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

CHAPTER IX 160 hierarchy of the representations. Let us consider the case of a donor on one pane of the diptych. Subordinated to the Virgin and Child to whom he prays, the donor will in most cases be relegated to the right pane (the heraldic left), which will be pivoted as the subordinate element. The scenery that the artist paints around the donor will be put in a perspective of vanishing lines suggestive of the rotation of the wing: kinetic art avant l’heure! One inevitably thinks of Hans Memling’s Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove (Bruges, SJH , no. 5 ). However, another choice is open to the artist. Where the wing has a protective function, the patron saint or the Virgin and Child can perform this function in a literal sense. In this case they are shown on the moving wing and the donor on the fixed element. This is the case of the Carondelet Diptych by Jan Gossart (Paris, Louvre, inv. nos. 1442-1443). Here it is the Virgin and Child that constitute the moving wing. In each of these two diptychs, it is the woodwork which, on the closed diptych, identifies the mobile wing. We shall return to this later. In a triptych, one can have a donor and a donatrix on both sides of the central representation. The donatrix, hierarchically in a secondary position, occupies the right hand wing, eyes down, hands lowered etc. Between hierarchically connected spaces or figures, links are reestablished by means of a gesture, an attitude, a pointing finger, a look … Amirror can bring together on its convex surface the players positioned in hierarchically ranged spaces. The arrangement of the figures is governed by rules of precedence, but the artist may have reason to depart from them. He can promote another message. The playing out of a historical or narrative sequence from left to right could override the awarding of the heraldic dexter or sinister. Some conventions could be mutually incompatible. The codified system that will be explained below requires us to explore the hinged or articulated work beginning with its closed state, especially when there is a figurative representation. Art historians should therefore follow this sequence in their descriptions. There are of course obstacles. The representation on the closed work may seem secondary or even insignificant. The exterior is often in very bad state of conservation, cradled, impossible to describe, or even inaccessible: some hinged works hanging in museums are frozen in perpetual open state with wood or metal bars. In the catalogue of this publication we have attempted to apply the correct sequence in the description of the articulated work (from closed to open work). We have not always succeeded. It remains nonetheless methodologically important to do so where possible. The articulation of the wings organizes a dynamic in the reading of the content. When the original frame of an isolated 15th or 16th century painting is lost, it is difficult to know if it was ever part of an articulated work. Today, in museums, some of the most valuable paintings are frequently exhibited after the removal of items that are poorly understood, no longer needed, or considered unsightly, such as the ironwork. Old polychromies are frequently overpainted. Traces or damage of every kind, even on the reverse, are erased in favour of an aesthetically more pleasing presentation. Few are the works that display any mutilation – often perpetrated by human hand. Every clue, however, is precious. A hinge with empty knuckles, or the trace of a hinge plate, tell us that the object is incomplete.