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

CHAPTER IX 164 13. Pauwels and Pauwels 1998, 71-95. Further literature on the subject: Collier 1983; Pauwels 1994. 14. Dülberg 1990. Jan van Eyck carried meaning-bearing perspective a long way in the service of the message and the dynamics of representation. Memling is a virtuoso of cleverly organized architectures, for example in the left inside wing of the Gdansk Last Judgement or in the architectural canopies of the outside of the wings of the The St John Altarpiece (Bruges, SJH , no. 1 ). The Campin-Van der Weyden group appears to have been less interested in this issue. In The Virgin and Child before a Firescreen by a follower of Robert Campin (London, The National Gallery, inv. no. NG2609), the vanishing lines of the tiles move awkwardly between the items of furniture. Towards the end of the 15th century the Flemish Primitives opt for a more accurate representation of perspective in the Italian manner. Dirk Bouts applied it with rigour, as Aimé and Henri Pauwels have demonstrated. 13 This development must have represented for certain artists the abandonment of a symbolic language, renunciation as much as conquest. The role of perspective is not limited to the expression of the hierarchy of the world. Not only is it meaning-bearing, but it is also functional. In the light of examples, we shall see that the perspective acts as a veritable instruction manual for the proper opening and closing of the articulated work. 2. The niche motif The niche is a privileged motif on the outside of a wing, even if another architectural motif can play the same role and apply the same conventions. Niches differ depending on whether they are located on the closed wing of a diptych or a triptych. On the closed diptych the niche is frontal with lateral lighting (fig. 80a). On the closed triptych the niches are oblique with an unified lighting (fig. 80b). Lateral lighting of frontal niches on diptychs seems to have been conventional. Niches were particularly well suited for such lighting effects. The rotation of the wing is suggested in an illusionistic way: as the wing moves, the perspective of the niche naturally changes from frontal to oblique; to the viewer, typically, one of the niche’s side walls recedes into dark shadow while only the farther side wall, on which the painter has projected the lighting, remains perceptible. The niche wall closer to the viewer disappears rapidly into shadow. Adhering to the painter’s illusionistic intent and message, a diptych wing with a frontal niche should be grasped on the shaded side for proper handling. Depending on whether the hinges were placed on the right or the left of the object, one either opened the diptych or turned it over to position it correctly for opening. Angelica Dülberg published an exceptionally rich documentation of many 16th century German diptychs with their frames and exterior decoration, allowing one to observe the application of this convention for correct opening with regard to the lateral lighting of frontal niches. 14 In the greater part of Dülberg’s examples, a couple is depicted on the inside: man on the left, woman on the right. The exterior of