Altar retable in St Mary’s Church in Lübeck

This winged retable from St Mary’s Church in Lübeck was made in Antwerp in 1518. This form of winged altarpiece was produced for export in large numbers by Antwerp studios above all in the first third of the 16^th century. The hallmarks of most of these ‘Antwerp retables’ are a raised case and very detailed carving. Some of the elements, such as the dimensions and certain figural groups, were standardized. As many as 200 Antwerp retables have been preserved in Europe to the present.

The Antwerp retable in St Mary’s Church in Lübeck, polychromed wood, 1518, manufacturer: an Antwerp workshop, photograph: Innomann; source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marienkirche_Luebeck_altar.jpg?uselang=de, Creative Commons Attribution – Redistribution under the same licence 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.de.