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

MASTERS AND MASTERPIECES: Eyckian paintings 249 89. In the little Bohemian book of models (about 1400), conserved in Vienna in its original state, the drawings have been glued onto maple panels attached to one another by means of pieces of parchment. The object rests in a leather case (Leithe-Jasper and Distelberger 1984, 60). 90. Bosshard 1992, 4-11. 91. An examination of the diptych was carried out by Ségolène Bergeon at the Laboratoire du Musée du Louvre in 1979, the results of which have been published in Comblen-Sonkes and Lorentz 1995, 8-9. 92. Hand et al. 2006, 5-6. 93. Friedman 1977, quoted from Dülberg 1990. 94. Kermer 1967, 4. 95. de Laborde 1850, 26. Little holes in the upper edge of the frame allowed the fixing of a “pipe”, i.e. a button with tassels as used in old books. The hinges are modern. Nails visible on the X-radiograph may have held into place a strip of leather or cloth covering the corded edge and allowing the articulation of the Diptych while evoking a bookbinding. 89 Each wing measures 37.5 × 22.8 cm. The measurements are similar to those of the Thyssen Annunciation (38.8 × 23.2 cm), as are the construction of the frames, the mouldings and the polychrome structures. There is no doubt about the close relationship between both diptychs, as has already been suggested. 90 The original polychromy of the Louvre Diptych is in most parts hidden by a thick ground and an overpaint. The boards are overpainted in brown-garnet red and the corded edge is gilded. The frames around the paintings are gilded but in the gaps one can see that they were originally painted in red and perhaps marbled like the frames of the Thyssen Annunciation . The gilded edges carved into illusory leaves have not been painted over. The narrow edges of the boards of the book still have their original black colour. On the boards of the diptych, soundings have revealed elements of the original sprinkling (red for the reverse of the Virgin and Child and green for the reverse of St John the Baptist). 91 Those marbled reverses are made out of dots of paint projected onto a black background. They bring to mind other Eyckian reverses and outsides of wings. The absence of gaps on the corded edge hides the remains, if any, of an original polychromy under the gilding and the thick ground. On the assumption that this part was covered with leather, one understands that there would not be any polychromy in this specific area. 3. Links between Eyckian paintings and the world of books The link between the first Netherlandish panel paintings and manuscripts has been repeatedly evoked. 92 Inventories mention diptychs that look like Books of Hours “tableaux faiz en manière d’un livre” 93 or “tableau en fourmes d’unes heures, fermant”. 94 The inventory of Margaret of Austria of 1524 says: no. 150: “Ung riche et fort exquis double tableau de Nostre Dame, doublé par dehors de satin brochier et monseigneur le duc Charles de Bourgogne, painct en l’un des fulletz, estant à genoux, habillé de drapt d’or, à ung cousin de velours noir et une heure estant sur son siège devant luy, le bors dudit tableau garnis de velours verd, avec trois ferrures d’argent doré servant audit tableau . ” 95