Alabaster, a millenary stone of European cultural heritage

Abstract

<p>Because of its ease of working in minute detail and its whiteness, gypsum alabaster was one of the preferred materials for European sculpture rivalling marble in the late Middle Ages and early modern period.  Its natural deposits are spread all over Europe, from the English Midlands to the Ukraine, from the Ebro basin to Tuscany, from the Alps and the Jurassic to central Germany (Fig. 1).  The close connection between natural alabaster deposits and artistic centres, which has emerged in recent work, is related to the ecological perspective currently much discussed in art history, which emphasises the convergence of nature and culture. This new approach is based on a combination of art historical, historical and natural scientific methods and has been employed in several research projects over the last decade, involving geologists, geochemists, art historians, and conservators in a network of heritage research institutions, geological surveys, and museums. Progressively, the links established by this transdisciplinary work between historical alabaster deposits and artworks outline the evolution of the networks of European “alabaster routes”, of transfer of unworked stone, art, artists and technical and artistic knowledge which confers to this heritage stone a unique role in European integration.</p><p>Here we present the current state of the art on prominent historical alabaster quarries, notably in France and Germany, and research perspectives in the framework of the upcoming Franco-German Materi-A-Net project co-funded by ANR and DFG.</p><p><img src="https://contentmanager.copernicus.org/fileStorageProxy.php?f=gepj.9b3946a6c0e160780212461/sdaolpUECMynit/22UGE&app=m&a=0&c=a42c67db6991d9f1ddc6723029648b28&ct=x&pn=gepj.elif&d=1" alt="" width="747" height="459"></p><p>Fig. 1 Principal alabaster deposits used for sculpture in Late Medieval and Early Modern times. Transdisciplinary network of the Materi-A-Net project.</p>

Research on the artistic expression form of traditional cultural imagery in sculpture modeling based on DE-GWO model

“…First, the imagery vocabulary was collected and sorted through online reviews and research literature related to the Yulin Cave statues. Secondly, the researchers of the Yulin Cave statues further culled and integrated the near and antonyms based on their professional knowledge and experience and initially screened out 14 imagery words that appeared more frequently in the near-sense vocabulary [17][18]. Again, researchers specializing in Chinese were invited to analyze the 14 imagery words on a multidimensional scale, and the most representative perceptual imagery words under the four dimensions were dignified, delicate, magnificent, and vivid.…”