Ædiculan i Lunds domkyrkas norra transept. En undersökning av skulpturen och dess bemålning

Abstract

Many authors have considered Lund cathedral, its mediaeval history and its sculptures, sometimes at considerable length. From an iconographical point of view, however, much of the earliest phases of the building’s construction and the sculptural programme still remain obscure. Hardly any of the early mediaeval sculptures can be found today in the places for which they were initially intended, and the original context of many of them seems to be irretrievably lost. Through the centuries, countless individual artworks have been destroyed and sculpture groups dismembered, sometimes for inclusion in new constellations. A good example of such an assortment is the aedicule in front of the northern transept’s eastern chapel. It consists of a number of elements, produced by different hands or workshops, that have at some moment in time been assembled to form the present assemblage. Various dates, chronologies and positions have been proposed for its different components, but so far none that are really convincing. This article presents the results of a study of the painted relief decorations on the canopy and the adjacent chapel – and also contains photographic documentation of its various components. The findings are compared and discussed in relation to previous research.