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

MASTERS AND MASTERPIECES: Eyckian paintings 251 99. Verougstraete and Van Schoute 1996, 87-94. 100. This subject has been investigated by Susan Jones. 101. Arnolfini : 29 × 20 cm (Bock et al. 1996, n°676 (523 A)); Baudouin de Lannoy : 25 × 19 cm (Bock et al ., op. cit. , n°678 (525 C)); St Francis : parchment: 12.9 × 15.2 cm, panel: 15.4 ± 2 × 16.7 (± 1.5); St Francis in Turin: 29.2 × 33.4 cm. Klein 1997, 47-50. There is another similarity with manuscripts. If the Louvre Diptych presented itself as we suggest in a reconstruction (fig. 50 ), it would have resembled books typical of the later centuries and especially of the 18th century (it is probably partly due to this similarity that the diptych’s book form was thought to be a late alteration). This suggests that a link exists between the marbled decorative painting on the reverses of the panels and the marbled papers used on manuscripts . We think that the marbled surfaces of the Louvre Diptych and of other Eyckian paintings evoke books as they existed in the East at the time. As a conclusion to the different observations on the general characteristics of the Eyckian frames and the decorative patterns on their reverses, one can suggest that there is something like a “standard Eyckian frame”, as in the case of Campin. 99 The mouldings in the Van Eyck frames are substantially different from the Campin mouldings. The idea that the artist (and his workshop?) 100 could have had their own frame-supplier is reinforced by the observation made by P. Klein that the supports of the Arnolfini and Baudouin de Lannoy portraits, both in Berlin, and the St Francis (Philadelphia, Museum of Art, The John G. Johnson Collection, cat. no. 314) are cut out of the same tree. 101 Certain frames are different: for example, the frames for the Van Eyck brothers’ altarpieces in Ghent, with their rough mouldings, may have been made in Ghent; the support and frame of the Portrait of Margaret van Eyck and their decoration, which are different in many ways from other Eyckian frames, raise questions. The link between the Eyckian paintings and the world of books may be stronger than previously suspected. Not only do some paintings assume an illusory bookform, as does the Louvre Diptych , but it can also be suggested that the decorative marbled reverses, – a frequent feature in Eyckian paintings – were inspired by marbled paper used through the centuries in bookbinding.