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

Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium 517 3. Master of 1473, Jan de Witte Triptych . Open: centre: Virgin and Child ; wings: Donor Jan de Witte (1443-1486/87); Donatrix Maria Hoose (1457-before 1518), 1473 (dated on the inclined sill of the central panel) Inv. no. 7007 Provenance: before 1856: M. Steyaert-Vanden Bussche Collection, Bruges. 19 August 1856: auctioned at the M. Steyaert-Vanden Bussche Sale, Brussels, Galerie Henri Le Roy. Before 1862: G.J.P. Weyer Collection, Cologne. 25 August 1862: purchased by C. Ruhl, Cologne at the G.J.P. Weyer Sale, Cologne. 1876: purchased by Prince Karl-Anton von Hohenzollern at sale C. Ruhl Collection. 1876-1928: Karl-Anton, Leopold and Wilhelm von Hohenzollern Collection, Sigmaringen. 1929: A.S. Drey Galleries, New York. 1929-1949: S.R. Guggenheim Collection, New York. 1949-1960: S.R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. 27 June 1962: purchased by art dealer Robert Finck, Brussels at the S.R. Guggenheim Sale, London, Sotheby’s. 1963: purchased from art dealer R. Finck, Brussels. Bibliography: Pauwels 1984, 353; Fransen and Syfer-d’Olne 2006, 392-413. Panels: each of the three panels consists of two oak boards, butt-joined and reinforced with dowels. The panels were painted in the frames. They have been thinned back to 0.6 cm and cradled. Dendrochronological analysis carried out in 2002 by Pascale Fraiture determined that the boards are of Baltic origin, near-radially cut with the exception of one board in the left wing. The tree cannot have been felled before 1459. The interval of fourteen years between 1459 and the date of 1473 inscribed on the centre rail includes an unknown number of years for missing sapwood rings, and possibly also heartwood rings, and the drying time necessary for the wood. Frames: originally grooved; the back lips of the grooves were removed to extract the panels for cradling. Cracks in the upper rails have required the insertion of pieces of wood at the back. The upper pieces are joined to the stiles with various end-to-end joints (half-lap, V-groove, tenon and mortise or butt joint?). The bottom joints are mortise and tenon, in each case reinforced with a single peg. The hinges have been renewed. A photograph of the triptych taken in 1960 shows two protruding hinges to the right, enabling the wing with the Donatrix to be closed on top of the other one. The polychromy has been overpainted. The overpainting has been removed on the lower rails which bear the inscriptions.