The anthology under review here is the result of a workshop held in Leipzig in 2009 on the occasion of the publication of Peter Tångeberg’s Wahrheit und Mythos — Bernt Notke und die Stockholmer St.-Georgs-Gruppe the same year. Naturally, the questions of attribution relating to the quite unique sculpture group of Saint George in Stockholm’s Saint Nikolai Church, the Lübeck (work)shop of Bernt Notke, and works attributable to the same workshop(s), are central to the book. The real aim is broader, though, as Tångeberg’s thesis that the Saint George group is really of Netherlandish origin is the point of departure for a series of attempts to map and discuss both the import and the impact of Netherlandish art (sculpture in particular) and artists to Scandinavia and Northern and East-Central Europe. Fifteen contributions, one in English and fourteen in German, cover the questions in surveys, in methodological discussions, and in focused studies of individual works and of smaller groups of interconnected works.

The anthology is divided into three sections. The first section provides valuable surveys and general discussions that function well as introductions to the complex problems of imports, influences, and identifications that run through the rest of the contributions. The second section, focusing on Scandinavia and the Baltic region, is dominated by an interesting discussion between Tångeberg and Jan Friedrich Richter regarding both the corpus of works attributable to Notke and to the identity and function of Notke (artist or entrepreneur?). The section on East-Central Europe contains important studies and discussions of the range and character of works produced in the Netherlands, by Netherlandish artists abroad, or influenced by Netherlandish models. Patronage studies are in focus here as well, and the impact of Habsburg patronage in particular.

The book is an eye-opener to the very rich heritage of wooden and alabaster sculpture in areas of Europe less attended to in the international scholarly literature, in part due to language and political barriers. It also throws an interesting light on some of the leading centers of art production of the time: Antwerp, Brussels, and Mechelen (Malines). Over 300 retables from these centers are still found today in the British Isles and in Northern and East-Central Europe. What emerges is both a clearer picture of the widespread distribution network of the Netherlandish art centers, but also the insight that the exports were not mass-produced, second-grade works, but often custom made, even for churches that in today’s geography appear remote and peripheral. The dichotomy of center and periphery reemerges from the studies as an asymmetrical field of dynamic exchange, where the periphery is not a passive receiver of influence or import but actively interacts with the center through qualified knowledge of style and quality, and by ordering specific, custom-made objects from selected producers.

Thus the book reopens a field of research and leads to a fruitful reevaluation of the sources, combined with new technical studies as well as a critical reexamination of the apparatus of stylistic attribution that, though it may be indispensable, is more often than not imprecise and prone to hinge on quite subjective judgments. The role and importance of Lübeck, which is traditionally considered the main provider of high art to the Baltic area, also comes out as in need of revision. Editorially, one wonders why the image captions and the texts have not been adapted to a common vocabulary and the naming of the works shown and cited. A map of the areas and places covered and mentioned could have provided the less-than-expert reader with a helpful tool of orientation. Finally, one is left to wonder why some of the most important works under discussion (like the Saint George group in Stockholm) are not illustrated. In such an interesting book on art and attributions, this appears to be an odd choice.