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

279 Catalogue This catalogue contains the observations made from the inspection of 164 works dating from the late 14th to the early 17th centuries, on wood or canvas supports. These observations were undertaken between 1983 and 1987 for a PhD thesis, and published in 1989. The choice of works at the time was largely determined by their accessibility, which explains why very nearly all the works treated in this catalogue are conserved in Belgium. To identify the joints used in assembling the different elements of a frame, it is necessary to observe the front, the back and the sides. Work in museum reserves was particularly fruitful in this regard. This was the case for the reserves of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, those of the Groeninge Museum of Bruges and of the St John’s Hospital in the same city. In other museums (Ghent, Leuven, Tournai) it was possible to examine the backs of the paintings in the exhibition rooms themselves. At the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, this was possible on days when the museums were closed to the public, except for some works attached to the walls. In the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, the curators permitted us to observe the backs of their valuable works, as did those of the Mayer van den Bergh Museum in the same city. There were limits to the observation of certain works: dimensions, weight, the fact of being placed on a pedestal, the passing tourists, security devices, the reduced lighting conditions required for proper conservation. A portable light source and a mirror held at arm’s length overcame some obstacles. At times a thin veil of engrained dust-which we could not remove-proved an insurmountable obstacle to the observation of the upper portion of a frame. To examine the large works, folding ladders were made available to us, but in spite of this it was not always possible to describe in detail the construction of certain of these paintings. At times we were assailed by doubts as to the original nature of some frames, especially at the sight of the polychromy or lack thereof. In most cases this doubt dissipated with observation of the backs of the frames which had been spared the often bold transformations. Many old frames are hidden under modern polychromy. We were unable to undertake the examination with the microscope needed for the accurate observation of polychromies. The systematic study of the polychromies remains therefore to be done. We also noted in passing the inscriptions and other texts, for example when we recognized a date or an artist’s name, but the systematic recording and formal criticism of the texts is another task still to be undertaken.