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

ARTICULATED WORKS WITH INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE 161 11. Ainsworth 1998, 183, 189-194. The very existence of instructions, located sometimes at the level of the joinery, sometimes that of the painting, points to the sophistication of certain articulated works. Succeeding, and even varying contents are revealed. Codified systems – within the joinery or painting – instructed the viewer in how to handle the works in a way that respected the rules of precedence, hierarchy and other links between the persons and representations. The object can only be studied as a whole. Some of the most valuable works have been dismembered and scattered to distant continents, with their degree of sophistication understandable only by means of imaginary reconstruction. In this regard, this chapter on articulated works constitutes a plea for the preservation and careful study of the frames and panels in early Netherlandish Painting. A. Instructions for proper handling of the hinged or otherwise articulated work 1. Perspective: meaningful and functional Art historians have often proclaimed the Flemish Primitives to have been incompetent in their handling of perspective. This opinion needs to be revised. Artists twisted perspective with a purpose: to guide viewers’ eyes, instructing them in the hierarchy of representations and leading them through the content. Perspective in the Flemish Primitives is meaning-bearing. Maryan Ainsworth described a system of sight lines directing the viewer’s eye to carefully positioned motifs in the Cervara Altarpiece by Gerard David (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. R.F. 2228; Genoa, Palazzo Bianco; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 50.145.9ab). 11 To our knowledge, no one has ever pointed out that viewers could not read the upper altarpiece of the Van Eyck brothers in the Cathedral of St Bavo in Ghent in a linear fashion, as the alignment of the panels might though entice them to do. The perspective of the ground changes several times under the feet of the various figures, so as to situate each player at his or her level (fig. 78).