How have sculptors worked with alabaster over time? From the Middle Ages to modern times, the Franco-German Materi-A-Net project, drawing on geoscience, history, art and the practice of sculpture and restoration, reconstructs the 'alabaster routes' in Europe.
30 June 2025
The transdisciplinary Franco-German Materi-A-Net project, co-funded by the ANR (French Research Agency) and the DFG (German Research Foundation), is reconstructing the 'alabaster routes' of medieval and early modern Europe.
The international team is using the methods of art history (analysis of works and sources), geology (locating deposits), geochemistry (determining the origin of materials) and restoration science (interpreting traces of work, experimental reconstruction), with the support of digital technology, to reconstruct the networks through which materials and works of art were exchanged and artists travelled over a vast area between England and Ukraine and between northern Germany and Sicily.
