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

CARVED AND PAINTED DECORATION 95 26. The technical aspects of the marbling on the reverse of Margaret van Eyck were described in more details during the March 1998 conference Recognizing van Eyck in the National Gallery of London and in the ensuing publication. Verougstraete and Van Schoute 2000, 107-117. 27. Cockx-Indestege et al. 1994, 35. In Samarkand and Herat in the beginning of the 16th century, sheets of paper were decorated with marbled frames, the centre of the sheet being blocked out by a solid stencil and the reserve created in this way left open for writing. This system was also very popular in the Arabic world, for framing miniatures in manuscripts. Turks used marbled paper for covering booklets. Marbled paper was polished to present a beautiful gloss. The uses of marbled paper as a frame for a miniature, as a cover for books or boxes, as support for texts and writing and so on present similarities to what is seen in panel painting. A link between marbling on paper and marbling on panel painting can reasonably be put forward. 26 Fig. 51. Marblings looking like porphyry. a. Jan van Eyck, back of Portrait of Margaret van Eyck , 1439 (Bruges, GM , no. 2 ). b. Jan Provoost, Diptych with Christ Carrying the Cross and Portrait of a Friar Minor , back of Christ, 1522 (Bruges, SJH , no. 11 ). c. Patterns of the stains, as seen under the microscope in the Portrait of Margaret . Marbling was a difficult art and recipes were long kept secret. The oldest manual is Chinese, written by Su-I-Chien in the 10th century. Marbling techniques in panel painting are sometimes astonishingly similar to one of the numerous techniques described in manuals for marbled papers. The marbling on the reverse of the Portrait of Margaret van Eyck , that we could observe with the microscope, much resembles the technique named in English as “spatter paper” or “sprinkled paper”; in French as “papier jaspé” or “papier moucheté”, in Dutch as “sprenkelmarmer” or “spatmarmer”, in German as “gesprenkeltes Papier” and in Italian as “carta a spruzo” (fig. 51c). 27 a b c