ABSTRACT
About 25 km south-west of Stockholm, in the province of Södermanland, one can find the remote village church of Botkyrka (Figure 2.2.1). Upon entering this church as a visitor, the eyes are immediately drawn to the magnificent monumental sixteenth-century artwork on the high altar of the church (Figure 2.2.2). 1 First, one is struck by the combination of sculpture and painting in the artwork's moveable wings. Upon moving closer to the high altar, we note the powerful narrative presentation of the Biblical scenes (Figure 2.2.3) that contain a huge number of details, such as the tiny dogs that are depicted in the foreground. The viewer is drawn between the central scene of The Crucifixion of Christ and the numerous tiny architectural details of each individual sculpted scene, each of which has the appearance of a church- or chapel-like environment. The viewer thus instinctively identifies the distinctive features of a Netherlandish carved altarpiece: its monumentality, the movable wings, the combination of painting and sculpture, the narrative display containing a plethora of ornamental tracery.
