Novas descobertas sobre o acabamento original da superfície de uma escultura de madeira de Tilman Riemenschneider

The Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg (GNM) owns a total of eight sculptures from the workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider. The depiction of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia, created around 1510, is considered his own work and most probably comes from the central shrine of an altarpiece. The preserved layers of paint can be attributed to two different phases of polychromy. The technological and stylistic characteristics of the oldest polychromy point to its creation in the 17th century. Underneath, there are remnants of a reddish coating on the smoothed wood. Material analyses (SEM/EDX, FT-IR, Raman-spectroscopy, HPLC-PDA-HRMS, LC-MS/MS) identified a thin, sparsely pigmented protein coating directly on the wooden surface without any dirt or dust in between. This glaze seems to be the original finish that protected, refined and slightly coloured the raw limewood. The findings provide a contribution to the understanding of the type of monochrome sculptures, in particular from the workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider.