Unravelling the History of Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces in Sweden. c. 1470-1527 and Beyond.

In the late fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, Netherlandish carved altarpieces enjoyed great popularity in the Low Countries and abroad. Today more than 350 pieces are preserved worldwide. Netherlandish carved retables have attracted a large proportion of scholarly attention over the last decades. This dissertation provides a comprehensive historiography of that existing body of literature and outlines the main research trends from the late nineteenth century until now. Medieval Sweden, one of the principal export markets of Netherlandish carved retables from c. 1470 on, forms the focus of this dissertation. Sweden still holds an exceptional amount of Netherlandish carved altarpieces: when considering the medieval 'borders', 39 Netherlandish carved retables, about ten altarpiece fragments, and two poupées de Malines (wooden statuettes from Mechelen) are preserved. This thesis (1) understands that several of these pieces are decontextualised in their present-day environment. The present research traces the provenances of these artworks as far back as possible, as the altarpieces have been moved several times to other locations in the past five centuries. After identifying the original sites for which the altarpieces were destined, this dissertation (2) addresses the search for the Swedish patrons of these altarpieces and examines how they can be identified from documentary evidence, visual sources, and iconographical indications. By bringing together archival evidence of late medieval art transport operations, this research moreover (3) aims to shed light on the way Netherlandish carved retables were transported to the Swedish hinterland. It therefore analyses the different steps (such as the production-, sale-, and transport procedure) and the intense cooperation between the protagonists (artists, workshop-assistants, contractors, patrons, merchants, packers, professional carriers, skippers, and brokers) involved to get altarpieces to their destination. The popularity of Netherlandish carved retables declined after the start of Gustav Vasa's reign (1523) and the Riksdag in Västerås in 1527, when Lutheranism was officially installed in Sweden. This dissertation, however, moves beyond that timeframe (4) to deal with questions on how Netherlandish carved retables in Sweden were copied, altered, re-used, recycled, repurposed, and studied in the first moments, decades, and centuries after their production, as the artworks self-evidently went through shifts in taste and appreciation.

Publication year:2022

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