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

CARVED AND PAINTED DECORATION 89 11. Huvenne 1984, 170-176. Other Bruges frames of the end of the century are decorated in the same way, but from the early 16th century, the majority of polychromies are limited to an alternation of gold close to the painting and black (or less often brown) on the outside (fig. 45a). This alternation can become a double one (gold, black (brown), gold, black (brown)), for example in the frames having flat faces between two bodies of mouldings (fig. 45b). Fig. 45. Single and double alternation gold-black. a. Hans Memling, Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove , 1487 (Bruges, SJH , no. 5 ). b. Brussels Anonymous, wing with the Portrait of the Donatrix Jacomijne Huioels , 1547 (Brussels, RMFAB , no. 25 ). We find various examples in the work of Pieter Pourbus, particularly in the Hemelsdale Polyptych , 1564 (Bruges, St Giles’ Church). 11 Where marbling remains, it decorates the closed wings (after Hieronymus Bosch, Triptych of Job , Bruges, GM, no. 14 ) (fig. 48c), but more often the outside frames are black with gilded inclined sills (Goossen van der Weyden, Triptych of Abbot Antonius Tsgrooten , 1507, Antwerp, RMFA , no. 8 ). A more decorative trend can be seen in those frames where the face is decorated with a floral pattern. The little flowers can be colourful and realistic, sometimes gilded and gathered into festoons (Hans Memling (follower), Virgin and Child , late 15th/early 16th century, Bruges, GM , no. 7 ). The floral decoration is sometimes stylized. We find a stylized decoration, applied using a stencil, in madder lake on a gold background, on the frame of a triptych by Ambrosius Benson (fig. 46a). In other settings a similar stylized floral decoration is executed in gilt on a black or brown background. The Claeissens family in Bruges and the Francken group in Antwerp produced many decorated frames of this kind (fig. 46b). Some frames are decorated with geometric patterns, sometimes continuous, at other times discontinuous that depart from the floral model and are more reminiscent of metalworking (fig. 46c). a b