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

MATERIALS AND MEN 9 46. Although overpainted in the 19th century, this curious figure probably dates from the 15th or 16th century, making it the oldest surviving example of a genre that continued into the 17th and 18th centuries. We examined this work in 1976. Devliegher 1979, 166-167. 47. On a base dating from the 19th century, an inscription indicates that the work was restored in 1609. Antonio de Succa drew the silhouette in pen and wash in 1615 in his Memorials . Comblen-Sonkes and Van den Bergen-Pantens 1977, 1: 244; Ibid. 2: f°89r°. 48. Fletcher 1984, 8-9. 49. Vandevivere 1985. 50. Ibid., 67. 51. Marette 1961, 147-149. 52. Trizna 1976. (oak, H. 245 cm, which with his sword reaches 268 cm), 46 conserved in St Salvator’s Cathedral in Bruges. 47 John Fletcher notes that both Dürer and Holbein the Younger used oak for the work done by them in the Netherlands, while in their home country, these artists adopted the woods in use there. 48 Dürer, during his stay in Venice in 1505-1506, also painted on poplar, thus conforming to Italian use. The supports used by Juan de Flandes have also attracted attention. The catalogue of an exhibition dedicated to this artist 49 reports – apart from the supports of works done with other artists – the following species: oak (one case), pine (three cases), lime (one case) and walnut (one case). The author of the catalogue sees in the use of these various species a further argument for the thesis of the “progressive Hispanicization” of the artist. 50 The use of woods and the covering of the surface with canvas before applying the ground, as is seen particularly in the panels of the Retablo Mayor of the Cathedral of Palencia, correspond rather to Spanish use. 51 From the foregoing, it has been concluded that itinerant artists complied with local practice. This statement should probably be qualified. Michel Sittow, a painter from the Hanseatic City of Reval on the Baltic, undertook his apprenticeship in Bruges. Though an itinerant artist, working in Spain, England, Reval and the Netherlands before returning to Spain, he remained faithful to oak supports. In the service of Isabella of Castile in Spain from 1492 to 1504, he collaborated with Juan de Flandes and painted in 1500-1501 on an oak panel the Assumption (Washington, National Gallery of Art, inv. no. 1965.1.1). The six works of certain attribution and three works of probable attribution are all on oak panels . 52 A preference for the use of oak supports, where choice was possible, seems to have existed alongside the adoption of locally- used species. In conclusion, for a total of roughly 550 works painted on wood supports for the Southern Netherlands in the 15th and 16th centuries (162 in this study, 66 in Marette 1961, more than 325 published by the Centre for the Study of the Flemish Primitives), the wood used has always been oak with the exception of four or five cases at most, not counting works executed abroad on supports that conform to local practice. Marette believed that painters from the 12th to the 16th centuries used exclusively local wood, basing this conclusion on the perfect correspondence between the forest