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

Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium 595 33. Anonymous, Presumed Portrait of the architect Carnot Inv. no. 6223 Provenance: gift of the widow of François Joly in memory of her husband who owned other paintings by Van der Veken. Bibliography: Verougstraete et al. 2004, 78-85. The portrait is painted on top of a very degraded work, as shown in the X-radiograph. The underlying composition is no longer recognizable. The clumsy execution of the surface portrait places it at the beginning of Jef Van der Veken’s (1872-1964) career, when he simulated the age of paintings using false patina, wear, soiling, and cracks painted or drawn in pen. We have here an example of the use of an old support and frame to produce a pastiche or a fake. Panel: (26 × 20.5 cm) Peter Klein has undertaken a dendrochronological study of the panel (27 September 2004). The oak comes from the Baltic (Poland). The terminus post quem for the use of the boards to produce the support is 1479 at the earliest, but more likely 1485. Both boards are butt joined (left to right, measured from the front: 15.3 and 6.3 cm across). A tongue glued to the sides adapts the panel to the frame, while evoking an unpainted edge. The initial board of the work may have been reduced in size. Frame: (44.5 × 39 cm) old, adapted to the dimensions of the support starting from a larger authentic old frame. The moulding (flat field between two bodies of moulding) and the decoration of gilt foliage on a black background are common in the 16th century. The decoration has in part been redone, as necessitated by the reducing of the old frame. Left: original half-lap joints, mitred at the front, cut square at the back, pegged. The joints and pegging have been repeated identically on the right, after reducing the initial size of the frame. The opening has been further reduced by means of a narrow modern frame placed inside the rebate of the other frame.