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

CHAPTER X 258 The frames and panels are in oak. The various elements of the panels are butt-joined, with reinforcing keys, each pierced with two pegs, one on either side of the joint, perpendicular to and flush with the surface of the painting. Each panel is slotted into a grooved frame. The joinery was completed before the painter set to work. The original hinges and ironwork have been conserved. There has been restoration work, mainly on the reverse, in the form of various pieces of wood (buttons and laths) and a small number of metallic reinforcements. These restorations are shaded on the diagram of the reverse (fig. 130). The reinforcement that we observed at the back of the Trinity in 1986 was lightened in 2012. Two small Plexiglass plates are fixed to the corners of this frame on the reverse, revealing the construction of one stile. We see there the tenon, but also a section cut out at the top and another at the bottom, suggesting that the Trinity had a system of vertically sliding latches fixing the inner frame to the carved outer frame which is no longer extant. On the front of the frame of the Trinity we see circular traces left by little hooks, a little above the junction with the lateral parts. The Trinity was attached to the carved outer frame and to the box. Fig. 129. Reverse of the centre part and the two flanking parts.