Aachener Kunstblätter 2022

The transitional phase between the late Gothic and the Renaissance on the Meuse and the Rhine forms the general theme of Volume 68 of the Aachener Kunstblätter. Seven authors from this region deal with works of goldsmith's art as well as wood and stone sculpture. Dominique Allart, University of Liège, focuses on the last major work of sacred goldsmithing in the Middle Ages, the larger-than-life reliquary bust of St. Lambert in the cathedral treasury of Liège, which has a complex iconographic programme. Vera Henkelmann looks at late medieval mariana from the Meuse region. She focuses on free-plastic double Madonnas hanging in the church interior without illuminated devices in Aachen, Maastricht, Roermond and Wessem. Benoît van den Bossche and Emmanuel Joly, University of Liège, focus on the north-western portal porch of the collegiate church in Tongeren, created in 1527-1537, and are interested in its history and the individual phases of its creation. Reinhard Karrenbrock, an expert on Lower Rhine-Westphalian sculpture, concentrates in his article on stone sculpture, which has been less researched in the Lower Rhine region, and makes two crucifixion groups in Marienbaum and Xanten, which have received little attention so far, the subject of his reflections. Christiane Paulus, who specialises in the Renaissance sculptor on the Lower Rhine, Arnt van Tricht, examines his epitaphs in St. Viktor in Xanten and asks about the pictorial models. Vincent Rudolf, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum Aachen, examines Liège's Renaissance funerary monuments, which serve the memoria of individual canons, against the background of the manifold relations between the Meuse metropolis and papal Rome. And finally, Michael Rief, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, turns his attention to the Renaissance fireplace from 1559, which unjustly leads a shadowy existence in the Aachen collection, with its depiction of the triumphal procession of Bacchus, which probably originates from the Old Castle in Geilenkirchen. This provides an insight into an epoch that has not yet been sufficiently researched for this region.