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

catalogue 428 7. Hans Memling (follower), Virgin and Child , late 15th/early 16th century Inv. no. 0000.GRO1358.I Provenance: sale of the Chantrell Collection, Bruges, 1840 (no. 20). Sale of the Steinmetz Collection, Bruges, 1885 (no. 91). Collection of Baron Houtart (Monceau-sur-Sambre) who donated it to the City of Bruges in 1926. Bibliography: De Vos 1982, 167-168. Panel: single board. Gouge mark on the reverse. The marked difference in colour between the frame and the panel results from a cleaning of the latter. Frames: two superimposed frames. The outer frame is rebated, the elements are assembled with slotted joints and pegged. The joints are mixed-cut to the front and cut square at the back. The hinges in the sides suggest that this second frame was added at a time when the Virgin and Child was integrated into a larger whole, possibly a triptych. The inner frame is grooved, with mortise and tenon joints at the front, tenon shoulder advanced at the front to give mixed cut, cut square on the reverse. Along the upper and lower edges and a small portion of the left hand side, there are traces of a barbe and unpainted edges covered in black colour. This barbe and the unpainted edge suggest the existence originally of a small outer listel, similar to what we see in most of the frames of Memling works conserved in the St John’s Hospital. The very different joinery of the two frames tells us that they were not produced together. A period of at least twenty years must have elapsed between the making of the one and the other. The outer frame has been restored in the museum workshop, disengaging the original polychromy consisting of gilding and red and green marbling. The body of moulding bordering the painting is gilded, and the flat edge is black, decorated with scrolls of gilded foliage, painted with a brush. The gilded scrolls were then corrected with black paint, applied with a brush. This floral motif executed freehand heralds the stencil decorations that the Franckens would make popular in Antwerp and the Claeissens in Bruges, especially during the second half of the 16th century. This could be an early example of this fashion.