The Urnes Madonna and its European Context c. 1200
Welcome to a lecture on medieval church art by Justin Kroesen, Professor of Material Culture of Christianity at the University Museum of Bergen.
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Professor og Material Culture of Christianity at the University Museum of Bergen, Justin Kroesen, will talk about The Urnes Madonna and its European Context c. 1200.
The lecture will be held in English.
Urnes stavkirke is a church of records: considered Norway’s oldest stave church, with some of the earliest surviving building parts, its name is used to designate an entire period in Norwegian medieval art.
Inside the building is one of the best ensembles of stave church furnishings, including one of Europe’s earliest surviving monumental Calvary groups.
Another, less known record is that the church was also home to the oldest known tabernacle shrine in all of Europe that can be more or less completely reconstructed, of which important surviving parts are now kept at the University Museum in Bergen.
In this lecture, Prof. Justin Kroesen, the museum’s specialist on medieval church art, will present a reconstruction of the shrine and place it in its wider international context. It will be shown that, while the stave church may perhaps be viewed as most essentially Norwegian, the Marian shrine helps us to understand the earliest development of a fundamentally European object type.
Free entrance, and everyone is welcome!