Talk:Marienaltar (Conrad von Soest)

Citation style

With (as an example) five citations of an item titled Die Donation des Bürgermeisters Nies (OK so far) explained by five instances of the string "Die Donation des Bürgermeisters Nies" (plus subtitle, plus publication details), the citation style of this draft is terribly labored. I propose to replace it with some system that is just as informative but a lot less repetitive. However, Wikipedia:Citing sources says that I need consensus for this. Comments, Crismorera18, Asilvering, anyone? -- Hoary (talk) 00:17, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

By all means. -- asilvering (talk) 00:24, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Agree Crismorera18 (talk) 10:55, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

asilvering, Crismorera18: Done, for now. Perhaps it could be improved here and there. -- Hoary (talk) 07:17, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I fixed some mistakes I'd made the first time around. (Now I think that use of Template:Harvc would be a further improvement.) -- Hoary (talk) 22:24, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Its name (and thus the article title)

Asilvering asked if "Marienaltar" was the common name in English. Crismorera18 replied that yes it was.

A little googling shows that "Mary altar", "virgin Mary altar", "mother Mary altar", "Marian altar", and "Mary's altar" are used. Google Ngram viewer shows that "Mary's altar" is commoner than either "Mary altar" or "Marienaltar", but not dramatically so; also, it of course doesn't distinguish between "Mary's altars" that are altars to (this particular) Mary and those that merely pertain in any way to this or some other Mary. So perhaps "Marienaltar" is indeed the best choice. (NB if it isn't already obvious: I know next to nothing about Christian iconography or nomenclature.) -- Hoary (talk) 22:44, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I wouldn't trust ngrams for this. "Marian altar" is essentially a genre of art. But whether this particular one is usually called "Marienaltar", I don't know. -- asilvering (talk) 01:07, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the 2016 edition of Lonely Planet Germany uses Marienaltar for it. -- Hoary (talk) 06:41, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Referencing

Whether to call the article's subject "Marienaltar" or some alternative is, I think, a minor problem compared with the patchy referencing. As an example, consider the very first paragraph that's long enough to need more than one lungs-full of air to read out. Within this one paragraph, all of

The paintings were originally part of a Gothic winged altar. In order to fit the panels into a Baroque altar structure [...] they were trimmed and partially hammered in 1720. This process, unthinkable today given the quality of the artwork, involved the removal of portions of the paintings. The paintings were arranged differently in the carved Baroque altar. The two outer panels were positioned in the lower portion of the altar, with the central panel above them in a vaulted arch. The two lower panels were covered by a lunette. [...] At the lower edge, the panels were painted over with banners approximately 20 cm high that placed Jesus at the center of the action and were likely intended to relativize the veneration of Mary. In 1848, the back was covered with newspaper to protect it from final destruction.

is unreferenced. How come? Because it's translated from de:Marienaltar (Conrad von Soest), which is only patchily referenced. At this point it's customary for editors of en:Wikipedia to compliment themselves on how seriously en:Wikipedia takes referencing, as opposed to so much that's perpetrated on other Wikipedias. But the problem's even simpler: the article de:Marienaltar (Conrad von Soest) is old, created back when articles in en:Wikipedia too were patchily referenced. Both articles need attention, from people who (unlike me) have access to the (German-language) sources and can read them. -- Hoary (talk) 07:58, 8 September 2024 (UTC)