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

MASTERS AND MASTERPIECES: the ghent altarpiece 213 24. De Schryver and Marijnissen have described the essence of this story from archival sources in Coremans 1953, 21-68. 25. Emile-Mâle 1994. At both places where the frames cast their shadows onto the panel, the artist seeks to enclose it, delimit it, or give a system of hierarchy to the space, and to this end, raises the frame to the rank of column or pillar. This reinforces the idea that the architectural items (niches, arcades and the like, painted in trompe-l’œil ) have a role to play in the hierarchy of representations. 3. The gradual combining of the two altarpieces in the Vijd Chapel This part of the notice presents a series of figures that correspond to assumed steps of the presentation of the altarpieces in the Vijd Chapel through the centuries. Following a short reminder of the known history, we present the outlines of the altarpieces to the left, and to the right various elements which support our argument. The story will be developed in the form of explanatory notes to each figure. There were in the Vijd Chapel originally two distinct altarpieces, one resting on a predella on the altar, the second mounted on the wall above the first. This presentation has changed over the centuries following the wars of religion and the iconoclastic crisis, the French Revolution, the two world wars and more recent events. Closely related to the history of the frames are changes in the environment: canopy, altar and predella, baroque frame. The early interventions, made necessary by the sagging of the wings of the upper altarpiece, were followed by further degradations associated with the work’s turbulent history. The physical combination of the two four-winged altarpieces into a single eight-winged polyptych began in the 19th century and was completed in the 20th. Today, the imperatives of security and sufficient visitor space have imposed a new presentation. Since 1950 the Altarpiece has been held in a solid metal chassis and in 1986 it was transferred to the larger and more secure Villa Chapel. The photograph dated from 1912 preserved in the archives of the City of Ghent is our most ancient document of the polyptych as a whole (fig. 116), at a time when the wings copied by Michiel Coxcie replaced the original wings (sold in 1816) and when copies of Adam and Eve by Victor Lagye replaced the wings of our ancestors, deemed to be insufficiently clad. The turbulent history of the Mystic Lamb has been narrated by Roger Marijnissen and Antoine De Schryver. 24 Gilberte Emile-Mâle has detailed its fate during and immediately after the French Revolution. 25 We refer to these authors and we summarize the well-known elements that make up the storyline. We will enrich them with our comments and diagrams. There will be some inevitable repetitions, but we hope to shed new light on some familiar elements.