Alabaster Sculpture In Europe 1300-1650

Exhibition at the M, Leuven, 14 October 2022 - 27 February 2023

Alabaster's popularity is illustrated by the many masterpieces preserved and permanently exhibited in major museums such as the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum and the V&A in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Staatliche Kunstsammelungen in Berlin. Its relative availability and ease of carving have made it a very suitable material for both large monuments and small objects.

This exhibition catalogue highlights the many facets of alabaster that made it a popular material used in many types of sculpture from the Middle Ages to the Baroque throughout Europe. The book brings together 130 masterpieces by the best artists of the 14th to 17th centuries - André Beauneveu, Jean Mone and Conrad Meit (Southern Netherlands), Tilman Riemenschneider (Germany), Jean de Cambrai and Germain Pilon (France), Diego de Siloe and Damien Forment (Spain) - as well as a few contemporary works by the Belgian artist Sofie Muller (1974-).