with the polychromy of sculpture from the Meuse or Lower Rhine regions. Where the polychromer of this high- quality work came from and how he mastered this decorative repertoire is still a matter for conjecture. Finally, it could not be determined whether the Elsloo sculptures were all originally polychromed, or whether some were unpainted or only partially painted. The technical study was only one side of the research project, however, for the works were also examined from an art-historical point of view. New archival research was carried out in both the Netherlands and Belgium in the hope of discovering data about the identity of the sculptors gathered under the name Master of Elsloo, their production and the historical context. Additional ­ information came to light about sixteenth-century sculptors in Venlo, for example, and the Roermond sculptors Johan and Gaert van Oel. The archives of Belgian Limburg in particular provided pointers to nineteenth- and twentieth-century restorations of Elsloo sculptures, giving us a clearer picture of the restoration practice then prevailing, as well as the sculptures’ state of preservation at that time. The historical and iconographic study of a number of works in England, including a statuette in boxwood, led to a more nuanced view of the sort of patron who would have commissioned an Elsloo sculpture. In addition to local jobs for churches, orders must also have come from the highest echelons of society for works intended for a private context or with dynastic significance. Stylistic analysis, carried out face to face with the sculptures and using the large amount of new photographic material, remains an indispensable method for studying the Elsloo oeuvre. An attempt was made to identify a taxonomy in the oeuvre that would permit the distinguishing of different hands. It appeared that certain elements are invariably alike while others differ nota- bly. By way of experiment one of the researchers used those stylistic similarities and differences to organize the oeuvre chronologically, interpreting the ­ similarities as characteristics of the same stylistic period and the differences as evidence of a stylistic evolution within one workshop.