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

GHENT, CITY MUSEUM 599 2. Antwerp Anonymous (after Pieter Coecke van Aelst), Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi . Open: wings: Adoration of the Shepherds ; Circumcision , c. 1520 Inv. no. A 59-4 Provenance: purchased in 1959 from the Brussels Sequestration Department. Bibliography: De Schryver and Van de Velde 1972, 189, no. 144. See another version of this composition: Leuven, MM , no. 6. Panels: central panel: three vertically butt-joined boards, one narrow and placed in the centre. The central panel has been bevelled and painted outside the frame. It is 0.5 cm thick at the edge. Frames: central frame rebated; wing frames grooved, and then modified to extract the panels. The joints are slotted joints, cut square on the outsides of the wings and on the reverse of the central panel, and mitred on the insides. The frame of the central panel is considerably thicker than those of the wings. On the outside of the wings: traces of a closing system which has since disappeared. Outside, the wings were painted black on a very thin ground.