TAMDRUP KIRKE - Nationalmuseet

elief. Brown varnish was not used on the reliefs
themselves, only on the ornamental pieces, which
corresponds to the situation on the closely related
golden altar from Sindbjerg Church.
All things considered, it must be the work of the
same workshop as the slightly older frontal from the
nearby Sindbjerg Church. However, the goldsmith
was not the same, since our master has worked
in higher relief in an animated, more expressive
style, with an effect that is at once rustic and very
monumental. The background should probably be
sought in the metal art of the Rhine and Maas
area in the latter part of the 1100s, work like St.
Heribert’s shrine in Cologne­Deutz, attributed to
Godefroid de Claire (or de Huy). The absence of
‘damp folds’ might on the one hand be due to
simplification, on the other to some sort of influence
from the new, classicizing ‘muldenfalten’ style
from the time around 1200.
Although the panels with the Poppo legend
could conceivably belong to a reliquary with his
remains (as proposed by the Danish historian Tage
E. Christiansen), the common features of the reliefs
and the uniform dimensions of the rectangular
ones suggest that everything was made for
the same assemblage: a golden altar consisting of
frontal and retable. The latter could be imagined
as a more modest version of the so­called ‘Pentecost
retable’ in the Cluny Museum in Paris or the
St. Remaclus †retable in Stavelot (Belgium).
The †high altar for which the golden altar must
be presumed to have been made is not known,
but the connection of the panels with the high
altar seems to be supported by the find of a number
of small fragments of copper plate with gilding
in the apse floor in 2001. Perhaps they got
into the floor even before or concurrently with
the erection of the present altar at the beginning
of the 1500s (figs. 48, 69). At all events the proportions
of the frontal do not accord with this,
nor does the altar or the wall above it leave
room for an old retable of the length of the
frontal. There is therefore much to indicate that
the golden altar had already been dismantled before
the Reformation in 1536. A confiscation list
from this time can perhaps be interpreted along
the same lines, since in listing the valuables of the
TAMDRUP CHURCH
5175
Fig. 135. Nedfarten til Dødsriget. *Plade nr. 22 fra
*(†)frontale o. 1200 (s. 5123). Jesper Weng fot. 2001.
– The Descent into Hell. *Panel 22 from *(†)frontal, c.
1200.
church it says the following: “in Tamdrup Church
there are many gilded pieces of copper”.
OTHER INVENTORY. This comprises a few
other medieval pieces. Contemporary with the
Romanesque building are two side­altars in front
of the demolished apses of the side­aisles. The
font (fig. 110), attributed to the master stonecarver
‘Esge’, is only a little younger, while the
Late Middle Ages are represented by a bell (fig.
114) with the date 1463 and the name ‘Johannes’
(the bell founder?) and by the brick high altar,
which was originally smaller and stood slightly
displaced to the south (cf. figs. 48, 69).
The altar candlesticks are from c. 1550 (fig.
107), as is the South German baptismal dish,
which was however only acquired for the church
in 1834. As so often, the main inventory is from
the age of King Christian IV: the altarpiece and
pulpit are both from 1600­25 and were made by
the same cabinet­maker (figs. 104, 112). The altar
plate (cf. fig. 105) from 1718 was made by Mogens
Thommesen Løwenhertz in Horsens and
was a gift from the parish clerk Peder Rasmussen
Dahl and his wife Maren Thomasdatter. From
c. 1750 comes a set of older altar paintings (figs.