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

BRUGES, GROENINGE MUSEUM 465 23. Jacob van den Coornhuuse, Last Judgement , 1578 (monogrammed to the bottom right and dated 1578 on the lower step, to the bottom left of the painting) Inv. no. 0000.GRO0154.I Provenance: commissioned for the Council Chamber of the Provostry. Was in the 17th century in the Council Chamber of the new Provostry, where it probably remained until the French Revolution. It then passed through various hands before being purchased by the City of Bruges in 1876 and entrusted to the Academy Museum in 1878. Bibliography: De Vos 1982, 207-209. Panel: six boards, butt-joined vertically (with dowels?). Two wooden tie-bars are inserted into the support. They are trapezoidal in shape, tapering and inserted mid- depth into the support in opposite directions. The joins are strengthened by modern buttons. Barbe and unpainted edge on the front of the panel tell us that this was painted in the frame. The tapering tie-bars, embedded into the panel in opposite directions, are not fixed to the frame as in the earliest examples of this practice. Their sole function, in the present case, is to strengthen the large panel. Frame: rebated. The upper rail is a single piece of wood. The frame is held together with slotted joints, which are pegged and strengthened with recent angle-plates at the back, mitred at the front, cut square at the back. There is no trace in the lower rail of the frame being supported on a base. There are two holes at the top of the curved top (holding, not suspension holes). The sides do not exhibit any traces of hinges. The polychromy has been redone. Cleaning tests have established that the black covering of the flat part of the frame covers the original gilded polychromy, with a text painted in black. This text was mentioned in an 1824 inventory as being the same as the one on the frame of the Last Judgement by Jan Provoost. The decision to cover up the original polychromy was therefore taken after that date.