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

BRUGES, GROENINGE MUSEUM 417 2. Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Margaret van Eyck , 1439 Inv. no. 0000.GRO0162.I Provenance: mentioned by Descamps in 1769 as preserved in the archives of the Corporation of Painters. The painting escaped the requisition by the French in 1794. It was then sold by the dean of the corporation to Pieter van Lede who donated it in 1808 to the Bruges Academy. Bibliography: De Vos 1982, 225-227; Janssens de Bisthoven 1983, 175-193, pl. CXCIX-CCV . Panel: a single board, 0.8 cm thick, the back is marbled: dark layer specked with red (imitation porphyry?), generally considered original. The technique adopted for this marbling – patches of red or ochre colour projected in various ways and held between various layers of varnish or lacquer – should be compared with the technique used by Van Eyck for other marbling, for example on the St Barbara (Antwerp, RMFA , no. 2 ). Be this as it may, the marbling is striking with its very realistic evocation of the material and its perfect state of conservation without cracks, while the polychromy of the frame, on the other hand, exhibits degradations. Margaret ’s panel and frame are also dealt with in the Chapter X on the frames and supports of some Eyckian paintings . Frame: mortise and tenon, pegged in the two upper corners, but not in the lower ones (?). The joint is cut square front and back. The 2.7 cm thick frame has the same profile at the front and back. The square cut of the joints tells us the moulding was probably cut by hand and not with a moulding plane. We note the irregular cutting of the lower moulding, probably due to the tool following the irregular grain of the wood. Nevertheless, the contrast between this moulding and that of the much more refined frames of other Van Eyck paintings, like those of St Barbara (Antwerp, RMFA , no. 2 ), or of the Virgin at the Fountain (Antwerp, RMFA , no. 3 ), is striking. The polychromy is original on the front: grey-beige, marbled with dark brown. A horizontal brown line emphasizes the straight cut of the joint. On the back: the dark colour on the frame does not seem original.