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

ARTICULATED WORKS WITH INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE 163 floor, on the ground … In the upper altarpiece by Jan van Eyck in Ghent, perspective comes to the assistance of the principle of dextrality described by van der Velden 12 to reflect the hierarchy of the world. Not all representations are hierarchized. Sometimes each image presents a frontal view in an independent space, inviting the viewer to contemplate each scene separately, as in the reading of a narrative or a succession of scenes arranged chronologically from left to right as in the Altarpiece of the Virgin by Rogier van der Weyden (Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 534A). In this case, this is a fixed triptych, but the same system can be applied in an articulated work (fig. 79a). There are intermediate cases where, in the foreground, the composition is frontal, while in the background, secondary scenes are placed in oblique perspective, creating a hierarchy within a single representation. This is what we observe in the St John Altarpiece of Rogier van der Weyden (Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 534B) (fig. 79b). Fig. 79. Example of three successive areas: the frontal disposition repeated in each composition corresponds to the narrative or historical mode. a. Rogier van der Weyden, Altarpiece of the Virgin , c. 1440, original frames lost. b. In the St John Altarpiece , c. 1455, only the central representation is in frontal perspective. In the other two representations, the foreground is in frontal perspective, but the background is organized in oblique perspective. a b 12. Van der Velden 2006, 124-155.