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

ARTICULATED WORKS WITH INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE 183 36. Van Asperen de Boer 2004, 107-118; Van der Velden 2006, 124-155; Jacobs 2012, 9. 37. Nieuwdorp et al. 1984-1985, 70-98; Nieuwdorp 1994, 137-150; Gifford 1995, 357-370; Nieuwdorp and Goetghebeur 2003, 282. 3. Articulated works with complex programmes, subject to transformation Some objects are opened progressively, presenting successive iconographic programmes. A single wing of a diptych, or the two wings of a triptych could be articulated at an angle. This fact has been noted by various authors. 36 This position is sometimes imposed by the lack of space in a building or the placing of a small diptych on a cushion which prevented its being opened flat. In some cases it is necessary to consider an artist’s specific intent. The fact that Jan van Eyck gave instructions that the wings of Adam and of Eve be placed at right angles in the Vijd Chapel was certainly intentional . The angled position could give a wing an intermediate status between inside and outside, or correspond to the requirements related to the hierarchy of representations etc. Some authors propose sometimes that small diptychs, triptychs and the like were exposed to contemplation vertically, with the open object placed in equilibrium at an angle or in an accordion position. But to suggest these precious objects were exhibited in this perilous position would probably be to underestimate the precautions taken in handling them. Transformable objects also existed. The Anchin Polyptych , of which only the famous paintings by Jean Bellegambe remain (Douai, Musée de la Chartreuse) includes a mechanism on rollers which served to reveal an ancient reliquary in precious metal. Certain altarpieces unfolded in successive stages, first as diptych, then as triptych and finally as quadriptych, each time revealing an iconographic programme having its own consistency. There were reversible diptychs, that is with two representations on one side, with the object reversible to reveal a second diptych, with two other representations. The dismantling of many works and the innumerable losses of original frames have left us with little evidence to comprehend how more sophisticated or complex unfolding objects were meant to be treated. The famous Antwerp-Baltimore Quadriptych (Anonymous Master, Gelderland (?), c. 1400, with a Nativity (outside uniformly red), a Resurrection (outside: St Christopher ) (Antwerp, Mayer van den Bergh Museum, cat. no. 374); the Annunciation (outside: Baptism of Christ ) and the Crucifixion (outside uniformly red) (Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery, inv. no. 37.1683 A-C) was probably not meant to open like an accordion, as was once thought. 37 We explored the hypothesis that places the quadriptych’s red- painted surfaces as the two exteriors (fig. 95). One of the Antwerp frames features a rounded edge on one side, clearly visible when the object is viewed in profile. This shape is reproduced in the illustration of the closed retable and its raison d’être seems plain: it must have facilitated opening. The corresponding Baltimore frame, today lost, probably had the same rounded edge. An initial unfolding would have exposed