The Netherlandish Carved Altarpiece in the Church of St. Reinoldi in
Dortmund and the Rise of an Artistic Medium.
Ethan Matt Kavaler, University of Toronto
The carved and painted altarpieces from the Netherlands were among the
most desired art objects of the late Middle Ages. Although these arose no
earlier than the final decades of the fourteenth century, they soon became
must-have acquisitions for churches and chapels throughout Europe. I focus on
the Flemish altarpiece of about 1415 in the St. Reinoldi Church in Dortmund, its
original location. In its affective gestures, its mimetic portrayal of
different materials, its illusion of depth, and its sophisticated
microarchitecture, it established conventions that would later be adopted by
sculptors and painters of the middle of the fifteenth century like Rogier van
der Weyden. Significantly this work was produced in Bruges rather than
Brussels, a subsequent site of much altarpiece creation. Although the Reinoldi
altarpiece has often been linked to the refined court art of Paris, its
painting is more closely related to that of the Lower Rhine and Westphalia.
This should not be surprising, since Bruges and Dortmund were both hubs on the
Hanseatic trade route.
