Frames and supports in 15th and 16th-century Southern Netherlandish painting

MATERIALS AND MEN 13 68. Philippot and Sneyers 1958, 56-60. boards “to be painted”, which were brought to Leuven by boat and delivered to the City Hall. On 20 May 1468 an agreement was concluded between the city and Dirk Bouts, in which the artist undertakes to deliver a painting measuring twelve feet high by twenty-six feet wide, and a smaller painting six feet high and four feet wide, to represent the Last Judgement. The 45 twelve-feet boards purchased by joiner Cox in Antwerp are indeed those intended for the paintings commissioned from Bouts. The artist began with the Last Judgement , no longer extant. Locksmith Jean de Jonghe was paid between 1 May and 31 June 1468 to place four hinges and a small lock. This tells us that the Last Judgement was a triptych. A year and a half later it was exhibited in the Council Chamber of the City Hall. Between 1 November 1469 and 31 January 1470, two stonemasons and their assistant were paid for producing a “moulding” under the painting in the room in question, a task that must have been of some size given that the three craftsmen spent forty-six days on it. Meanwhile, during May, June and July 1469, a handful of joiners, including Cox, worked to produce the panels that Dirk Bouts was to paint for a chamber on the first floor of the City Hall. One panel was removed from the room and brought to the master’s workshop between 1 November 1470 and 31 January 1471. Before 25 June 1473, the panel was lifted using a pulley, while another panel was taken down. A stretcher, covered with canvas “primed” in red by city painter Hubert (Hubrecht?) Stuerbout, was placed in front of the first panel, on hinges supplied by locksmith Josse Metsys, father of the painter Quinten. Payment for this stretcher was made between 1 May and 31 July 1473. Dirk Bouts died probably on 6 May 1475, bequeathing his finished works to his wife, his unfinished works to his sons. The city paid its debt to the deceased’s heirs only five years later, following a visit by Hugo van der Goes. The payment relates to the Last Judgement and to one panel of the large painting, fully completed, as well as a second almost finished panel. The original project was for four. A second visit by Van der Goes is to be connected with the finishing of the unfinished panel – which experts have identified at the Beheading of the Innocent Count 68 – installed in the City Hall less than a year later. Before February 1482, a wooden stretcher, covered with canvas “primed” in red like the other one by Stuerbout, was placed to protect the work from dust. In addition, the same year a blacksmith was paid for sealing two studs into the wall to attach the second panel. In 1482, locksmith Metsys received payment for placing a lock on the Last Judgement. These archive texts suggest that there existed in the wood trade a specific quality of boards specially felled and cut “to be painted”. The wood for the panel on the one hand and for the frame on the other may not necessarily have come from the same source. It was the sponsor who entrusted the carpenter with purchasing the wood and producing the supports. The agreement between the artist and sponsor covers the dimensions of the work and the price. One can observe that the economics of the material dictated the format prescribed to the painter. For the Last Judgement , the boards were simply cut in two to give a triptych which is six feet high. The Justice of Emperor Otto III measures close on 329 cm high, that is the full length of 12 feet boards. The twelfth part of the height is equivalent to 27.41 cm, which corresponds