Paint and Piety

A forum (the papers of which are published here) was held in Oslo in 2010 to gather ideas, seek advice and, in general, begin to shape the onward decision-making process for a new project known as After the Black Death: Painting and Polychrome Sculpture in Norway, 1350-1550. The forum was the first step towards gaining intellectual access to altarpieces, shrines, sculptures and crucifixes for which little (if any) historical documentary evidence has survived. Significantly, too, the forum was a step toward addressing issues related to visibility. While the frontals and sculpture that pre-date 1350 are, with few exceptions, the products of Norwegian, probably monastic workshops, the majority of objects that post-date the Black Death have no such claim to a unifying cultural tradition. By contrast, the majority are categorized as the products of North German and Netherlandish workshops that were imported to Norway prior to the Reformation.