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

MASTERS AND MASTERPIECES: the ghent altarpiece 217 31. We are unaware whether Michiel Coxcie’s panels of the Virgin and St John the Baptist are curved at the top. See also note 11. 32. Coremans 1953, 100. altarpieces in Ghent, is not more evocative of the canopy. Its strange shape with a curved central portion towering above the rest on which a canopy is painted seems dictated by a model that the artist intended to respect. “Copy-pasted” in our figure 110 by way of hypothesis, the proportions of the canopy correspond to the wall of the Vijd Chapel. This presentation with the canopy that we propose is intended solely to invoke the general appearance that the altarpieces could take in the 15th century. The same remark applies to the form proposed for the upper altarpiece. · The original shape of the upper altarpiece Since the upper altarpiece is everywhere sawn across the top (the wings already in the 16th century and the central parts during the French Revolution, see below ) we do not know what was the original shape of this altarpiece. Michiel Coxcie in 1555-1558 (1559?) gives the wings a curved form, inspired by the amputated wings. The measurements (height and width) given by the Commissioners of the Revolution during the dismantling in Ghent in 1794 plead in favour of a simple shape, perhaps square, comparable to what we have now, but we cannot exclude another shape, for example a curved one for the central panel with the Divine Lord. A curved shape is present in the evocations of the masterpiece by Coxcie and by Gossart, and in the Fountain of Life that we have cited on the question of the canopy. Coxcie’s central panel with the Divine Lord retains to this day an unpainted curved edge at the top. 31 · Tracery on the inside and flat painting on the outside The removed upper parts (of the wings cut back in the 16th century and of the central panels, cut back during the French Revolution) contained tracery on the inside and flat painted areas on the outside. All this tells us that the upper altarpiece was higher than it is now. On the closed altarpiece side, the missing part was a flat painting. The curved rails of the closed wings, in their current state, present on their outer edge a bevel, a typical moulding for edging a painted panel on the outside of articulated works. In open position the altarpiece presented carved gilded tracery on a blue background across its whole width. Several arguments argue in favour of the existence of tracery. There is the X-radiograph that gives a rather blurred image of the spandrels and the description of these spandrels made in 1953: “A surface to be levelled and […] traces of the old blue waterbased coating consisting of indigo and azurite […].” 32 Another fact that argues for the existence of tracery is the difficulties encountered by the French Commissioners in 1794 in preparing the works for shipment to Paris. A document relating to the sale in 1816 of the wings says that these three central panels were part of an altarpiece of which “[ … ] the main pieces were sealed in plaster and nailed, so that, in order to remove them, the French Commissioners nearly demolished the