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

CHAPTER II 68 26. Hollanders-Favart et al. 1975a, 431. The joiners were concerned to allow the panel a certain amount of play within the frame. The groove is slightly deeper than the tongue so as to leave a certain play for the panel. It is also deep enough to ensure that, with the shrinkage of the wood, the tongue does not come out of the groove, but not too deep, which would weaken the cheeks of the groove. In rare cases we have observed pegging to limit the play of the panel within the frame. The pegs were inserted into the side of the frame, parallel with the plane of the painting, against which they butted (Anonymous, Life of the Magdalen , Zoutleeuw, St Leonard’s Church). 26 In a 16th century painting after Hieronymus Bosch, a Descent into Hell (Dinant, Private Collection), pegs inserted for the same purpose crossed the frame perpendicularly to the plane of the painting. 5. Rebated frames (fig. 29: 4) The rebated frame appeared before the 1520s, probably originally for practical reasons such as the organization of work and its distribution between the joiner and the painter, or handling problems, especially for large-format works. The use of rebating became generalized in the middle of the 16th century and is still in use today. The panel rests against the rebate cut into the inner edge of the frame, and is held variously by wooden pegs, or (most often) forged nails. The central panel of the Triptych of the Last Judgement by Bernard van Orley, 1518-1525 (Antwerp, RMFA , no. 10 ) was painted outside the frame, which is rebated. On the other hand, the central panel of the Triptych of the Virtue of Patience by the same artist, 1521 (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. no. 1822) has a barbe and unpainted edges and was therefore painted in the frame (the original frame is lost). Many times small indents were made in the support to house the original dowels or nails. The correspondence of notches and holes on the frame and the panel is a good indicator of original nature of the framing system. Panels have frequently been extracted from grooved frames to be restored. For this the back cheek of the groove was generally sawn away. In this way many originally grooved frames have been converted into rebated frames at the restoration stage. F. Parchment, fibre and canvas reinforcements Reinforcements are encountered in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. After then they are exceptional and archaic.