Hanover
7-9 April 2016

One of the highlights of Hanover’s Landesgalerie is the so-called Goldene Tafel, which once adorned the high altar of the Benedictine Abbey S. Michaelis in Lüneburg. Four wings house an extensive sculptural programme and valuable paintings which constitute important examples of the International Gothic around 1400. The shrine – unfortunately not preserved – is known to have contained the gold-covered wooden antependium of the high middle ages which gave its name to the altarpiece. The central panel was surrounded by reliquaries, of which some are preserved in the Museum August Kestner. Others, which fell victim to theft during the seventeenth century, can still be documented through secondary sources. The altarpiece can be considered one of the best documented and especially multiformed of its kind.

Since 2012 the Goldene Tafel is the subject of an interdisciplinary research project, sponsored by the VolkswagenStiftung, the Klosterkammer Hanover and the FAMA-Kunststiftung. In collaboration with the Gemäldegalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt and the Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaft und Kunst Hildesheim, conservators, art historians and historians analyze the altarpiece. As well as subjecting the retable to a full technical examination, the project also investigates its origin, history, style and use.

Further more an up to date and sustainable way of conservation and presentation of the four altar wings is developed. This conference will present the research team‘s findings and place these in a wider context.

We therefore invite papers as well as posters that present related research projects, monographic investigations on comparable objects. Especially welcome are contributions which focus on recent advances in the field of technical examination and papers addressing the question of museological display of similar works.

Suggested sections may include:

• Monumental architecture as princely commemoration? The construction of Lüneburg’s St. Michael’s Abbey, its furnishings and its functions Commemoration and Representation: Charting the commemorative culture of the Guelph dynasty
• Inclusion and representation. Relics and the purpose of “spoils” in altarpieces of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Evidences of manufacture: tool marks, underdrawings, transfer of motifs and forms of ornamentation. What the results of technical examination can tell us about the production of major carved and
  painted retables.
• North German, Central German, West German or Low Lands? Defining, producing and disseminating sculpted and painted retables during the fifteenth century.
• Ways of Seeing – Presenting the medieval retable in the museum environment

Proposals for 30-minute papers or 5-minute poster presentations should be forwarded to antje-fee.koellermann@landesmuseum-hannover.de until the 30th of September. Requested are the title and a brief summary (max. 2000 characters) in German, English or French.

Lectures and posters are intended for publication as part of the Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte.

Source : Medieval Art Research