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

ASSEMBLY OF PANEL AND FRAME 69 Parchment strips are glued onto joins and cracks in The Walcourt Annunciation and Visitation (fig. 32a). In this work also, little squares of parchment, arranged in lozenge patterns, cover pegs fixing a frame to the reverse (fig. 32b). This lozenge pattern is not arbitrary, but is intended to minimize the effects of wood shrinkage on the parchment. Fig. 32. a. Strip of parchment covering a split. b. Little square of parchment, arranged in lozenge pattern (between the two hands), covering a peg. Anonymous, fragments of wings known as The Walcourt Annunciation and Visitation , late 14th century (Namur, PMAA, no. 1 ). Despite the thinking that often presided at the positioning of the parchment, the results were not good and the system was abandoned. It is exceptionally, and archaically, that it is found on a join, as on the back of a wing sometimes attributed to Jan Rombouts, The Third Appearance of Christ (Leuven, MM , no. 4 ). Vegetable or animal fibres may cover the joins of a panel and a frame. Fibres are glued to the front panel, on the joins, in the Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele by Jan van Eyck (Bruges, GM , no. 1 ). The joints of the frame of the same work were also covered with fibres (fig. 33). a b