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

MATERIALS AND MEN 7 32. “daghelix vele fauten ende gebreken gebeuren int maken vanden autaertafelen ende andere stucken.” Quoted from Monballieu 1966, 52. 33. Verougstraete-Marcq 1988, 9-21. 34. Marette 1961, 62. 35. Ibid., 63. depending on its size (two or four wings). The wing panels should be lighter where there are four wings instead of two. Larger wings have thicker panels than small ones. The frames of the wings themselves are to be narrower that the frames of the central part (we have observed this to be almost general use). To facilitate the understanding of this ordinance, we give a loose translation, transposing the old measurements of foot and inch into the metric system (the Antwerp foot is 28.68 cm, divided into 11 inches): “in the same way, if the carver or painter wants to make a case for an altarpiece with a maximum width of 200.7 cm, he will make the frames and side walls 3.9 cm thick. If the altarpiece has four wings, the wing panels will be 0.87 cm thick, and where there are two wings only, 1.3 cm thick. The back of the altarpiece [or of the panel?] will also be 1.3 cm thick; it will be strengthened in the centre at the back with a reinforcing bar, under pain of a fine of one old ecu, payable as stated previously. For anyone wishing to make a case larger than 200.7 cm, the frame will also be 5.22 cm. The back of the case [or panel?] will be 1.96 cm with two reinforcing bars, one in the centre and one in the narrower (upper?) part. The frames of the wings will be 5.9 cm wide and 3.9 cm thick. The panels of the wings will be 1.3 cm thick. This applies therefore for a case of more than 200.7 cm and having four wings. Where the case has only two wings, the panels will be 1.96 cm thick, under pain of a fine as before.” The ordinance concludes by stating that many errors are committed daily in the manufacture of altarpieces and other items. 32 B. Choice and provenance of the wood In the great majority of cases, the wood used is oak. Only rare works escape this almost universal rule. Oak was already adopted for pre-Eyckian works, though the small number of these works does not allow us to conclude that oak was the only wood used. A dismantled wing of this period, a Coronation of the Virgin with an Annunciation on the outside (Antwerp, RMFA , no. 1 ) is painted on softwood, but it is not certain that this work was produced in the Netherlands. 33 Out of sixty-six works on wood from the Southern Netherlands in the 15th and 16th centuries, Jacqueline Marette mentions as an exception to the use of oak, three works on walnut, a wood used south of the Loire: The St John Altarpiece (Bruges, SJH , no. 1 ), the Donor in Prayer under the Protection of St John the Baptist (Paris, Louvre, inv. nos. 393 and 394) and a late 14th century panel: Scenes from the Life of the Virgin (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. no. 4883). 34 In the latter case, the use of walnut could be explained by the fact that it was, according to the author, an item of imported furniture that was then painted on site. 35 The author notes that the first four