ALTARPIECES

Of all the creations of late Gothic art, the carved altar— piece is b&yond all doubt the most fascinating. It is in the decoration of the altar, holiest of holy places, on which all eyes are turned, that the artists’ imagination and virtuosity scored their triumph. The wall standing bchsnd the altar, rising vertically above the slab of the altar, took on unprecedented breadth and complexity. The art of the altar- piece, horn well before the fifteenth century, experienccd a remarkable flowering during this period. In the Germanic countries and thc Nethcrlands, the altarpieces in carved and painted wood, fitted with  folding wing panels, developed from fourteenth-century examples :, the vast rcliquary altarpieces, which associated the holy receptacles on several levels with an ornamentation of statuettes placed side by side beneath arcades; or the small altarpieees shaped like tabernacles, which housed the holy image in the centre. When closed, the painted (sometimes carved) wsng panels enabled the sculptures and relies to be protected; when open, to be presented on the altar for adoration by the faithful.
At the end of the fourteenth century, potentially far- reaching changes affected the shrine or casket (Schrein in German, screen in Flemish), the central part of the altar— piece. This shrine, being deeper, could receive narrative compositions in high relief beneath the architectural elements, and its median bay was elevated, breaking with the rectangular form and creating a vertical axis at the centre. That was the ease with the Crucifixion altarpieee commissioned by Philip the Bold in 1390 from Jacques de Baerze, a sculptor of Termonde, for the Charterhouse of Champmol. The way was open for formulas typical of the Netherlands around ioo, where scenes with multiple figures placed on rising ground were composed by small reliefs carved separately, then fitted together and arranged in tiers in the different compartments of the shrine. The form of those compartments and their architectural setting, composed of flamboyant fenestration, vaults, colonnettes, gables and pinnacles, evoke the inreriors of Gothic churches. The Dortmund altarpiece of about 1420 already offers an accomplished example of this type of shrine, called Kapellenschrein. But the attempt to suggest depth of space is restricted by the material confines of each compartment. In compensation, it brings with it a kind of miniaturization of forms and prohferation of details placed at the service of expressive and narrative values. The anecdotal episodes, picturesque costumes, and concrete elements rendered in minute detail help to situate the narratives drawn from the Bible or the byes of the saints in the sculptors’ contemporary world.
The monumental figure carvings standing in the shrines of the German altarpieces produce a different effect. In both eases, however, the altarpieee is conceived as a whole (Gesamthnnstwerk). Shrine and wing panels must be considered together, according to the opening and closing of the altarpiece as required by the necessities of the liturgical calendar. There is a dehberate progression of forms and imagery in the passage from the simpler paintings on the wing panels (often grisaille on the outside and more coloured representations or else low reliefs within) to the sculptures of the central shrine, where the most sacred and elaborate images stood. When closed, the altarpiece wears, 

as it were, its everyday face, adapted to days of toil or mouroing; when open on feast days, it shows itself in all its splendour.
The production of carved and painted altarpieces in the southern Netherlands, already considerable in the course of the fifteenth century, became extremely abundant at the close of that century and the start of the next. Strictly organized, and in some cases almost standardszed, this line of work was extensively commercialized, as shown by exports to France, the Iberian peninsula, the Balcaric and Canary islands, and the Germanic and Scandinavian countries. Two centres, Antwcrp and Brussels, were p;edominant, while the workshops of Malines specialized in the manufacture of statncttes. Several craftsmen collaborated in the construction of an altarpiece: joiners and cabinetmakers who devised the shrine, sculptors, painters and gilders who were responsible for the polychromy. The statutes of the craft guslds to which they belonged laid down precise conditions of work and production. Each town’s hallmark was affixed to its works as a guarantee of their origin and quality. The varieties of wood most frequently used were oak, walnut and some fruit trees.
In Brussels the mark of the cabinetmaker was stamped on the outer panels of the oak shrine and depicted his tools: a plane between the branches of an open compass. It was often accompanied by the wooden mallet, the mark of the Brussels sculptors, which was carved on the wood, generally out of sight: on the head or back, or beneath the base, of the figures. On the other hand, the rectangular mark bearing the word B5tvE5EL, which was impressed in the still fresh preparatory coat before the application of the gold, and guaranteed the quahty of the polychromy, was placed in evidence on the front of the shrine (Saluzzo altarpiece) or on the pedestals of free—standing statuettes. Some workshops might also use their own hallmarks, and sometimes the sculptors, hke the famous Jan Borreman, even signed their works (altarpiece of St George, t493, Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels).