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

CHAPTER X 278 The pegging of frames directly onto the panels was a common practice, which simplified the joinery; the panel is then flat on the reverse. In case of a wing the painter would eventually paint a trompe-l’œil frame. The system encountered here, with frames applied both to the front and reverse, is unusual. The normal process, where a frame was desired on both the inside and the outside of a wing, was to use a regular grooved frame. The abundant and unnecessary pegging in the wings of the Haywain looks like clumsy joinery. The joinery seems to come from a secondary centre, and not one of the main centres where better quality pieces were made, among which one can certainly include the support of the Epiphany . The polychromy, partially redone, is black on the outside of the altarpiece and black and gold inside.