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

CARVED AND PAINTED DECORATION 87 5. Campbell 1991, 65. 6. Dülberg 1990, 186-187, 272-253. 7. Dülberg 1990, 229; Campbell 1991, 66. 8. Campbell 1991, 67. 9. Dülberg 1990, 230. 10. Martens and Peeters 2006, 35-54. city halls, brotherhood and guild meeting places, maybe castles), some paintings were attached to the walls in the 15th century, whereas this seems not to have been often the case in private houses. Exceptionally, in interiors, a painting hung from a chain to enable someone to turn it and display its reverse. 5 Some paintings, generally small diptychs, hung over the curtains of a bed or a praying stool, as is represented in miniatures. In the 15th century, many paintings were not intended for permanent display. Often protected by wings, most paintings in private houses were stored in boxes or cases, wrapped in cloth or paper and put away in cupboards and trunks. Dülberg describes circular German paintings with lids. 6 Some other German paintings had draw-lids. 7 A mirror could also be used as a cover. 8 Those fragile bags and boxes were not preserved, with exception of a very rare example: the Diptych of King René and Jeanne de Laval by Nicolas Froment has retained its original fabric bag, c. 1476 (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. R.F. 665). 9 Paintings created for the purpose of being wrapped for storage, always had their backs painted. Towards the end of the 15th century, paintings with a Virgin and Child, for example, or series of portraits, were exposed for permanent viewing. Portrait galleries of some sort seem to have existed before. In the 16th century the growing demand for paintings to decorate Antwerp houses is well documented. 10 2. Colour and decoration: development over time Preferences for one colour or another have changed over time. Bright colours, red in particular, were popular in the 14th and early 15th centuries. Black came into fashion in the mid-15th century and remained popular from then on, in many cases accompanying a gilded moulding around the painting. The few original frames from the late 14th century still in existence demonstrate a marked taste for bright colours. Vermilion covered with madder lake was adopted to paint in trompe-l’œil the frames of The Walcourt Annunciation and Visitation (Namur, PMAA , no. 1 ) (fig. 43).