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

ANTWERP, ROYAL MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS 331 4. Master of the St Ursula Legend, Diptych of the Virgin and Child and Three Donors . Closed: Eucharistic Motif and Crucifix , 1486 Inv. nos. 5004-5004bis Provenance: Charles Fairfax Murray Collection, London. Placed on sale in 1914 in Paris. Acquired in Paris by Kleinberger, with the help of Artibus patriae thanks to the Oscar Nottebohm bequest. Bibliography: Vandenbroeck 1985, 91-93; Hand et al. 2006, 164-165, 290-291, 318. Panels and frames: each part of the diptych consists of a single board. Integral frame in each case. A frame is also carved on the outside, consisting of a flat edge and a narrow inclined sill. In the catalogue Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych , Hand et al. have undertaken a detailed study of the diptych, and describe the polychroming as follows: “on the left wing the inner frame was gilded over a layer of yellow-tan paint, and the outer frame over red and black marbling. The frame of the right wing, too, was initially painted: the inner elements reddish and the outer parts blackish. X-radiography revealed that when the right-wing frame was gilded, all of the sitters’ ages were replaced with numerals of a simpler type. The original numeral had long swirling strokes like those still visible in the inscribed date at the top. A mistake was made in the age of the man, however, who would have been fifty rather than thirty years old. The original numerals, most likely executed in mordant gilding on the painted frame, can still be seen under raking light […]. The reverses of both panels were originally marbled.” (Hand et al. 2006, 164-165) The authors note the corrections and changes in the composition which seem to point to the diptych having been produced from a pre-existing painting of the Virgin and Child. This diptych opens from left to right