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

CHAPTER IV 84 The inclined sill is an important component of the mouldings of the old Flemish frames. Viollet le Duc indicates that the inclined sill was adopted in woodwork as far back as the 13th century, for example for the insides of church doors. The inclined sill prevented dust getting trapped. 2 Applied to the lower rail of many frames, it also embodies a sense of perspective. As such it is the normal continuation of the perspective of the depicted ground, landscape or tiled floor. More abstractly, it guides the viewer’s eye towards the centre of the painted composition. Relatively few frames have come down to us with carved decoration. In the course of the 16th century, however, carved decoration underwent a certain development under the influence of the Renaissance. From the late 15th century, the emergence of Gothic colonnettes – a simple mutation of decorative beading – announces this development. The colonnette can be richly decorated (fig. 39a). Independently carved tracery recalls that of carved altarpieces (fig. 39b). 2. Viollet le Duc 1875-1876, 368. Fig. 39. Carved decorations. a. Anonymous, Jesus with Martha and Mary , mid-16th century (Bruges, SJH , no. 17 ). b. Anonymous, Votive Painting with the Intercession of the Virgin and with the Donor, Canon Art van Pyringhen , 1497 (Tongeren, BOL , no. 2 ). Fig. 40. a. Tracery. Dirk Bouts, Justice of Emperor Otto III (Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, inv. nos. 1447 and 1448). b. Corbels (dentils). Anonymous, Coat of Arms with St Gertrude , c. 1500-1549 (Leuven, MM , no. 11 ). Refined tracery is sometimes applied to the panels. Some frames are decorated with “corbels” or “dentils”(fig. 40). a b a b