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

ARTICULATED WORKS WITH INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE 185 38. Haug 1938; De Vos 1994a, 245-247; Campbell 1995, 253; Lorentz and Borchert 1995, 47-54. element painted on both faces, and one element with a red painted outside) an object of which no one any longer understood the subtleties. Reversible diptychs also existed; a small retable, sometimes attributed to Memling, sometimes to a follower, 38 with the Heavenly Redemption and Earthly Vanity , c. 1486 (Strasbourg, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 51) is an instructive example (fig. 96). Fig. 96. At the present time, the three original panels are conserved as six separate paintings. The original piece was not only dismantled but cut to create six separate works. This reconstruction suggests the original configuration to be that of a reversible diptych. The hierarchy of the two diptychs is suggested by the scripts, in capitals on the major diptych, in cursive Gothic script on the more intimate diptych. Hans Memling (or follower?), Heavenly Redemption and Earthly Vanity , c. 1486, each element c. 22.1 × 13.1 cm.