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

710 Author’s Curriculum Vitae Hélène Verougstraete is professor emerita of the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL) and of its sister university, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KULeuven). After an internship in restoration of works of art at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels, she devoted her PhD in Art History (1987) to the frames and supports of 15th- and 16th-century paintings in the southern Netherlands. She went on to teach mediaeval art and the technical examination of easel painting, and directed the Laboratoire d’étude des œuvres d’art (UCL). Between 1975 and 2006 she co-organized with Roger Van Schoute the biennial and triennial Symposium for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Paintings and the publication of the ensuing acts (Volumes I to XVI). Besides the great Flemish Primitives, Bruegel has been her favourite artist. The signature of Bruegel the Elder and a date (1557) found on a tondo with a morality “The drunkard pushed into the pigsty” (“t Varcken moet in’t kot”) have expanded the catalogue of Bruegel the Elder (with Roger Van Schoute); this work is today in a Private Collection. Hélène Verougstraete has published a detailed study of the iconography of the Triumph of Death by the Bruegel dynasty (1997, 1999), noting in the same artists the use of colours for giving meaning to moralizing works (2009). With her team at the UCL she prepared the catalogue Restaurateurs ou Faussaires des Primitifs Flamands / Fake or not Fake. Het verhaal van de restauratie van de Vlaamse Primitieven for the exhibition of abusive restorations, especially those of Jef Van der Veken, which was held at the Groeninge Museum in Bruges from November 2004 to February 2005.