Medieval and Renaissance sculptors carved gorgeous statues and religious icons from alabaster, a soft, creamy white stone similar to marble. Much of their work, from visages of the Virgin Mary to angels slaying demons, now reside in museums like the Louvre in Paris and others across Europe. But a mystery remains: Where did the alabaster come from?

“This is quite a frustration for museum art historians to have question marks everywhere,” said Wolfram Kloppmann, a geochemist at the French Geological Survey.

In a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Kloppmann and a team of art historians, geologists and geochemists traced the origins of more than 60 alabaster statue. While many came from known quarries in England and Spain, the analysis of the stone also revealed an overlooked hub for alabaster production in the western French Alps. The site was a much richer source of the mineral than previously thought. The researchers’ work helped reconstruct an art trade route that existed across western Europe from the 12th to 17th centuries.