Abstract
Pre-World War II art historical research on late medieval altarpieces in Norway was concerned predominantly with creating groups of artworks connected to masters on the Continent, by focusing on stylistic features in both carving and paintings. While, in recent times, new insight has been achieved regarding early and high medieval Norwegian art production, the early critical methodologies applied to the late medieval period have yet to be supplemented with modern technological research. This article will reevaluate two important consequences this has had on our understanding of the period. Firstly, the pre-war conception of oeuvres produced by real or fictive masters, without any regard to the artworks’ varying degrees of relationship, and secondly, the assumption that this body of work consists mainly of imported ‘Hanseatic church art’, which allegedly overwhelmed Norway’s own late medieval domestic art production.
This research was first published in Zeitschrift für Kunsttechnologie und Konservierung. © Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft.