A chorus, catalogued as a detail

A concert of angels is an office rendered as an ensemble: sound produced collectively by figures who are never named and never ranked. The record marks this entry as a detail from a larger altarpiece, which changes what it is — not a picture of a chorus but a portion of a structure in which the chorus occupies one register. Six of the 224 titles in this catalogue come from that same altarpiece.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1516 and gives Matthias Grünewald, a German painter, with Northern Renaissance as the style term. No dimensions are recorded. The measured colour families are yellow and red. No location is recorded.

Fragments in the record

Eight titles here are marked as a detail or a fragment. That is a category worth naming because it affects every claim a catalogue can make: dimensions may belong to the whole or to the part, and a location may name the object rather than the extract. In this case the record supplies neither dimensions nor a location, so the entry reports the relationship and stops. Thirteen titles in the catalogue involve music.