A Masterly Hand / Scientia Artis 9

Three types of archival sources were consulted. The first was the Limburg church and municipal records, held in the State Archives in Has selt. 13 T he initial aim was to get a clear picture of the still-extant archival material, the objective being to find data on sculptors’ activity and on the sculptures and their context that would complement the archival research done in the Netherlands by Gerard Ven ner. 14 U nfortunately, hardly any fifteenth- and sixteenth-century records from places with Elsloo sculptures survive. In most cases the oldest documents date only from the seventeenth century. Moreover, the material that does survive is rather fragmentary. The only references that were found relating to the Elsloo sculptures date from the nineteenth or the twentieth century and allude to restorations. More data on old restorations can be found in the Archives of the Royal Commission for Monuments and Sites (Koninklijke Commissie voor Monu- menten en Landschappen), the second type of archival source consul ted. 15 It holds all the recommendations made by that commission since 1835 on the conservation and restoration of the Limburg churches and their furniture, including their sculptures. Some of these late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth- century restorations are discussed in detail elsewhere in this publicat ion. 16 The third type of archival source is ecclesiastical in nature and contributes to a better understanding of the situation of the Limburg churches in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. In the first place it includes the archi- diaconal and episcopal registers of benefices. Ordered alphabetically by parish, they mention the names of the altars attached to the benefices and the income the archdeacon or bishop received from th ese. 17 T he registers’ function was related to the archidiaconal and diocesan church visitations. They were used to verify and update particular information on the benefices registered during the last visitation. A number of lists dating from 1400 to the mid-sixteenth century survive from the diocese of Liège and its archdeaconry of Kempen- land, to which the studied churches in Limburg belon ged. 18 T hey provide information on the local devotion to saints, which can be an argument that a statue of a particular saint originally comes from a certain chu rch. 19 By linking the altars mentioned in the registers with still-existing sculptures, this type of source can also be helpful in reconstructing dismantled altarpieces. For example, using such registers allowed Lydia Beerkens partly to reconstruct the altars in the Church of St Peter-in-Chains in Venray (also part of the Kempenland archdeaconry) in which the numerous surviving fifteenth- and sixteenth-century statues were originally plac ed. 20 H owever, she also had access to the old archives of the Venray church, which still exist, unlike those of the majority of the churches involved in our research. And like the present author, she also made use of the ecclesiastical sources mentioned below. In the second place there are the archidiaconal visitation reports. From the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries more detailed archidiaconal visita- tion reports are preserved and have been published by Jozef Grauwels in the journal Het Oude Land van Lo on . 21 T hey contain information about the church, such as its patron saint, its status ( ecclesia integra , ecclesia media or quarta capel la ), 22 th e benefices, confraternities, tithe collec tors 23 an d patr on. 24 These data attest to the importance and financial situation of the church, 4.5 a 4.5 b 4.5 c 4.5 d 4.5 e 4.5 f 4.5 g 4.5 h 4.5 i 4.5 j