KU's Museum of Art is alive
Historic research is never ending job
for Marilyn Stokstad, museum director
By ROSE MARIE LEE
By ROSE MARIE LEE Bees, brambles, thistles, goats, and sheep are a few of the obstacles Marilyn Stokstad, KU art historian, encountered in her search for the full identity of "The Lamentation," a tympanum in the KU Art Museum.
A tympanum is stone sculpture enclosed within the half-moon space above a door.
"The Lamentation" is an example of late 15th century Spanish architectural sculpture. The sculpture, depicting a Pieta scene, was acquired three years ago from an art dealer in New York. It's possible that the tympanum is a "key piece between Gothic and Renaissance art," Miss Stokstad said.
MARILYN STOKSTAD
It was "sheer intellectual curiosity, in part" that led Miss Stokstad, chairman of the KU Department of Art History since 1961, and director of the KU Art Museum, to Spain for the second consecutive summer.
FURTHER RESEARCH of 15th century Spanish sculpture, done after her return from Spain last year, gave clues that the KU tympanum was done later than she had originally thought. She said it was certain that it was done later than 1498, possibly between 1500 and 1510.
By style analysis she discovered that the tympanum must have been done by an artist who worked in the northern part of Spain where he was influenced more by French sculptors than Italian.
Miss Stokstad explained that artists still remained anonymous at this time, and although it is possible to trace the specific style of a work of art, the specific man who did the work is unknown.
Search for the origin of the tympanum led her to the ruins of a monastery located 40 kilometers from Valladolid, Spain. This is the mid-way point between the northern city of Burgos and the southern city of Toledo.
She said the man who did the work probably worked in the shop of Simon de Colona after Filipe, a Frenchman, joined his shop. The sculptor of the KU tympanum then probably migrated southward to Valladolid.
"The STYLE of the monastery was right, the date it was built coincided with the estimated data that the tympanum was made, the stones were right and the measurements—had to be determined." Miss Stokstad said.
Measurements, she explained, would provide concrete evidence that the KU tympanum came from the monastery in Spain. "If the door measurements are smaller than the tympanum, then it couldn't possibly have come from there, however, if the space were a little (not more than a few inches) larger, then it's possible that the KU tympanum could have fit there," she said.
At the same time that she chased away sheep and goats, she also had to make notations and obtain measurements. Her legs and arms were badly scratched from the brambles and thistles that she waded through to get to the monastery ruins.
AFTER TAKING many measurements, she concluded that there was one door in the cloister that the tympanum could have come from. "But bees from more than a hundred hives swarmed within the cloister and the farmer who owned the land said if I went in there, the bees would surely kill me," she said.
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Miss Stokstad said she has done as much work and research as she can at this time to determine whether the KU tympanum is the one from the monastery outside Valladolid, Spain.
"It now depends on luck. I may come across something more conclusive on the tympanum when I'm conducting research on something else," she said.
None of the participants at the Midwest College Art Conference at Wayne State University in Detroit, where she presented a paper on her findings earlier this month, were able to offer any more conclusive evidence.
Prior to joining the KU faculty in 1957 Miss Stokstad taught for three years at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she obtained her Ph.D.
A native of Okemos, Mich., Miss Stokstad said it wasn't until she was a senior at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., that she thought seriously of a career in art history.
In her spare time she likes to cook "anything that's complicated and fattening—and knit or sow."
She said she also enjoys reading murder mysteries, which seem a likely interest for an art detective.
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Monday, December 5, 1966
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