MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES

Around 1400, in several centres of the Netherlands and the Empire, materials like clay or east stone, less costly and easier to work with than traditional stone, marble or wood, came into current use. The practice of casting made it possible to produce statues and statuettes in series and at lower price, often with widespread distribution. The different regional variations of the “fine style” in the Germanic countries are illustrated by numerous works in moulded cast stone (Steinguss): Beautiful Madonnas, Virgins of Pity, male and female saints. Examples of sculptures are preserved, if not from the same mould, at least from moulds cast from the same model, as shown by the Virgins from Hallgarten and Eberbach, whose refined lyricism is characteristic of a whole group of works of the Middle Rhine regson.
In the course of archaeological digs in the Low Gountries at Utrecht and Liege, casts have been unearthed of statuettes and reliefs that were used in the fifteenth century to manufacture small terracotta objects, often exported. The earlier sets of such works have their place in the mainstream of internanonal Gothic. Modelled so as to produce statuettes of special charm, clay was a favourite medium at Nuremberg in Franconia, also in Swabia and along the Middle Rhine. It made possible a subtle relief and great delicacy in the handling of details, in harmony with the flowing drapery and sweetness of expression. An extreme care was taken in modelling the back of free—standing sculptures, such as the series of apostles at Nuremberg.
Glay could also be used, hke plaster, to fashion ma— quettes or models of sculptures frequently mentioned in documents from the end of the fourteenth century on,wards. At the Gharterhbuse of Champmol, just outside Dijon, founded by the Duke of Burgundy in 1383, the Dutch sculptor Glaus Sluter had a model made in plaster for the “Well of Moses,” perhaps lifessze: during the winter of 1398-1399 a teamster of Dijon spent sixteen days “hauling fine sand to make a plaster cast. . . and putting the markings on it for the construction and stonework of the fountain.”
Once the work was carved or modelled, the materials employed were generally not left in the natural state. Stone, wood, clay or cast stone received a carefully applied polyehromy using complex techniques which gave the sculpture a perfect finish. Alabaster and marble, sometimes wood as well, were partially heightened with colours and gold, which set off the parts left uncovered. But the fragility of this added colouring and the defacement or weathering it has suffered over the course of centuries (when it has not disappeared entirely) usually prevent us today from appreciating the play of gilding and colour, the beauty of painted decoration and the fineness of flesh-tints in their original brilliance.