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

CHAPTER IX 180 33. Dülberg 1990, 83, figs. 9-10; Van Os 1994, 106-109. It is possible that, even within the confines of a unique or solitary space, perspective can be discontinuous, as in the Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove (Bruges, SJH, no. 5 ) (fig. 92d). In this work, Mary is presented frontally, and the viewer is directed to focus attention on her. Maarten is shown in front of a wall and situated in the receding space of the perspective, in a fan of oblique lines (this time around a horizontal axis) that perform the same function as the fanned lines of floor tiles or ceilings in the examples discussed above. These oblique lines establish the hierarchy of the representations and suggest that it is the panel depicting Maarten that was intended to pivot to close the diptych. The reflection of persons in the mirror behind the Virgin reminds the viewer that the figures are united in the same space, despite the discontinuity of the perspective. Further examination of perspective in panel paintings of the period would surely yield fruitful lines of inquiry. 2. Articulated triptychs with three equal parts The procedure of staggered unfolding, permitting the successive exposure of representations, was common to triptychs having three panels of equal dimension. In such triptychs, the hierarchical arrangement of the images on each panel served to instruct the user how to open and close them. Today most of these interesting triptychs are dismantled or divested of their frames. A scarce example still in its original condition is an Italian triptych from the entourage of Paolo Veneziano, c. 1300, with the Man of Sorrows in the centre, the Virgin to the left, and St John the Evangelist to the right of the central panel (Dordrecht, Simon Van Gijn Museum, on loan from a Private Collection) (fig. 93). The painting on the outside of the left wing features Two Dominicans with a Bird and Christ Enthroned . 33 Christ’s and Mary’s faces incline toward each other, indicating that this pair of representations was meant to be closed first, before folding the wing portraying St John. Physically, it would have been difficult to do otherwise, because an object consisting of three (or sometimes four) superimposed panels presents additional laths or adapted hinges in its construction. These laths and hinges did not impede the painter from expressing the hierarchical arrangement of the panels by means of pictorial language, for example by depicting two faces inclined toward each other, as in the Dordrecht triptych, or by depicting the Christ Child pointing his finger toward a donor on the wing preferred for first closure.