A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

of Elsloo – it also applies to the Master of Oostham, for example – and that the particular stylistic character associated with the Master of Elsloo, as well as the allusion to a phenomenon that has evolved over time, would thus be lost. Another provisional suggestion, already used in this publication, is ‘Elsloo group’ as an umbrella term for the large group of stylistically related sculptures and their makers. Didier had already proposed the name in his introductory text in the 1990 Sint-Truiden catalogue, and it was used in the 2001 inventory Spätmittelalterliche Holzskulptur zwischen Maas, Rur und Wurm , where it appears along with variants such as ‘Master of Elsloo’, ‘Elsloo workshop’, ‘circle of the Master of Elsloo’ and ‘follower of the Elsloo group’. The term ‘Elsloo group’ could encompass all these permutations, however, and would mean that the reference to the sculpture in Elsloo – with which everything began in 1940 – and the recollection of the well-known and decades-old concept of the Master of Elsloo is retained. At the same time, dropping the ‘Master’ will hopefully put an end to the erroneous idea of a lone woodcarver at work. Even- tually, however, it would be desirable to arrive at a more accurate name or names in which an alternative is found for the problematic ‘Elsloo’. Ideally, archival research will bring to light the sculptors’ real identities. Unfortunately, the archival research carried out as part of the project failed to produce any additional data leading to the secure identification of the Master of Elsloo or rather of the carvers grouped under this name. Although it is tempting to see the Master of Elsloo in the Van Oel family of sculptors in Roermond, such an identification is premature without further knowledge about their production. Nor could a direct link be established between the few sculptors who were found in sixteenth-century Venlo archival sources and the sculptures attributed to the Master of Elsloo. Despite the large amount of new data, many other questions also remain unresolved and there is still uncertainty about many issues. There are various reasons for this. For one thing, there is the sheer volume and complexity of the material. Moreover, much original material has been lost as a result of wear and modification and the original context of many works has changed, which can give a distorted picture. Very little original polychromy has survived, for instance, so this aspect could only be studied to a limited extent. Another difficulty was the lack of additional funding in the Netherlands and Germany, where a significant number of Elsloo works are preserved, so that in those countries only limited research was possible. Not all the sculptures there could be studied systematically, as was also the case for the works in other foreign collections. Furthermore, almost no archival research relating to this subject has been done in Germany yet. Due to all these difficulties, not all the examinations carried out led to sound conclusions and unambiguous results. For instance, it was expected that the identifying and measuring of workbench marks would lead to a better understanding of the various hands and workshops responsible for the Elsloo production. In the case of this anonymous, complex group of sculptures, however, this method did not lead to such far-reaching conclusions. Moreover, not every sculpture bore workbench marks, the key work in Elsloo being one