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

MATERIALS AND MEN 19 86. Klein 1986, 232. 87. Fraiture 2013. After the long journey from the Baltic region to the Netherlands, the merchant stores the wood that customers will come and purchase with the required dimensions: for sculptors thick parts, for carpenters long, narrow pieces. The presence of various boards from the same tree in the same support 86 demonstrates that boards were carefully piled in order after sawing and that this order could survive until the purchase of the wood by the joiner. Fig. 3. The cutting of the log by splitting or by sawing produces four main qualities of boards. 1. Full quarter (or full radial) cutting provides boards of which the medullary rays run parallel to the panel sides; tree rings are perpendicular to the rays and thus to the panel faces and the board therefore contains a maximum number of rings. 2. Quarter (or radial) cutting leads to slightly oblique medullary rays in relation to the panel sides; the tree rings, which are also slightly oblique, are slightly less numerous. 3. Concerning semi-radial cutting, the rays and rings are very oblique (45°); the number of visible rings is significantly reduced, that much that it may not suffice [for dendrochronological dating]. 4. Tangential cutting, finally, limits the number of rings present, which are generally not enough for dating. The cambium is the source of reproductive cells that form the sapwood toward the inner trunk. It is found on the periphery of the trunk between the sapwood and the bark. The heartwood is the biologically inactive part of the wood. A tree ring is formed in the sapwood; after a few years, it is transformed into heartwood. The cutting rarely includes sapwood (A, B), usually only heartwood (C, D). 87 A C B D 1 2 3 Sapwood Heartwood Core Oldest tree ring Most recent tree ring Cambium 4 Bark