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

CARVED AND PAINTED DECORATION 93 17. Wolfe 1990, 5. 18. Haemmerle 1977, 44; Berthier 1982, 605-620. Certain painted diptychs produced to resemble books exhibit marbled front and back covers, as will innumerable books in the 17th and 18th centuries (fig. 50). We do not know when marbled paper was first used in books, but the worlds of paintings and books have long been very close. Both bookbinders and diptych painters were fascinated by marbling. Fig. 50. a. Jan van Eyck (follower), Diptych with the Virgin and Child and St John the Baptist , c. 1440 (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. R.F. 38-22). Reconstitution of the original appearance based on the remains of the original polychromy under the actual overpainting and on the X-radiograph. b. 17th- and 18th-century books. We have mentioned this in connection with the Eyckian works . This taste for marbling is so much part of our culture that we still find traces of it in everyday objects sold today, like certain green or grey folders specked with dark spots. Marbled paper may have provided the original inspiration for the marbling of painting frames in northern medieval Europe. The history of marbled paper was one of continuous success between the 10th century, when it was first manufactured in China, 17 and the end of the 19th century, when its production ceased in most European countries. Soon after China, Japan and Corea made their own marbled paper. In Japan examples from the 12th century survive, with the use of marbled paper an exclusive privilege of the emperor and the nobility until the 16th century. The complex techniques of paper marbling slowly made their way westwards. It was produced in Turkestan in the 13th century, and in Samarkand and Herat in the early decades of the 14th century. The techniques had long been practiced in Persia before they were transmitted to Turkey, probably – though we cannot be certain – in the 15th century. 18 In the Ottoman empire marbled paper was a much appreciated support for calligraphed a b