Devotion and Revival in the Mass-Produced Statues of the Late Medieval Maasland

The former Prince-Bishopric of Liège—between the Rhine and Maas rivers—was one of the most important and prolific sculpture-producing centers in the late Middle Ages. More than 200 sculptures attributed to the so-called Master of Elsloo (active 1490–1550) and more than 100 statues in the circle of the Maastricht-sculptor Jan van Steffeswert (ca. 1460–1530) survive today. Despite such unusually high levels of production, scholarship has largely dismissed these sculptures as low quality and stylistically outmoded. These works, however, offer important insight into the tastes of non-elite audiences in the late-medieval period. With their vacuous stares, draped bodies, and stiff forms, the statues of the Maasland depart significantly from contemporary works produced in Brabant and Flanders, which were marked by affective expressions and fluid contours. Instead, the Maasland works recall local statuary made in the thirteenth century, a period that sixteenth-century audiences revered for its artistic production. These statues, made of cheap local oak, took part in a larger fashion for anachronism in the Prince-Bishopric; aristocratic audiences contemporaneously commissioned gold reliquaries that call to mind Romanesque metalwork. Examined in the context of the religious upheaval that faced the Prince-Bishopric in the late Middle Ages, the anachronism of the statues takes on new meaning, bringing to mind an era of religious unity. Romanesque revival reinforced traditional devotional practices in a period of increasing tension. Study of this group highlights how sculptors’ stylistic choices harnessed the past to respond to the religious and social anxieties of their many audiences.