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

CHAPTER X 230 55. Coxcie’s copy dates from 1558 (date on the fountain). Van Vaernewijck also mentions the dates 1558 and 1559. Already in 1824, Waagen described the Coxcie copy as dismembered. The elements of the copy, now dispersed, were gathered at the Coxcie exhibition at the M-Museum in Leuven in 2013. They are right now in three types of frames: the oldest, those by Schinkel surrounding the Virgin and St John. The Brussels wings are in black and gold frames, and the two central parts, high and low, in modern wide gilt frames. 56. Ghent, State Archives, inv. no. SCMS_FO_5315. In 1859, the church authorities placed an iron grille in front of the altar in the Vijd Chapel to prevent curious sightseers from climbing onto it. This suggests that the altarpieces were hung fairly high up and perhaps joined together. Curtains protected the work. The archives mention such curtains several times through the centuries. · The reconstitution of 1861-1865 In 1861, the purchase of the wings of Coxcie’s copy of the original altarpiece made it possible to reconstitute an ensemble. 55 An agreement between the government and the St Bavo Church council stipulated that Adam and Eve would pass into the hands of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. For the reconstitution in Ghent, a copy of our ancestors decently dressed in animal skins was executed by painter Victor Lagye. The government made a gift to the church of the Coxcie wings and paid for the reconstitution of the ensemble, along with some other expenses. The 1861 to 1865 reconstruction is based on the diagram made half a century earlier by Waagen who replaces the panels in correct sequence and sketches a single altarpiece. Waagen himself probably saw the central parts brought together as they were hung on their return from Paris. The 1912 photograph, taken by Edmond Sacré, shows the altarpiece as it was re-assembled in 1865. Later photographs dating from the dismantling of the polyptych for the 1950-1951 restoration show what was behind the reconstituted polyptych: the 1865 mounting, in the form of summarily built box frame, was anchored into the wall. The depth of the box had the effect of bringing the altarpieces closer to viewers, and facilitating the deployment of the wings in front of the Baroque columns. The lower half of the box was reinforced with metal stays to support the weight of the upper altarpiece. The wings were held in a fairly rudimentary metal strapping and pivoted in joined pairs, but separately for the top and the bottom, around a vertical rod embedded in the altar. This had the effect of taking the weight of the wings off the central part. The central panels were pressed into rebates cut in the box, with frames screwed on top holding the ensemble together. The system was slightly different at the top and the bottom, as Canon Van den Gheyn explained in 1920 (see below ). Between the two altarpieces remained a little space on which, following the 1920 exhibition, the famous quatrain was inscribed. For the Coxcie wings, mediocre new black and gold frames were produced (those that continue to exist today). Onto them were hung Victor Lagye’s wings, the only ones of which the frames were gilded, faithful to the originals. The 1912 photograph 56 shows the reconstructed altarpiece with the Coxcie wings and, for Adam and Eve, those of Lagye.