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

MASTERS AND MASTERPIECES: the ghent altarpiece 225 45. Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Archives of the Ghent Altarpiece, file on the 1920 exhibition, and file no. 5521. 46. Coremans 1953, 39. 47. Ghent, State Archives, inv. no. SCMS_FO_5315. 48. Emile-Mâle 1994. c) From the 17th century until the French Revolution (fig. 115) · The baroque frame Around the altar surmounted with its altarpieces, Boudewijn Van Dickele placed in 1662 a baroque architectural frame consisting of two twisted columns with composite capitals, placed on high pedestals in front of a brick wall. A small number of photographs show, incompletely, this baroque frame (a photograph from 1912, another following the 1934 theft, and one from 1951). This baroque ensemble was dismantled in 1951. A horizontal entablature surmounted the columns. A summary drawing, in the form of a floor plan and elevation, dating from 1920, sketches the entablature, of which we have not found any photograph. 45 There is also mention of a pediment, but we believe this is in error. 46 Everything was in wood, painted to imitate marble. The two twisted columns, today in the crypt of St Bavo’s Cathedral, were examined by Elisabeth Bruyns, who found no trace of attachment (hinges, nails etc.). This tells us that the altarpieces were not attached to the columns, but that the Baroque frame was simply arranged around the altar. The small white centre console that can be observed under the entablature on a photograph from 1912 47 (fig. 116) apparently served to hold in place the upper altarpiece, according to the baroque practice, following ancient habit, of holding altarpieces at the top to prevent their tipping forward. In Van Dickele’s day the centre of the upper altarpiece still had its carved tracery. · The destruction of the central frames Gilberte Emile-Mâle explains that works sent to France by the Commissioners of the Revolution, for the large part canvases attributed to Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens, De Crayer, Van Thulden and others, were removed from their frames and stretchers before transportation. 48 The frames were left behind, the canvases rolled and reframed in Paris. Sometimes, if the top of the canvas was rounded, it was cut straight. Once in Paris, the paintings underwent the treatment deemed necessary, and were framed before being displayed in the Muséum. To take down the Van Eyck brothers’ altarpieces in 1794, the Commissioners of the Revolution worked two days, removing first the lower, and then the upper altarpiece. This clearly demonstrates that the two altarpieces were not joined one to another. The records do not tell us specifically that the Commissioners destroyed the frames, but the texts mention the difficulty of their work and it is clearly the destruction of the frames which was the reason. So what was the problem? It was not a problem of