Förlorat guld. Absidmålningarna i Löderups kyrka, Skåne

Lost Gold. The Apse Paintings in Löderup Church, Scania, Sweden This article is an excerpt from Inger Ahlstedt Yrlid’s doctoral thesis Och i hopp om det eviga livet. Studier i Skånes romanska muralmåleri (And in Hope of Life Eternal. Studies in Scanian Romanesque Murals) published in 1976, in which the author summarizes what is known about the vanished Romanesque murals in Löderup Church in southeastern Scania (i.e. Medieval Denmark, now Sweden) before their destruction in the 1860s. It is part of the introduction to the thesis, where the Romanesque frescoes in Scania and their state of preservation (if any) is described. “The Löderup example” is a case study illustrating the fate of many other Scanian church paintings during the 19th century. The posthumously published study on the Danish Romanesque murals by Ulla Haastrup (Danske romanske kalkmalerier, 2024; reviewed in ICO, nr 1–2, 2024) discusses the wall paintings in 99 churches of which 14 are located in Scania. Several significant Scanian cases are, however, missing and Löderup Church is one of them. Its apse was probably one of the period’s most lavishly decorated and exemplifies the strong Byzantine influence that Haastrup highlights in her study.