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

CARVED AND PAINTED DECORATION 91 13. Dhanens 2009, 125. 14. Dülberg 1990, 116-127. 15. Mundy 1977, 4-15. 16. Cämmerer-George 1967, 71; Bauch 1967, 122. In other cases too, one is led to ask whether or not to attach special significance to the use of red, green or other colours; for example when the flat upper side of a book- shaped diptych carries green marbling, and the other flat side red marbling, there seems to be an intended progression from the green colour of waiting and expectation to the red colour of accomplishment. One such work, the Diptych with the Virgin and Child and St John the Baptist , c. 1440, from the workshop of Jan van Eyck (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. R.F. 38-22) is described in the Chapter IX Articulated works with instructions for use . According to Elisabeth Dhanens very old traditions concerning the mystic properties of colours were still alive in the 15th century. The author describes the colours of a no longer extant altarpiece (the Wachtebeke altarpiece , 1431) as mentioned in the archives: “the inside to be in fine gold” (“binnen van finen goude”), while the basic colour of the exterior is described as beautiful red (“scoen roed”). 13 4. Marblings Imitations of marbling are highly decorative, linked possibly with architecture, furniture and domestic objects. But the primary comparison needs rather to be made with the world of books. Similarities in their use as well as in the techniques, support this hypothesis. Indeed, the first marblings on panel painting may be related to the precious oriental marbled papers. As the time passed, the oriental origin of marbling was probably forgotten, and there was a shift towards a more routine execution of the motive after true marble. Dülberg devotes a chapter of her book to marblings on the reverses of portraits. 14 The term “marbling” covers a variety of painted stone and marble imitations. Examples of marbled frames and reverses occur in the Trecento in Italy, on wall and on panel paintings. 15 It has therefore been suggested that marbling initiated in Italy where it had been practiced already in Antiquity. 16 Marbled reverses also occur in Bohemian panel paintings of the 14th century. Marblings seem to have been introduced in the Low Countries in the first third of the 15th century, on frames and reverses of Jan van Eyck’s paintings (Bruges, GM , no. 2 , for example), Robert Campin ( Portrait of a Man , Portrait of a Woman , London, The National Gallery, inv. nos. NG653.1-653.2) and Rogier van der Weyden ( Portrait of a Woman , Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, cat. no. 545D). The closed wings of manyNetherlandish triptychs in the 16th century were decorated with marble imitations (fig. 48).