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

CHAPTER IX 166 This pictorial convention also applies to the various architectural elements. For example, in Memling’s Jan Floreins Triptych (Bruges, SJH , no. 2 ), the architectural elements on the outsides of the wings appear frontal at a first rapid glance. In fact they are in perspective as for a slightly open altarpiece. Each architectural item is in oblique perspective (fig. 81). Fig. 81. The architectural items on the outsides of the wings are painted in perspective, on oblique planes, as if the shutters were slightly opened. Hans Memling, Jan Floreins Triptych , 1479. In the case of dismembered works and isolated components, the direction of perspective helps us identify whether the wing was originally placed on the right or the left. A good example is The Good Thief by Robert Campin (workshop?) (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, inv. no. 886) (fig. 82). On the badly damaged outside of this fragment of a wing, the perspective of the niche with St John the Baptist is that of a left wing. It is therefore wrong to state, as has often been thought, that this was a right wing, based on the fact that it is on this side that we see the good thief in a copy conserved in Liverpool ( Descent from the Cross , painted some time between 1448 and 1465, Walker Art Gallery). Another example is The Trinity by Robert Campin (Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, inv. no. 939B) (fig. 83). Fig. 82. The perspective of the niche, with a side wall that is wider to the left than to the right, corresponds to that of a partly-open left wing. Robert Campin (workshop?), damaged fragment with St John the Baptist (recto of The Good Thief , c. 1430). Fig. 83. Here again, the perspective is that of a partly opened left wing. Robert Campin, The Trinity .