Late Medieval Panel Painting through the Prism of History, Material, and Technique. Interdisciplinary Object-Based Research at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum

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The Germanisches Nationalmuseum boasts an outstanding collection of about 250 late-medieval panel paintings from the German-speaking lands. In breadth and quality, the collection stands among the most important of its kind worldwide. Paintings from Cologne and Nuremberg represent extraordinary strengths. Still today, however, an in-depth scholarly investigation of these holdings is lacking. In the proposed project, the museum's paintings from Cologne and northwestern Germany as well as the Middle and Upper Rhine regions are to be thoroughly researched and the results comprehensively analyzed and interpreted. The focus would lie on interdisciplinary art-historical and technical investigation, which forms a central desideratum and yields crucial new insights. The goal for each painting is a complete account of its material genesis, the reconstruction of the original context and condition, and the identification of later modifications, in order to understand the work with regard to its shifting functions and meanings. The results will be published in a scholarly collection catalogue. Additionally, research materials will be incorporated into a WissKI-database. On this basis, it will be possible to evaluate the individual findings on the 29 paintings from Cologne in the GNM, while also taking into account the discoveries of the collaborative project carried out 2009-2012 in Cologne and Munich on the "Technology of Panel Painting in Cologne." This will make it possible, for the very first time, to trace the history of technical developments in painting in the highly important artistic center Cologne over the crucial period 1400 to 1500. To be analyzed are the materials and techniques used, their specific manifestations and changes. In doing so, characteristics particular to time, place, and function will be investigated, as distinct from workshop-specific and individual features. Indispensable to understanding these findings is the art-historical and cultural-historical contextualization, which considers, on the one hand, the works' style, motifs, and iconography and, on the other, the economic, sociocultural, and religious framework of their making. Important preparatory work is being done as part of a research project devoted to the Franconian panel paintings in the GNM funded 2013-2016 by the Leibniz Association (Leibniz Gemeinschaft). Both projects form the basis for a comparative cross-evaluation of findings on panel paintings produced in Cologne and Nuremberg. This comparison will make a substantial contribution to scholarship on the development and diffusion of artistic materials and techniques. In doing so, it will decisively advance the field of technical art history. In addition, the project will prompt, from an art-technological perspective, a reexamination and redefinition of the important art-historical concept of "Kunstlandschaft."