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Oxford Art Online

Grove Art OnlineFrame

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Frame.

The role of the frame in the presentation of a picture fulfils some or all of the following functions:

the protection of the painting; its display and physical attachment to the wall; the enhancement of

subject and colour scheme while remaining subordinate to the picture; the definition of the picture’s

perimeter and the focusing of the spectator’s attention on the subject; the provision of an area of

transition between the real world and that of the picture; the creation of harmony with the

surrounding interior decoration; and the isolation of the picture from a distracting background. It

also exists as a pleasing ornamental object in its own right. The picture frame is the medium

through which fine arts are merged with architecture and the decorative arts. Frames, often

themselves works of art, have been designed by artists, architects and ornamentalists, and executed

by highly skilled wood-carvers, gilders and craftsmen. Picture and frame are mutually dependent,

the one incomplete without the other. They were generally conceived as a single stylistic entity, like

the architectural mouldings surrounding frescoes or inset pictures, or a tapestry with its interwoven

border; their fusion was commonplace in the Renaissance, when paintings and relief sculptures

were integrated with architectural frames in wood or marble. Many paintings, however, have been

separated from their original frames. This divorce rate, generally higher in proportion to the age of

the picture, stems from various reasons. Because of the portability of unframed pictures, for

instance, marriage with the frame has always been vulnerable. The act of framing is also a signal of

ownership: pictures were reframed according to the tastes of new owners; to suit a prevailing style

of interior decoration; or into a standard house or gallery frame.

The following survey charts the principal and most regularly used European and American frame

designs and their stylistic development. The variety and interrelationship of patterns are clarified

with diagrams and cross-sections drawn directly from archive photographs of frames containing

their original or contemporary paintings, the majority of which may be seen in public collections.

Captions indicate as accurately as possible frame opening sizes, followed by section width.

See also Display of art and Mirror.

I. Introduction.

II. Italy.

III. France.

IV. Britain.

V. The Netherlands and Belgium.

VI. Germany and Central Europe.

VII. Scandinavia.

VIII. Spain.

IX. USA.

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Frame, §I: Introduction

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Frame, §I: Introduction

I. Introduction.

The types of frames may be broadly defined in three groups, governed by the picture’s purpose,

setting and owner. Ecclesiastical frames generally reflect the architectural style of their settings,

reinforcing Catholic imagery or Protestant austerity. Court frames, commissioned by rulers and

nobility, represent an essential, and long underestimated, component of the arts employed for

propaganda purposes and as a status symbol, expressed through grandeur, luxury and sculptural

magnificence; they may also have pictorial or family emblematic devices emphasizing subject and

ownership. Secular frames, the greatest volume of production for domestic consumption, are often

the standard and most economical ‘pattern book’ versions of court frames; their style and cost

conformed to prevailing interior decoration and to the perceived significance of the painting. Within

these main areas the style of the frame may also depend on the subject-matter of the picture:

religious, mythological, historical, portraiture, genre, landscape, still-life or abstract. Two further

factors determine the frame’s character: whether it is a decorative element coordinating with

contemporary furnishings; or whether it is solely the artist’s responsibility, uncompromised by the

taste of others and aesthetically integrated with the picture. Then it may be designed by the artist or

painted directly on to the canvas, or projected in a trompe l’oeil extension of the picture on to the

frame itself.

1. Form and function.

Viewers seldom ‘see’ the frame when contemplating a picture, and yet it occupies a substantial

proportion of the picture/frame ensemble and, as such, inevitably has a significant peripheral

influence on the painting within. Existing literature makes few references to the way in which the

forms and functions of frames are achieved in their design or to the aesthetic relationship between a

picture and its frame. The subject was summarized by Guggenheim (1897):The form and character

of the frame are governed by the laws of aesthetics and of human sensation. The intention must be

to engender a sense of harmony and to concentrate the beholder’s attention on the painting. A frame

constructed in accordance with a proper understanding of art and science will enliven the painting’s

colours, detach them from their surroundings and unite them into a harmonious and effective whole.

The frame and its functions can be assessed in terms of three fundamental and interrelated factors:

overall shape or design, ornamentation and finish. The four component sides of the frame isolate the

picture from the wall to a degree according to their scale and width. Its cross-section may be a flat

border, a hollow moulding whose real depth enhances the picture’s illusory perspective, or a

bolection moulding projecting the subject forward from the wall surface. The contour of the frame

is often broken by projecting corners and/or centres, as in the cartouches of Louis XIV and 17th-

century Spanish frames and outset corners in the Palladian style, to create a play of diagonal and/or

horizontal and vertical axes across the picture’s composition. These projections, invariably

employed in portrait frames, act as spatial coordinates; their axial geometry reinforces the pictorial

composition and thereby focuses the viewer’s attention on the sitter. At the same time this external

contour, contrasting with the interior rectangle, assumes a distinctive and visible pattern on the wall.

The elevations of virtually all frames share the common basic features of a narrow moulding

adjacent to and delineating the boundary of the picture, echoed by another moulding nearest the

wall and divided by a broader space between. The decoration of these surfaces determines the

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character and style of the frame and has been achieved over the centuries in countless ways, from

the modest to the magnificent. Indeed the history of frames may be seen as a survey of the use of

ornament throughout the ages, skilfully handled by designers to enhance and focus the subject

without distraction.

In general there is a subtle balance and counterplay between mouldings and their decoration. The

innermost moulding, if decorated, is complemented by an adjacent plain frieze or hollow, the latter

being a visual rest from the outer surface, more broadly decorated since further from the picture.

Usually the scale of the painting’s composition and detail is in proportion to that used for the

ornament on the frame, such as the miniaturized techniques of Dutch works with fine ebony ripple

mouldings, or the broader leaves and architectural motifs surrounding the bold draperies and

settings of Baroque figure subjects. A powerful ornamental device employed to draw attention

inwards is the use of a rhythmical series of raked lobing, usually running from centres to corners,

known as gadrooning. Common in Mannerist and Baroque frames, this motif suggests a 360° sweep

of lines radiating to and from the subject.

The third essential characteristic of the frame, as in all decorative art objects, is the colour and

texture of its finish. The vast majority of frames are gilded or parcel-gilt; others are polychrome or

of plain polished wood. From the earliest times gold has been employed in a multitude of ways to

enhance the frame and therefore its content. Its glowing, reflective properties have endowed the

frame with a special significance, literally highlighting the picture it contains as well as

harmonizing with surrounding furnishings. Even more than the frame’s form, the gilt finish

uniquely isolates a work of art. Accustomed to constant, flat electric lighting, we tend to overlook

the fact that paintings have been viewed for centuries by flickering candlelight. In the vast evening

gloom of cathedrals and churches, altarpieces would seem to be surrounded by a pulsing ‘halo’ of

light, and in palatial interiors or on domestic overmantels gilded frames were strong focal points

regardless of the aesthetic merits of their pictures. Paintings on the four walls of parade rooms and

galleries far outnumbered the furniture on the floor, and their impact was vastly enhanced by their

gilded finish. Similarly, polychrome and parcel-gilt finishes were employed to great effect by

medieval, Renaissance and Baroque decorators in Catholic countries. Church and court interiors

were ablaze with colour, and frames were richly painted to coordinate simultaneously with their

surroundings and to accentuate their pictures’ colour schemes. Colour in frames heightened

dramatic effect: painted and polychrome mouldings with flashing gold corners and centres animated

portraits and accentuated the chiaroscuro drama within Spanish and Italian subjects.

The visual contrasts inherent in Classical architectural ornament, through its deployment of

mouldings and enrichments, depended on an understanding of the properties of light. All those

involved in the design of frames, especially architects, were skilled in the disposition and

ornamentation of mouldings, as well as the interplay of their surface textures and varied finishes.

The effectiveness of undecorated plain moulded frames depended on a careful juxtaposition of

forms from the repertory of Classical mouldings to create a sequence of linear rectangles. From

whatever viewpoint, there would then always be a series of facets whose gilded surface directed

light. Paintings carrying deep, hollow profile frames would gain added luminosity by the light

reflected on to them from the inside upper surfaces of the scotia.

The most sophisticated understanding and exploitation of the reflective possibilities of gold leaf are

seen in French Baroque and Rococo frames, concurrent with Italian and English variants. Jean

Berain I, Daniel Marot I and Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, among others, designed sequences of

ornament—shells, foliage and flowers linked by strapwork (see fig.)—to be carved and recut in the

gesso in low relief against a background of textures: cross-hatching, punchwork and sanded and

plain surfaces. All these components, when gilded, the raised areas burnished and contrasting with

matt gold grounds (as in furniture mounts), created a complex orchestration of light that mirrored

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the paintings’ broad or fine passages of brushwork, as well as ensuring that the frame was a

decorative work of art in its own right, on a par with surrounding objets d’art.

The importance of the play of light on smooth and patterned surfaces governed the design of ebony

and ebonized frames made by northern European cabinetmakers. Devoid of gold leaf or paint, and

excepting examples veneered with tortoiseshell and luxury inlays, the aesthetic effect of such

frames depended solely on their proportions, profile and a series of plain or finely decorated

rectilinear mouldings that caught and fragmented the light. This manipulation of light draws

attention to the subject, whose colour scheme is also optically enhanced by the neutral surroundings

of its black frame.

2. Stylistic overview.

Paintings and relief carvings have had borders from an early period—although this is a

sophisticated development, defining the permanence and isolation of the image in contrast to the

apparent transience of, for example, cave paintings, layered on a rough, unbounded surface.

Stylized geometric margins appeared first on vase and tomb paintings between 2000 and 1000 BC,

dividing narrative scenes and decorations into horizontal bands. Later, vertical divisions were added

(e.g. Tomb of Sennefer, Luxor; c. 1453–1419 BC), while architectural frames were applied to wall

carvings. A millennium later, in Classical Greece, the borders of mosaics became the organizing

structure of the whole, arranging figures and scenes into an abstract pattern of circles and spandrels,

squares and lozenges. Then, when images—devotional, memorial, didactic or aesthetic—began to

be important in their own right and not merely adjuncts to walls and vases, the framing edge took

on other functions. It became protective and emphatic, as with Byzantine and Carolingian ivory-

carvings for book covers and diptychs, which would have architectural borders to safeguard them,

and to provide focus and depth. On 11th- and 12th-century metalwork altars the frame was also

protective, but, set with gems and other inlay, it symbolized the celestial glory of the Trinity and the

saints. Even the decorative margins of illuminated manuscripts hint at the richness of heaven, reflect

the imagery of the text or set up a tension with the text through grotesque details.

In the 12th and 13th centuries carved wooden frames appeared, the forebears of the modern

movable frame. The first examples, like the engaged borders of the ivories and the metalwork altars,

were in one piece with the painted ground. The panel had its surface lowered by gouging into a

shallow box shape, the surrounding wall of which became the frame. The whole panel was then

covered in gesso and gold leaf, the image being painted on the smooth, sunken surface. Patterns

could then be punched into the gilded gesso to define robes, haloes, the junction of picture and

frame, and the frame itself; so that, apart from the physical unity of both, there was a close identity

of ornament and tone through the work. Larger altarpieces were developed, the painting ground

formed of boards bonded together with transverse supports, dowels and glued linen layers, while

separate mouldings, plain or simply carved, were laminated on to the outer edges to form the frame.

This became increasingly elaborate: painted, carved or punched on its top edge, with auxiliary

mouldings on either side. Finally, in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries, the silhouette of the frame

altered: at first a peaked pentagon imitating a basilica in cross-section, the altarpiece acquired tiers

of painted images, each framed by a complex of inner decorative mouldings to simulate the nave,

aisles, crypt and clerestory of a medieval church. The outer frame gained weight and solidity to

support this edifice, with lateral buttresses in Italy, and was ornamented with architectural features:

pinnacles, crockets, tabernacle work, cresting and niches. National variations of this style developed

throughout Europe. Eventually the increasing size of these great screens, especially in Spain, meant

that they could no longer exist as independent structures; at a height of c. 9 m they had to be applied

to the back wall of the church, often around an apse, as a pictorial panelling in which the frame was

merely a separating device between each scene.

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The cathedral silhouette continued as the form for free-standing altarpieces, but in the early

Renaissance this outer contour became that of a Classical temple: a single frame, usually

rectangular, around a single scene (the sacra conversazione, within a ‘real’ perspectival space). Neri

di Bicci summed up the Renaissance aedicular frame as a squared form with predella, fluted lateral

pilasters and architrave with frieze, cornice and foliage above; but it was soon as ornamental as the

Flamboyant Gothic type, including decorative carving, pastiglia, painting and sgraffito on all

surfaces, and added such features as modillions at the base. The architrave could expand into a

triangular or segmental pediment, or the picture could be continued inside a broken pediment. Italy

led in this evolution and in that of the non-aedicular frame, the cassetta and its variants, movable

wooden case or moulding frames, applied from the 14th century to secular subjects and simpler

religious images. Again, each country developed its own versions of the cassetta, and travel, trade

and political connections all helped to spread framing motifs, mouldings and other influences from

country to country. Renaissance designs, however, spread less quickly than the more florid High

Gothic, Mannerist and Baroque styles.

With the Baroque period and the burgeoning of the great courts of Europe, the mainspring of

patronage transferred from the church to the king, with his need for unparalleled public displays of

wealth and power. The index of artistic leadership also began to move from Rome to Paris, and a

golden age of framemaking began in France. This produced virtuosos of carving, gilding and

recutting of gesso; creators of vast, three-dimensional sculptural frames for ceremonial portraits and

Old Masters, coloured with a range of gold leaf; confectioners of delicate Rococo settings

transcending the medium of carved wood, which were fitted to fantastic interior schemes of fretted

boiseries. English and German carvers produced their own versions of Baroque and Rococo frames;

and in England the Palladian idiom and Grecian style of Robert Adam spawned further integrated

schemes, including ceilings, carpets, furniture and picture frames. Paintings were hardly more under

this regime than elements in an abstract arrangement of objects, anchored to their setting by the

correspondence of their frames with the ornamentations of surrounding objects.

A second wave of classical design in England and France during the late 18th century heralded a

more uniformly international vocabulary of framemaking. With the Napoleonic Empire straddling

Europe, the court style it promulgated could be reproduced both by craftsmen travelling with the

Bonaparte rulers and by local carvers using patterns from Paris. In the early 19th century national

differences tended to vanish, and the processes of the Industrial Revolution further homogenized

and bastardized the art of making frames. Years of war and national debt meant that the carvers

themselves were vanishing, unaffordable luxuries, and the first 40 years of the century were marked

by repetitious, standardized models, cheaply made of composition on a deal base and finished with

ersatz base-metal ‘gilding’. However, artists throughout Europe fought back sporadically by

generating individually designed and carved frames. In the mid-19th century the Pre-Raphaelites

revived old techniques of framemaking and ornamentation, experimented with geometric,

naturalistic and symbolic motifs, and abandoned stock plaster patterns for original designs carved in

oak and other ‘honest’ materials. These practices were strongly influential in Europe, being diffused

through the great international exhibitions of the late 19th century and by the mutual links of artists

in different countries. Symbolist, classically inspired and Art Nouveau frames appeared, sometimes

in striking admixtures. The Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists experimented with simple forms

whose colouring was inspired by recently published scientific studies of light and colour. Creative

framemaking thus came almost wholly under the control of the artists themselves, rather than of

master carvers who could design in their own right.

By the 20th century there were few remnants of original frame craftsmanship left. A handful of

artists persevered in earnest re-creation of archaic methods, but Picasso and Braque subverted this

approach, using the frame as a prop for jeux d’esprits: ropes became the setting for collages; painted

and pasted borders replaced more formal designs; and fragments of frames were drawn around or

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appear in the background of paintings. Surrealists also treated the frame as a visual pun, or, like the

Symbolists, as part of the work itself. There was little similar invention in the late 20th century; as

in the early 19th there were few artists’ frames but great reliance on mass-produced mouldings. The

tendency was also to dispense completely with formal framing or to employ a minimalist technique

of painted battens edging the stretcher, giving nominal protection without affecting the image.

3. Purpose.

While the border was physically part of the work, as in early wall paintings and mosaics, its role

was unquestioned because there could be no division of image and setting. With independent works,

the purpose of the frame was increasingly to focus on and isolate the significant image; with the

creation of large altarpieces, a symbolic dimension was added. The purposes of a Gothic altar frame

are multiple. In the dimly lit churches of Spain and Italy, a gilded setting with faceted columns,

buttresses and canopies could catch light and throw it on to the paintings within. The cathedral

outlines and ever more complex architectural features meanwhile provided an analogue of the

celestial Church, of which the actual church of brick and stone was a faint earthly echo. Such details

as inset jewels, painted ‘stained glass’, gilded angels and the busts of prophets helped to magnify

the glory of the central image, bringing a reflection of heaven to the poorest worshippers. Well-lit

northern European churches did not require so much gold to illuminate their altarpieces, and

although edge mouldings and pictorial grounds are usually gilded, the main frame area is painted in

bands of colour, marbled, patterned, hung with donors’ armorial bearings, inscribed or made

precious with antique cameos and intricate mosaic work. These decorative techniques were again

designed to reveal to the lay worshipper an analogue of Heaven, while inscriptions gave the

educated spectator a further gloss on the painted scene, and coats of arms identified the gift both to

God and to the Church.

Renaissance aediculae similarly create an allegorical pattern of the spiritual temple and imply the

Classical concepts subsumed by Christianity, such as the Platonic ideal. Pure Renaissance examples

are most common in Italy; they provide wide areas of reflective gold to compensate for the loss of

the pictorial gilt ground. Secular Renaissance frames adapted the use of gold to illuminate; they also

deploy complex relief patterns to animate the light given off by the frame. Depth and width are

exploited to support the painted composition; and different types of carved or painted ornament

reflect shapes within the picture. This relationship may reveal an abstract sense of pattern in the

scene, undiscoverable without the original frame.

Besides provision of light and correspondence of pattern, the late medieval and Renaissance frame

has another particular purpose. The early arched settings of small altarpieces suggest a church door

opening on a spiritualized vision; the closeness of simple tabernacle forms and of the cassetta to an

architectural opening reinforces the idea of the frame as a window, giving on to a world whose

space and perspective are connected to those of the spectator. This architectural transition to the

world of the painting is mirrored outwardly by the logical transition to the wall where it hangs, so

there is no dislocation between a Flemish landscape and its embossed leather background or

between a vision of Olympus and a Rococo boudoir. As paintings related less and less to their

surroundings, this interval of passage became proportionately of greater importance. The decoration

of the frame can enhance or modify this effect: in northern trompe l’oeil frames, where the painting

is carried over the wooden moulding (for example a cloth or hand hanging down into the spectator’s

world), the window-like function is intensified, and the image given greater ‘reality’. Carved

architectural ornament, in sympathy with the outer and/or the painted worlds, also achieves a unity

that is aesthetically coherent and that heightens the realism of the work. Ornament can also sustain a

picture against the overwhelming opulence of a Baroque or Mannerist background: Louis XIV and

Louis XV frames hold their own in Versailles, for instance, although it is also true that an over-

elaborate design can itself swamp a small or subtle painting.

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Further functions of setting can be seen in the trophy frame, which annotates and reveals the

subject. Status and interests can be indicated for a portrait; hunting and battle scenes are given

importance by appropriate motifs; and religious symbolism can be expanded. Ownership can also

be proclaimed by the trophy frame, for example by the use of heraldic cresting. The trophy frame is

related in some ways to the livery or gallery frame, which again proclaims ownership and links the

painting as part of a collection to a single house or patron. Where the design is flexible and

unassertive, the livery frame can bind a collection together or unify a roomful of disparate images;

where it is contemporary with the pictures, it will usually harmonize naturally with the composition

and with the wider architectural ‘frame’ of the interior. It can equally fragment this unity, however,

where it is visibly anachronistic or aesthetically at odds with the image.

The idea of frame as window begins to break down when the abstract and decorative purposes of

the picture consciously equal or surpass the representational elements. Arrangements of line and

harmonies of colour, for example in the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, James McNeill Whistler

and Albert Joseph Moore, are picked up in the geometric, carved and painted frames. Here, no

attempt is made to contrive depth or spatial connection through the frame; instead, the choice of

profile and ornament is aimed at flattening the pictorial image and emphasizing its decorative

qualities. Symbolists and Secessionists followed this tendency, which also fed on their production

of posters in flat, linear designs within ornamental borders. The loss of perspectival space within the

picture and the importance given to flat patterning, colour and texture meant that the frame itself

was increasingly unnecessary. Stock plaster mouldings had long been the conventional way to

provide a neutral frame that would not ‘interfere’ with the work, now that any alteration of the

artist’s vision began to be seen as undesirable, and the simultaneous wish for a Ruskinian honesty

of presentation ended ironically in the 20th century in small strip frames, minimalist battens

fastened to the stretcher sides and, finally, in no frame at all. This movement was bolstered by the

architectural trend towards function and away from ornament. This provokes questions as to

whether a frame is unnecessary interference with the artist’s intention; whether this is only so in the

case of abstract work; whether minimalist architecture and pictorial detail require minimal—or

no—framing; whether the architecture itself provides sufficient frame; or whether, as Ortega y

Gasset wrote, all pictures need frames for the image to cohere and avoid dissolution (see 1986 exh.

cat.). Allied issues have been raised in the 20th century: the framing of heterogeneous museum

collections; unsuitably framed individual pictures; institutional interpretation of the artist’s assumed

intentions; and the treatment of collectors’ frames when they have a later date than the paintings

they contain.

4. Framemakers and reframing.

The framemaker’s relationship to artist, architect and patron is as relevant as historical knowledge

of framing; especially the changing status of artist and carver, which illuminates the different values

that have been set on the frame. Medieval altarpieces were executed by an equal team of carver,

gilder and painter, in which the carver’s wage might well be the highest. The painter had little say in

the design, often receiving the carved, gilt panel only after the others had finished with it. Some

early designs by artists do exist for a few works (e.g. by Dürer, Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Lotto and

Vittore Carpaccio); their rarity may be because few have survived or because they were uncommon.

Even where contracts exist putting the painter in charge of the commission or requiring his design

for a frame, the ornamentation may have remained the carver’s province.

During the Renaissance dynasties of exceptional carvers flourished, particularly in Italy; these also

enjoyed equal status with the artist and were often important architects/sculptors responsible for the

interiors where the works would hang. A painting could still be commissioned when its frame was

already complete, and there was little sense that the work of carving or gilding was inferior (e.g.

Leonardo gilded the frame for his Virgin of the Rocks, 1480s; Paris, Louvre). Gradually, however,

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framing was left more in the artist’s hands, and the ‘name frames’ began to emerge: these are

designs associated with a particular painter, such as the ‘Maratta’, ‘Canaletto’, ‘Longhi’, ‘Lely’,

‘Wright’, ‘Morland’ and ‘Whistler’ frames. Distinct from the producers of these stock designs,

however, a master carver was still socially on a par with the artist and was often engaged directly by

the client to provide an exceptional frame. In France the master carvers, their workshops and the

guilds became rich and influential; craftsmen began to stamp their frames with a studio mark; and

dozens of pattern books were published and diffused throughout Europe. Sculptors, ornamentalists

and cabinetmakers all produced frames that can be classed as superb carvings, exquisite designs or

precious pieces of furniture. The quality of these, residing not only in the original composition and

carved detail but also in the application of layers of gesso, the recutting of the gesso and the use of

toned gilding and part burnishing, was reflected in the high prices they commanded, although in the

16th, 17th and 18th centuries the cost of paintings rose proportionately faster than that of frames,

and stock designs were relatively cheap.

Collectors tended to pay to frame their acquisitions suitably, as with the galleries built from the 16th

to the 18th century to house specific collections, for which the architect would often design

background hangings, decoration and frames. The jewels of a collection received settings

approximating to their perceived worth. On the other hand, a Dutch patron of the 17th century or

the early 18th would look to fashionable France rather than a native style when framing his most

prized paintings, and French collectors of northern paintings would naturally do the same; from the

time of their execution until quite a recent date, portraits by, for example, Rembrandt might be

framed in French Baroque gilt frames, which can kill the contents.

The position of the framemaker crumbled, along with that of other luxury trades, because of the

impoverishment and restraint caused by the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars of the late 18th

century and the early 19th; and, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, mass-produced

products began to replace handmade goods. Machine-stamped lengths of moulding created cheap

frames for the engravings churned out by new processes; framed pictures for the better-off middle

and working classes became affordable; and there was a gradual infiltration into the higher end of

the market and a consequent slump in demand for hand-carved frames. Other products of the mass

market—composition and papier mâché, base metal instead of gold leaf—all fed this trend, and by

1813 the number of carvers had shrunk by almost nine-tenths. The artist’s position remained

unaffected: indeed, his status had changed from the artisan of the Middle Ages to the inspired

creator of the Romantic Age, leaving the carver or framemaker reduced to the stature of mere

craftsman. In the later 19th century the artist would become rich, titled and influential; but there was

no equivalent place for the carver, just as there was no longer widespread demand for his skill. The

design of any frame outside a production-line type was firmly in the artist’s hands; and although the

rarity of a tailor-made pattern executed by one of the few good carvers remaining meant that its

price was comparatively high, still its maker would never be given the recognition, equal with the

painter, that he had enjoyed five or six centuries earlier.

So little were good authentic frames valued that the early panel paintings shipped out of Italy in the

19th and 20th centuries were taken wholesale from their carved Gothic settings, and the latter were

burnt to salvage the gold leaf. Museums in Europe and the USA reset the panels in pastiches of the

original, with iron-like composition Gothic Revival ornament finished with drab oil-gilding and

base leaf. Imitation French Baroque frames with stamped ornament were used on Italian

Renaissance and Mannerist works; and original Louis XIV carved frames were stripped of their

gilding, washed with subdued colour and used to marry Impressionist paintings to the Louis Revival

interiors of their American purchasers. Soon this ubiquitous practice had fixed a generalized Louis

XIV pattern in the public mind as the ‘Impressionist frame’. Similarly, Turner’s works lost their

gilded hollow, ‘Morland’ or laurel frames, often ending in neutral greyish 1960s mouldings with

inner hessian slips. Remedying this divorce of paintings from their contemporary settings began in

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earnest only in the late 20th century; the process is handicapped by the small number of original

frames surviving and by the reluctance of institutions to spend on displaying authentically the

pictures they have rather than on acquiring new ones. Curators may also baulk at hanging diverse

styles of frame side by side, preferring to preserve a neutral pre-existing ‘gallery’ style or to create a

new one. The loss of balance, colour and focus in many paintings is severe, and only the custom of

illustrating art books with unframed reproductions could have blinded the spectator for so long to

the effects of such misalliance. Some art history methodologies locate the work in its social and

historical setting; it needs also to be appropriately sited in an immediate physical context that will

take account of its original purpose and surroundings or subsequent place in a noted collection. It

needs a frame.

5. Historiography.

The dislocation of contemporary frames from their pictures has been a deterrent to art and furniture

historians alike. The frame frustrates both disciplines and has long remained in a no-man’s-land

between the fine and the decorative arts. 99% of the illustrations in art histories exclude the frame,

despite its crucial role in evoking its painting’s milieu. This neglect has virtually eliminated the

frame from the viewer’s consciousness and critical appreciation. Since the early studies by Bode

(1898–9), Roche (1931) and, later, Heydenryk (1963), recognizing the significance of frames,

deeper exploration began in the last three decades of the 20th century and is gathering momentum.

Grimm’s broad and copiously illustrated survey Alte Bilderrahmen (1978) remains the standard

work on the subject. Two important and beautifully illustrated books on the history of Italian

frames, La cornice italiana… (1992) and La cornice fiorentina e senese (1992), together with

studies by Mosco, are impressive successors to the pioneer works by Guggenheim and Morazzoni,

placing Italy in the forefront of national frame history (see bibliography of §II below).

Appraisals of museum-frame collections have prompted exhibitions with excellent catalogues,

exposing a new level of scholarship to an international audience: the Alte Pinakothek, Munich,

undertook a detailed stylistic and regional analysis of its Italian frames in Italienisch Bilderrahmen

des 14.–18. Jahrhunderts (1976); Prijst de lijst (Amsterdam, Rijksmus., 1984) is a meticulous

account of 17th-century Dutch frames with their original pictures; The Art of the Edge (1986)

surveys the role and development of the frame in the context of the Art Institute of Chicago’s

collection (and includes for the first time in English one of the few essays dealing with the

conceptual issues of the frame, by José Ortega y Gasset); Cadres de peintres (Paris, Mus. d’Orsay,

1989) focuses on the integrity of 19th- and 20th-century artist-designed frames, a theme that is

developed by the catalogue In Perfect Harmony (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Mus., 1995); and Italian

Renaissance Frames (1990) is an in-depth catalogue of the frames and framemakers of the

Renaissance paintings in the Lehman collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The

Art of the Picture Frame (London, N.P.G., 1996) examines the portrait frame as it is affected by the

input of patron, artist and framemaker; while Frameworks (London, Paul Mitchell, 1996), running

in tandem with the National Portrait Gallery exhibition, analyses the frame within its larger setting.

Permanent displays are far less common. The only museums showing (empty) frames as works of

art have been the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and the Dallas Museum of Art (Reves

Collection), TX, both of which concentrate on 17th- and 18th-century French frames. Since 1995

these have been joined—and surpassed—by a private collection of 240 European frames donated to

the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. This displays four centuries of the highest quality design and

craftsmanship, and will become a focal centre for the study of frames. Alongside these institutional

landmarks have appeared Mendgen’s book (1991) and an increasing volume of specialized

individual studies in leading art and museum journals, indicating the enormous depth of the

subject’s potential. An entire issue of the Revue de l’art (no. 76, 1987) was devoted to a stimulating

overview of all the main contributions to frames, together with nine specialist articles and a

comprehensive, indispensable bibliography. Two examples of frame studies being integrated with

10

art-historical texts for the first time are the descriptive appraisal of frames in the picture guide of the

Thyssen–Bornemisza collection (1989) and the essay on frames within an artist’s monographic

exhibition catalogue (Wright of Derby; London, Tate, 1990).

Bibliography

H. Harvard: ‘Cadre’, Dictionnaire de l’ameublement et de la décoration, i (Paris, 1887), pp. 510–15

M. Guggenheim: Le cornici italiene dalla meta del secolo XV allo scorio del XVI (Milan, 1897)

W. von Bode: ‘Bilderrahmen in alter und neuer Zeit’, Pan, iv (1898–9), pp. 243–56

R. Thorel: De l’influence du cadre dans les oeuvres d’art (Paris, 1904)

F. Feneon: ‘Les Cadres’, Bull. Vie A. (Feb 1922)

W. Ayrshire: ‘The Philosophy of the Picture Frame’, Int. Studio (June 1926)

S. Roche: Cadres français et étrangers du XVe siècle au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1931)

F. S. Meyer: A Handbook of Ornament (Chicago, 1945)

J. White: The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (London, 1957)

A. Strange and L. Cremer: Alte Bilderrahmen (Darmstadt, 1958) [25 figs]

H. Heydenryk: The Art and History of Frames (New York, 1963) [100 figs]

M. Shapiro: ‘On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in Image Signs’,

Semiotica, i (1969), pp. 223–42

P. Thornton and W. Reider: ‘Pierre Langlois, ebéniste’, Connoisseur, clxxviii/718 (1971), pp. 283–

8; clxxix/720 (1972), pp. 105–12

J. Gloag: Guide to Furniture Styles: English & French, 1450–1850 (London, 1972)

C. Grimm: Alte Bilderrahmen: Epochen–Typen–Material (Munich, 1978) [extensive bibliog.; 483

figs]; Eng. trans. as The Book of Picture Frames (New York, 1981) [with suppl. on American

frames by G. Szabo; 30 figs, 489 pls] [g]

P. Thornton: Seventeenth-century Interior Decoration in England, France and Holland (New

Haven and London, 1978)

W. Ehlich: Bilderrahmen von der Antike bis zur Romantik (Dresden, 1979)

G. Lacambre: ‘Cadre’, Petit Larousse de la peinture (Paris, 1979), pp. 258–60

P. Mitchell: ‘The Framing Tradition’, Picture Framing, ed. R. Wright-Smith (London, 1980), pp.

12–32 [9 colour pls]

11

T. Clifford: ‘The Historical Approach to the Display of Paintings’, Int. J. Mus. Mgmt & Cur., i

(1982), pp. 93–106

F. G. Conzen and G. Dietrich: Bilderrahmen: Stil–Verwendung–Material (Munich, 1983)

P. Cannon-Brookes: ‘Picture Framing: A Neglected Art’, NACF Rev. (1984), pp. 84–93 [12 figs]

S. Jervis: The Penguin Dictionary of Design and Designers (Harmondsworth, 1984)

P. Thornton: Authentic Décor: The Domestic Interior, 1620–1920 (London, 1984)

S. E. Fuchs: Der Bilderrahmen (Recklinghausen, 1985) [146 figs]

P. Lewis and G. Darley: Dictionary of Ornament (London, 1986)

The Art of the Edge: European Frames, 1300–1900 (exh. cat., Chicago, IL, A. Inst., 1986) [incl. J.

Ortega y Gasset: ‘Meditations on the Frame’, p. 21]

Rev. A., 76 (1987) [whole issue devoted to frames]

C. de Watteville: Guide to the Exhibited Works in the Thyssen–Bornemisza Collection (Lugano and

Milan, 1989) [cat. entries on frames by P. Mitchell and L. Roberts, pp. 365–71]

Wright of Derby (exh. cat., London, Tate, 1990) [with essay on frames by P. Mitchell]

E. Mendgen: Künstler rahmen ihre Bilder: Zur Geschichte des Bilderrahmens zwischen Akademie

und Sezession (Konstanz, 1991)

In Perfect Harmony: Picture and Frame, 1850–1920 (exh. cat., Amsterdam, Van Gogh Mus., 1995)

Frameworks (exh. cat., London, Paul Mitchell, 1996)

The Art of the Picture Frame: Artists, Patrons and the Framing of Portraits in Britain (exh. cat.,

London, N.P.G., 1996)

E. Wilner: The Gilded Edge: The Art of the Frame (San Francisco, 2000)

H. Heydenryk: The Right Frame: The Essential Guide to Framing (New York, 2003)

The Art of the Frame: Gems from the Simoni Collection (exh. cat. by S. Smeaton; Pensacola, FL,

Mus. A., 2004)

Paul Mitchell, Lynn Roberts

Copyright © Oxford University Press 2007 — 2015.

12

Frame, §II: Italy

article url: http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T029196pg2

Frame, §II: Italy

II. Italy.

1. Precursors.

The earliest decorative borders used in Italy to enclose paintings are probably those on Etruscan

wall paintings (7th–2nd centuries BC). Though obviously not picture frames in the modern sense of

a three-dimensional protective edging, they employ many of the motifs of Classical Greek

architecture and vases as a setting for figurative scenes. Roman art was influenced equally by these

Etruscan and Greek works; it also developed the Etruscan style of funerary portraiture, where the

painting is ‘framed’ in architectural ornament. Other early types of border include those around

mosaics and, later, the coarsened antique decoration of manuscript paintings. Panel painting—in the

Byzantine tradition—was also well established in Italy as early as the 5th century AD, leading to

the Western genre of altarpieces and also to the production of painted Crucifixes, the earliest of

which is dated 1138. The latter were intended to ornament rood screens, to be hung from church

ceilings or to be set on an altar, and they were invariably edged with a simple moulding, such as a

taenia and an ogee or ovolo. From such decorative additions to the altar table came the paintings

known as antependia or altar frontals. These are related to the carved sides of Roman sarcophagi

with their Classical enrichments, as are metalwork frontals, such as the 11th-century Antependium

of Basle with its scrolled foliate border and its architectural divisions. In these cases the work

hardly counts as an independent, framed picture, but at the beginning of the 13th century the frontal

was moved on to the top of the altar to become a dossal or free-standing retable, its frame gaining

both decorative and symbolic significance, and greater protective importance. Ensembles of both

dossal and frontal exist, providing a large didactic area, which is unified by the decorative borders

of each element.

The original method of framing panel paintings or early altarpieces was limited to gouging out a

lowered painting surface within a traylike raised ledge. The surface of these remaining borders or

engaged frames—often a painted or gilt band in the case of icons—gave an opportunity to apply the

long tradition of sculpted and drawn ornament, already familiar through ivory and architectural

carving, weaving, wall and manuscript painting, goldsmithing and mosaic. Punched and low-relief

decoration was prevalent: a Sienese altarpiece of 1215, consisting of three tiered scenes on either

side of a large Christ in Glory (Siena, Pin. N.), uses continuous runs of a star or daisy pattern,

filling the whole width of each framing or separating band. A similar work by Margarito d’Arezzo,

Virgin and Child, Angels, Saints and Scenes from the Lives of SS John the Evangelist, Benedict,

Catherine and Margaret (mid-13th century; London, N.G.), has a deep outer gilt frame, ornamented

with round bosses along its forward edges. Though Vasari credited Margarito with inventing these,

they appear on other early frames and door-frames and are an antique device. Both bosses and

daisies show an inventive use of gilded ornament some time before the appearance of complicated

carved mouldings, as does the technique of sgraffito, applied to the overpainted flat surfaces of a

frame to scratch out delicate arabesques and inscriptions from the gold beneath (e.g. Coppo di

Marcovaldo: Madonna del Bordone, 1261; Siena, S Maria dei Servi).

13

2. Pre-Renaissance.

These first abstract, rectangular frames, closely related to Renaissance frames and their modern

descendants, were soon overtaken by those with symbolic elements derived from architecture. The

silhouette of the basilica, for example, with its gabled front shaped like an irregular pentagon, was

imitated by some 13th-century altarpieces. The earliest dated version appeared in 1235, and

examples were produced in the later 13th century by Duccio, Cimabue (Virgin and Child; Paris,

Louvre) and Pacino di Bonaguida (the Tree of Life; Florence, Accad.). The borders of these gabled

works follow the panel shape and are composed of variously complex flat, beaded and stepped

mouldings fixed to the panels. They are gilt and polychrome, with elaborate panels of painted and

sgraffito decoration on the flats; on the works by Duccio and Cimabue these are replaced with

painted heads of prophets and saints inside roundels. Thus, painted visions of heaven were framed

in representations of the spiritual Church, of which its earthly stone counterpart was a reflection.

Gothic architecture, which made a later and less intense impact in Italy, was first reflected in art in

these simple gabled frames.

The plain silhouette was elaborated within by trefoils, pointed arches or round arcading above rows

of figures, as in Guido da Siena’s Virgin and Child Flanked by SS John the Baptist, John the

Evangelist, Mary Magdalene and Francis (1270s; Siena, Pin. N.) and Madonna and Child

Enthroned (1275–80; Siena, Pal. Pub.). The arcading of the former is pierced beneath the gable by

painted roundels, like rose windows; the gable of the latter rises in a pediment above the main panel

and contains a representation of Christ as Judge. Both can be related to the Gothic façade (begun

after 1215) of Siena Cathedral. Portable devotional pictures were being produced alongside such

large altarpieces, for example the Magdalen Master’s Virgin and Child Enthroned with SS Peter

and Paul (c. 1265–70; New York, Met) and the Crucifixion with SS Nicolas and Gregory (c. 1310;

Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.), attributed to Duccio, both of which are in the form of a triptych where two

hinged panels fold across the main scene, like church doors giving access to a celestial world. The

first is based on rectangular forms beneath a lintel; the second has segmental doors folding into the

round arch of the Crucifixion scene, above which the peaked gable holds a Christus Benedictus. In a

further development, Giotto’s Badia Altarpiece (Florence, Mus. Opera Santa Croce) shows a large

compartmentalized altarpiece, where the divisions echo the aisles and nave of a cathedral, separated

by architectural piers, and pinnacles (untraced) rise between the five gables.

A final stage in the evolution of these altarpieces into images of the Church came with the building

of the frame into a storeyed polyptych. At first there were two levels, representing the body and

clerestory of the church, as in Pseudo-Jacopino’s polyptych with the Presentation of Christ in the

Temple (c. 1350–80; Bologna, Mus. Civ.). Here, a Pietà rises above the main scene, and there are

two layers of saints. Next, the predella at the base, originating in the roundels and inscriptions of

Giotto’s altarpieces, was used to represent the ‘crypt’ of the church. The predella panels are

embodied in the plinth supporting the major elements of the altarpiece and usually stand forward of

these. As in architectural and sculptural plinths, they can be used for inscriptions, or for small-scale

paintings (e.g. scenes from the life of a saint) fitting naturally beneath the vertical divisions of the

upper scenes and framed by the pedestals of their pilasters and by the base and cornice of the plinth.

In the Virgin and Child with Saints (c. 1330; Bologna, Pin. N.) by Giotto’s assistants, the painted

architecture of the Virgin’s throne reproduces the carved wooden frame, with its decorative crockets

and square piers, and the interdependence of frame and painting is suddenly illuminated. This

interdependence is also emphasized by the multiplying of levels in the more complex 14th-century

polyptychs into a hierarchical arrangement of tiered saints and prophets, scenes from Christ’s and

the saints’ lives, and pinnacled angels rising up and around a major scene (e.g. of the Virgin, the

Coronation of the Virgin or the Crucifixion), to the highest image (of God the Father, Christ as

Judge, Christ Blessing), as in Simone Martini’s St Catherine polyptych (1319–20; Pisa, Mus. N. S

14

Matteo). The spiritual world and the physical church, with its chapels, crypt and clerestory, were

thus simultaneously represented.

The main outer frame, unbroken in 13th-century altarpieces, was fragmented in the 14th century

into sloping-shouldered panels (bearing further panels above), ogee-arched and triangular gables,

the vertical divisions hidden by thin Solomonic columns, the inner arches decorated with pendent

fretted traceries (e.g. Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, Spinello Aretino and Lorenzo di Niccolò’s

Canonization of the Virgin, Florence, Accad.). These altars are in the High Gothic idiom, which is

architecturally far more northern European than Italian; yet they were developed, most importantly

perhaps in Siena and Florence, by Italian craftsmen who worked closely with the painters, were

paid sums that were a large proportion of (and could equal and even surpass) the cost of the picture

and were sometimes commemorated by inscriptions on the altarpiece itself, their reputation and

influence feeding back into the development of the northern European polyptych (see Gilbert,

1977).

In the 14th century and the early 15th polyptychs became so vast and elaborate that, at an early

point, huge lateral buttresses were developed to support them and give additional emphasis. These

were bolted on to the altar, but where the paintings have been removed in later periods through theft

or sale, the buttresses have been lost, their clusters of pinnacles and abstract ‘mosaic’ decoration not

valued equally with the pictures. Exceptions are Giovanni del Biondo’s Rinuccini Altarpiece (1379;

Florence, Santa Croce) and Taddeo di Bartolo’s Virgin and Child (Volterra, Pin. Com.), both ornate

many-tiered polyptychs with decorative columns and pilasters hiding both the division between the

painted panels and the physical joints of the planks forming the altar. These applied ornaments, like

the arch traceries added after painting, show a shift in constructional processes, the earliest

altarpieces having been painted only after all woodwork and gilding had been completed. Another

work retaining its buttresses is Andrea di Cione’s earlier Strozzi Altarpiece (1354–7; Florence, S

Maria Novella), which is important in that it shows the cell-like format of Biondo’s altarpieces

being swallowed by the expansion of the major scene into a single painted image. This prefigures

the physically and metaphysically unified painting of the mid-Renaissance and indicates a move in

the construction of the frame (which was now falling behind architectural development in Italy)

towards the single containing frame of the 15th century.

The pure Gothic architectural frame, however, endured as late as the 1470s, as seen in the Venetian

High Gothic altarpieces of Antonio Vivarini and Bartolomeo Vivarini (e.g. Venice, Accad.;

Bologna, Pin. N.; see 1990 exh. cat., no. 10). These are works of striking flamboyance and

intricacy, refining examples of the 14th century and the earlier 15th by the Veneziani and the

Murani. Influenced by the Muslim objects entering Venice, Venetian metalwork and the filtering

down to north Italy of the Northern High Gothic style, they turn the settings of the actual paintings

into shimmering incrustations of pierced and undercut filigree. Conversely, plainer rectangular

frames continued to appear alongside the soaring storeys and ornamental accretions of the major

polyptychs, for example the large portable altarpiece of the Virgin and Four Saints, its five framed

rectangular panels (1333–44; New York, Met.; Malibu, CA, Getty Mus.; priv. col.) attributed to

Simone Martini and assistants. The frames, only one of which is an untouched original, consist of a

flat painted with delicate arabesques and lozenges between stepped mouldings, united with the gold

picture surface by a punched border. Here the protective role of the frame is most evident: a

polyptych, originally over 2 m across and needing to be transported between various religious

houses, required a setting that was both functional and decorative rather than a fragile fantasy of

crockets and pinnacles.

Single rectangular panels also exist from an early period as independent works, looking towards the

large 15th-century quadro and its aedicular or its cassetta frame (see §3), for example Simone

Martini’s Christ Discovered in the Temple (1342; Liverpool, Walker A.G.). Such panels might exist

15

independently or as elements of small triptychs or diptychs, and while the panel might be elaborated

with cusped and trefoiled arches, the frame might also be richly ornamented. On Paolo di Giovanni

Fei’s Virgin and Child with Angels, Saints and Eve (c. 1380–90; New York, Met.), the flat of the

frame is decorated using the technique of aggetti (a compound of gesso pressed into a mould) or

pastiglia with foliate scrolls and florets defined by punching, and inset polished glass cabochons.

Within the frame, the picture surface is ornamented with a cusped arch, twisted colonnette and

spandrel medallions painted with Gabriel and the Virgin Annunciate. A similar frame on Fei’s

Virgin Suckling the Infant Christ (New York, Met.) has additional inset plaques of verre églomisé

decorated with heads, derived from the painted frame of Duccio’s Rucellai Madonna.

3. Renaissance.

(i) Early Renaissance.

The quadro all’antica proper—a rectangular picture in a classically inspired frame—had its first

major expression in the work of Fra Angelico, who developed the sacra conversazione from its

beginnings in Andrea di Cione’s Strozzi Altarpiece, for example in the Annunciation (c. 1432;

Cortona, Mus. Dioc.). The evolution of a single scene appearing to exist in ‘real’ time and ‘real’

space is thus intimately linked with the evolution of the frame as a ‘window’ on to that scene, rather

than as a symbolic representation of the House of God with its many mansions. It is also linked to

Brunelleschi’s revival of Classical architecture and to the parallel development in painting of a

Brunelleschian system of perspective, where the illusory pictorial space appears continuous with

that of the ‘real’ world. The mediator between such a painted world and the spectator could no

longer be the emblematic traceries of a Gothic frame, especially within the new classicizing

buildings themselves, and so the aedicular frame was adopted, based on the Greek temple. In such

early examples as Bicci di Lorenzo’s Annunciation (Baltimore, MD, Walters A.G.), the frame of the

quadro hesitates between the Gothic and Classical, but in the mature version the form is as

described by Neri di Bicci (see §I, 2), with predella, pilasters and entablature. Interestingly, the

influential fresco of the Trinity (1427) by Masaccio in S Maria Novella, Florence, with its

perspectival recession based on the spectator’s eye-level—the picture space appearing a

continuation of ‘real’ space—uses Brunelleschian architectural forms to articulate the space and to

frame the whole. (Brunelleschi may actually have designed this setting.)

The importance of 15th-century classically inspired sculptures and funerary monuments to the work

of the framemaker should be stressed, and their influence is evident in a terracotta tabernacle frame

of c. 1430–40 (see 1990 exh. cat., no. 6). Although frames were no longer engaged with the picture,

tending towards an analogous separation of painter and wood-carver into artist and artisan,

Renaissance artists were frequently polymaths capable of undertaking sculptural, painting and

architectural projects, with a consequent overlapping of genres. Many trained as goldsmiths

(Antonio Pollaiuolo, Andrea del Verrocchio, Brunelleschi) and had an intimate knowledge of

decorative settings and ornamental fashions; while important sculptors and architects (Benedetto da

Maiano, Giuliano da Maiano, Antonio di Ciaccheri Manetti, Giuliano da Sangallo) were also wood-

carvers, designing and producing frames in their workshops for the foremost Renaissance painters,

as well as the interiors in which the frames would hang. Equally the painter himself needed the

ability to produce contractual drawings for both picture and frame if his client preferred to contract

the whole work through him rather than the wood-worker.

The provenance of frame designs in the 14th and 15th centuries is obscure: there are cases where

the patron obtained the wooden panel/frame (the tavola) from a wood-carver and would then

contract an artist to paint it, the gap between operations allowing funds for the painting to be

gathered; hence the altarpiece for S Francesco, Borgo San Sepulchro, was acquired from

Bartolomeo the carpenter four years before Antonio da Anghiari was contracted to paint it in 1430

16

(see Gilbert, 1977). The wood-worker presumably designed the whole structure himself (or

followed the client’s rough sketch, or copied a pre-existing work). Alternatively, the wood-worker

might be given a model; Jacopo Papero, for example, made the inner wooden frame for the

Madonna dei Linaiuoli (Florence, Uffizi) after a model (1432) by Ghiberti. Fra Angelico then

painted the image, and the next month Simone de Nanni Ferrucci (1402–69) was commissioned to

carve the outer marble tabernacle, again after Ghiberti. The painter himself might commission the

panel from his favoured wood-worker, as Neri di Bicci obtained his tavole all’antica from Giuliano

da Maiano. Presumably, he supplied his own drawing for the frame, although Giuliano himself was

of sufficient stature to undertake (as an artist would a picture) the whole design from a written

specification. Again, the client might approach artist and wood-worker individually and draw up

simultaneous contracts, probably requiring from the artist a preliminary design for the whole work,

from which the wood-worker would copy the frame. Peramore di Bartolomeo undertook to make an

altarpiece ‘after the design given to him’ the same day that Lorenzo Lotto agreed to paint it (as for

the Entombment, c. 1512; Jesi, Pin. Civ.), Lotto being accustomed to providing such drawings of

frames (see L. C. Matthew: ‘New Evidence for Lotto’s Career in Jesi’, Burl. Mag., cxxx (1988), pp.

693–7).

Andrea Mantegna: Virgin and Child with Saints, tempera on panel,…

The move from engaged Gothic frame, constructed as one with the panel before gilding and

painting began, to movable classical frame meant that control of the design generally passed from

the wood-worker to the painter. More drawings of frames survive from this time, including those by

such artists as Filippo Lippi, Vittore Carpaccio and Giovanni da Udine. The designs for the superb

Venetian aedicular frames of Giovanni Bellini’s Frari Triptych (Venice, S Maria Gloriosa dei Frari)

and Mantegna’s Virgin and Child with Saints (1457–9; Verona, S Zeno) are attributed to the artists

themselves. Both have used this control over the whole work to integrate its painted and carved

architectural structures, as in Masaccio’s Trinity, creating the illusion of the ‘real’ presence of

heavenly visitants before the worshipper.

These two frames exhibit regional features in their construction and ornament. Even the earliest

altarpieces display differing characteristics according to their place of origin—Sienese Gothic

polyptychs tend to have truncated triangular tiers and inner depressed arches, Florentine altarpieces

have elongated trefoil/pointed arches and more frequent painted roundels, and Bolognese frames are

elaborate, with chunkier carving. The later aediculae and 16th- to 18th-century cassetta frames

descended from them show these diversities too, but the continual movement of workers nationally

means that, unless a painting framed by a local artisan and/or painted by a local artist has remained

within the region or has a documented provenance for its frame, specific features cannot definitely

be accredited to that region. However, certain points may be made, particularly regarding Venetian

frames, notable from the 14th century for their richness, fineness of detail and the Moorish

influence displayed in their use of pierced roundels and tracery. From the altarpieces (1320s–50s;

Venice, Accad.) of Paolo Veneziano and Lorenzo Veneziano, encrusted with ornament and using

blue and gilt shell-domed niches, through the polyptychs (e.g. 1443–4; Venice, S Zaccaria) of the

Murano brothers, carved by Lodovico da Forlí, to the Late Gothic confections (1450s–70s) of the

Vivarinis, decoration increasingly runs riot in a crescendo of lacework, fretted pinnacles, crockets

carved into minute leaf sprays and overhanging pierced canopies.

17

(ii) Aedicular frames.

With the flowering of Renaissance architecture and interior decoration, the picture frame took on a

fully classical form. For altarpieces and devotional paintings this was the aedicula or tabernacle

frame, for secular works the corresponding cassetta. As regional styles of structure and

ornamentation modified each of these groups, a seemingly endless variety of frame patterns

evolved; these multiplied as the language of the Renaissance was overtaken by that of Mannerism.

This enormous productivity is in itself proof of the immense importance attached to the function

and creation of frames during the Renaissance.

A celebrated example of the Renaissance aedicular frame, signed and dated 1488 by the carver

Jacopo da Faenza, was created for Bellini’s Frari Triptych (see fig.). This comprises a base with

predella panels supporting two pairs of pilasters, each pair carrying an entablature linked by a

broken segmental pediment, the whole carved with antique candelabrum patterns and scrolling

foliage. Above this are mounted actual candelabra between Roman sirens (functional candle-holders

became a necessary part of the frame as the amount of gold leaf on the picture surface shrank: with

gilding restricted to details of robes and haloes and then just to the frame itself, extra sources of

light were needed to reveal the image). This repetition of motif, and of the frame’s structure in the

painted architecture, mean that frame and image are completely integrated. Aedicular frames were

also used from the mid-15th century for the display of single panel altarpieces and smaller

devotional works (see 1990 exh. cat.). As well as the façade of a Classical temple, the frame for

Sano di Pietro’s altarpiece, the Virgin and Child with SS Mary Magdalene, James, Philip and Anne

(completed 1462; Pienza Cathedral), reflects that of Pienza Cathedral, for which it was

commissioned. Its fluted pilasters support a triangular pediment, the tympanum decorated with the

figure of Christ gazing on the Virgin and saints below. Also in Pienza Cathedral are late 15th-

century works by Matteo di Giovanni and Giovanni di Paolo with segmental pediments, again on

fluted pilasters.

Italian Renaissance aedicular frames: (a) Venetian frame with pastiglia

decoration,…

A typical Venetian aedicula (see fig.) in the same idiom as the Frari Triptych has low-relief

pastiglia decoration on a punched ground, including foliate candelabra in the pilasters, and masks,

dolphins and birds in the predella frieze. Variations on pilasters and columns can be seen on the

small devotional works by Bellini at Harewood House, W. Yorks, and there is another

characteristically Venetian type (pastiglia decoration on a blue-black ground) on paintings also by

Bellini in the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan.

Aedicular frames in Tuscany reflect the region’s more austere architectural style. Some carried low-

relief antique ornament, others were in parcel gilt walnut or with grotesque decoration (b) applied in

gold to a faux walnut surface. Perhaps the most sumptuous surviving example in the Tuscan style—

the design is attributed to the architect Giuliano da Sangallo—surrounds Domenico Ghirlandaio’s

Adoration of the Shepherds (1485; Florence, Santa Trínita); the artist’s setting includes a

corresponding triumphal arch and canopy with fluted pilasters. Columns were also used (c), as

noted above; this was more common in northern Italy and often echoed the pictorial architecture.

Smaller aedicula from the Veneto sometimes used the distinctive twisted Solomonic column.

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(iii) Craftsmen and workshops.

The great altarpieces of the 14th to the 16th century were produced by famous carvers and sculptors

who founded schools of craftsmen—in their workshops or indirectly—who propagated their styles

in simpler types of frame. Some of these are known by name. The three men who created the Monte

Oliveto Altarpiece (1384–5; Florence, Accad.) are commemorated equally on it: Aretino the

painter, Cini the carver, Saracini the gilder; whereas in the case of Fra Angelico’s Madonna dei

Linaiuoli, the framemakers were subordinate, following designs by a prominent architect (see

Gilbert). Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin (Venice, Frari) was commissioned after the completion

(1516) of its great marble aedicula by the master sculptor Lorenzo Bregno; Titian’s work

therefore—like a 13th-century panel painting—had to conform to a pre-existing frame. The painter

Francesco Francia (a goldsmith and son of a wood-worker) designed aedicular frames for his work

in the style of the Bolognese High Renaissance—with finely carved dense arabesques in parcel gilt

on a dark ground—magnificently realized by the great wood-carver Andrea da Formigine (c. 1480–

1559) (e.g. Francia’s Christ Enthroned and St Michael Subduing the Devil; Bologna, S Domenico).

The architect Manetti, even when promoted to capomaestro of Florence Cathedral, accepted the

commission to frame Pesellino’s altarpiece, the Trinity with Saints (London, N.G.); and Leonardo,

when painting the Virgin of the Rocks (1480s; Paris, Louvre; two side panels by the brothers

Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis and Evangelista de Predis), undertook himself to gild and colour the

frame, which had been carved by Giacomo del Maiano.

Little differentiation was made between the ‘fine art’ of the painting and the ‘applied art’ of the

frame: great men of whatever specialization seemed willing to design, carve or gild the precious

settings for important works. Late in their lives, the successful sculptors and architects Giuliano da

Maiano and Giuliano da Sangallo still undertook commissions for frames, the quality of which (e.g.

Maiano’s for Botticelli) indicates that these were not necessarily workshop products. Regarding

secular items Vasari notes that ‘even the most excellent painters employed themselves…in painting

and gilding…chests…beds, the backs of chairs, the frames and other ornaments of the rooms’ (Vite,

1550, rev. 2/1568). The history and ornamentation of frames is thus intimately connected with the

evolution of pictorial art, as it is with that of other furnishings; long panels painted by such artists as

Piero della Francesca, let into the sides of cassoni between enriched mouldings, can equally be seen

to stimulate or to derive from larger wall-hung paintings in similar mouldings. Likewise, picture

and frame might become part of a complete decorative scheme. The bridal furnishings of the Casa

Vecchia, Florence, possibly commissioned (1481) by Lorenzo the Magnificent for his ward Lorenzo

di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, consisted in one room of pine furniture, a white-covered bed and a

white wood frame around Botticelli’s Primavera (c. 1478; Florence, Uffizi; see Foster and Tudor-

Craig).

(iv) Cassetta frames.

For the vast and increasing output of secular paintings, simpler rectangular frames were produced,

the patterns and decoration of which were clearly derived from contemporary altarpieces. The

process of structural simplification that took place resulted in the disappearance of the pilasters,

pediment and base of the altarpiece, leaving a simplified entablature profile, a decorated frieze

between narrow mouldings. This became known as the cassetta frame, the basic theme, with

infinite variations, of most 16th- and 17th-century Italian frame patterns. The cassetta itself is

already present in some tabernacles as the surrounding inner frame. The intermediary phase

consisted of an entablature minus the frieze—a combined cornice and architrave—to sit above a

continuous decorated symmetrical frieze with moulded borders, as on Bartolomeo Montagna’s

Virgin and Child (Worcester, MA, A. Mus.).

19

The cassetta frame was not so much a new development as a return to much older forms—the

architectural borders of Classical doors and windows, the painted margins of frescoes, the

decorative frames of manuscript illuminations—elaborated by Renaissance interest in ornament and

varied by local virtuoso carvers. The section and borders of the cassetta or entablature frame were

primarily architectural. Its frieze often echoing the decoration of an interior, the entire form was

designed as a sophisticated play on the style and ornamentation of its intended setting. Regional

variations were an obvious effect not only of the stylistic dialect of the craftsmen employed but also

of the architectural vocabulary of the interior where the frame was to hang. The fact that the

establishment of the locale and period of each pattern is speculative should be remembered in the

following summary of stylistic, regional and chronological features.

Italian cassetta frames with continuous surface decoration, mid-16th century to…

The main cassetta patterns may most easily be charted by treating their continuous development

over the 16th and 17th centuries before returning to the other principal concurrent frame styles of

this period. The appearance of the cassetta frame is determined by two main factors: ornamental

technique and finish, and the distribution of decoration. Although partially overlapping and not

necessarily chronological, these characteristics may be divided into three groups: continuous

surface decoration, with or without carved borders (see fig.), ‘Baroque’ cassettas with corner and

centre arabesques (see fig.) and fully architectural designs (see fig.). With few exceptions cassetta

frames share the same underlying structure: a half-lapped back frame to which are applied mitred

inner and outer mouldings. The decorative treatment of these mouldings and the frieze was

endlessly varied according to region, function and cost.

Italian cushion frieze cassetta frames with moulded pastiglia decoration, from…

Visually, the ancestor of the modern entablature frame in its basic oblong form is that type (late

13th century–14th) seen on Fei’s work decorated in pastiglia (see §2 above). This was often

engaged with the painted panel, however, and the earliest true movable cassetta appeared in the

early 16th century in the Veneto, this being probably the first example of a mass-produced frame

style (see fig.). The structure consists of a shallow convex frieze bordered by plain mouldings

laminated on a flat back frame. Ornamental designs were applied to the frieze in thin strips of

aggetti. These were usually cast in lengths between 125 and 150 mm, carefully joined to give a

continuous pattern. The finish was all gilt or with the moulded section in polychrome. Of eight

recorded patterns, three were most common, all deriving from antique Roman and earlier sources.

The double guilloche (a) was purely architectural, employed in Roman mosaic borders and in the

decoration of ceilings (which often echo picture frames), pilasters, arches and such furnishings as

20

cassoni. Layers of overlapping palm scales (b) and Roman grotesque panels with winged putti,

candelabra and spqr tablets (c) were also used. Others include undulating vines and trailing oak

leaves with acorns. Intricately carved moulds facilitated the easy production of these low-relief

surface decorations appropriate for small-scale works. Geometric ornaments were used for the

secular portraits and mythological or allegorical subjects of the Renaissance, differentiating them

from the aedicular shapes and often symbolic or naturalistic motifs associated with religious

images. The purest form of cassetta with plain mouldings, all gilded, and found in Rome and

Tuscany during the 16th and 17th centuries (see fig.), was often employed as a ‘gallery’ frame—a

streamlined, cost-effective pattern for framing whole groups of a collection, as at the Capitoline (a)

and Spada galleries, Rome. The cassetta frieze could also be painted to simulate marble and

harmonize with a marble interior. Faux-marbre (b) was more economical than gilding and a

contrast to carved and gilt borders, as well as reinforcing the tonality of work painted in a

chiaroscuro style.

The most elaborate and eye-catching surfaces were achieved by the application of Moresque and,

later, arabesque ornament in sgraffito and mordant-gilt techniques (c). Examples appeared

throughout Italy, notably in the Veneto, the Marches and Tuscany. They derive from painted

borders—on illuminated manuscripts, on early engaged frames and even on the façades of

Renaissance buildings, such as the Museo Horne and the Palazzo Medici–Riccardi (both Florence).

The scrolling decoration was generally continuous in the 16th century but placed at corners and

centres in the 17th (see fig., a). Vertebrate candelabrum-based patterns were also used, springing

from bottom centre to top centre of the frame. These designs were achieved in sgraffito by painting

a layer of black or blue-black tempera (sometimes with other colours in combination) over the

gilded frieze and scraping this away to reveal the design in gold. Such frames were an enduring and

widely diffused type, involving finishes of extreme sophistication, which were allied to

contemporary lacework and often based on the pattern books used by laceworkers (e.g. Giovanni

Antonio Tagliente’s Essempio di recammi (Venice, 1527), the earliest of such works and the first to

publish Moresque designs).

The most frequently employed surface treatment of all-gilt frames was the execution of scrolling

foliate patterns, either continuous or in panels, with punched work known as bulinatura (see fig., e).

The punching was done directly on to the gold surface, dimpling the gesso beneath it. It creates

subtle brocaded effects that alter as the light catches them and produce a sense of shimmering

movement. The technique is directly descended from the punching of gilded areas on early panel

paintings, when many different stamps were used to define anything from a halo to the pattern on a

robe. Such panels often had, within their actual frames, an inner ‘frame’ or margin of ornamental

punched lines on the gilded background of the painting, as in Simone Martini’s Annunciation

(Washington, DC, N.G.A.). It may also relate to glass- and metal-engraving. Less commonly, the

contours could be engraved in a continuous line, contrasted with a background textured in zigzag

chiselwork, known as hazzling (see fig., d). Hazzle decoration occurs frequently as a means of

highlighting the borders of later 17th- and 18th-century Italian and French frames. Bulinatura was a

common technique throughout Italy but seems to have reached a high point in the central areas of

Tuscany (especially Siena), the Marches and Emilia.

Late 16th- and early 17th-century Bolognese frames form a particularly coherent regional style (see

Morazzoni, 1953). Many examples are found in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna and are

notable for the finely rendered friezes of stylized blossom and foliage (e.g. Annibale Carracci,

Assumption of the Virgin, 1592). Borders are generally foliate rather than architectural, with a

distinctive outer bell-flower and inner running leaf band (see fig., e). Occasionally the principal

moulding forms the sight edge of the frame, projecting the picture plane forward, as on Giovanni

Cariani’s Seamstress Madonna (1524–8; Rome, Pal. Barberini; see fig., f): where the pattern is seen

with a plain gilt frieze, with stylized leaves influenced by Bolognese examples.

21

As traditional as sgraffito and bulinatura was the use of pastiglia. Semi-liquid gesso is trickled

through a cone (like cake icing) on to a design previously drawn on the frieze. The edges are

sharpened while setting and, after gilding, the ground often punched to provide a contrasting

texture, as on the frame of Andrea del Sarto’s Holy Family (1515–16; Paris, Louvre; see fig., g). Far

more easily created than by carving, this low-relief decoration, rounded by the surface tension of

the drying gesso, yields a soft, flowing ornament, which on the del Sarto is set off by carved bead

and fluted borders. Pastiglia ornament was particularly common in the Veneto, although found

elsewhere in Italy. The technique dates back to the spandrels, borders and robes of 14th-century

panel paintings, as well as to the decoration of 16th-century furnishings, notably the fronts of

cassoni, and continues into mid-17th century cassetta frames.

16th- and 17th-century cassetta frames may generally be distinguished by the distribution of

ornament. This was usually continuous in the Renaissance in accordance with antique sources (9c,

d, g) but situated at the corners and centres in the Baroque period to correspond with pictorial

movement. (For example, the vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines of Guercino’s Angels Weeping

over the Dead Christ (c. 1618; London, N.G.; see fig., e) are subtly reinforced by the carved central

flower motifs and corner rosettes, set on the finely punched frieze.) Ornamental techniques were

similar in both centuries, and regional characteristics persisted. Peculiar to Tuscany was the use of

mordant-gilt corner and centre arabesques on black, sometimes with the main border finished in

black and gold stripes (see fig., a). These recall the blocks of alternating light and dark stone in

Florentine window-frames and more strikingly on the façade of Siena Cathedral. The frame on

Titian’s Virgin and Child with Saints (Paris, Louvre; see fig., b) is characteristic of the more

elaborate and formal Baroque cassetta from Florence or Rome, with straight fluted and beaded

borders and, here, red tinted panels. The use of gadrooning was a typical Mannerist and Baroque

device, giving a dynamic rhythm to the frame’s structure and enhancing the focus on the subject.

Typically Florentine (and also found in Venice) is the use of a plain walnut frieze with parcel-gilt

gadrooned borders (see fig., c). The prevailing Spanish influence in Naples as well as Florence is

reflected in frames that combined—like the chiaroscuro of the paintings—boldly carved and gilt

foliate scrolls on a black frieze with a gilt gadrooned outer rail (see fig., d).

Italian architectural cassetta frames with overall carved decoration, mid-16th

century…

The decorative techniques so far discussed were generally for smaller-scale devotional and secular

pictures seen at close range in intimate surroundings. Cassetta frames for larger-scale works—

church altarpieces and historical and mythological subjects in palazzi—were more robustly

decorated with carved architectural motifs reflecting the ornamentation of the building (ceilings,

cornices and doorways), as well as larger pieces of furniture. For the purposes of classification,

patterns formed from an underlying entablature profile may be termed architectural cassetta frames

(see fig.). The luxuriantly carved Tuscan example on Sebastiano del Piombo’s Holy Family with St

John the Baptist and a Benefactor (?1517–20; London, N.G.) derives from the inner structure of the

Renaissance altarpiece (of the type seen in fig. above). The junctions of scrolling acanthus friezes

on a blue-black ground form compartments, each containing a rosette and echoing the enriched

beams and coffering of polychrome Renaissance ceilings. The ornamentation of the frieze, being

the broadest element in the section, determines the character of the frame. Two large altarpieces

22

bearing their original frames (b and c) incorporate respectively fluting and a broad guilloche, the

latter repeating contemporary Bolognese window-frames. Guilloche ornament frequently appears in

the soffits of ceiling beams, as does the continuous chain motif enriched with flowers appearing on

Jacopo Tintoretto’s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (c. 1580; Munich, Alte Pin.; see fig.,

d). This almost precisely repeats the ceiling decoration depicted in Veronese’s frescoes in the

Stanza dell’Olimpo at the Villa Barbaro, Maser, and is similar to the monumental frame on his

Mars and Venus United by Cupid (second quarter of the 16th century, New York, Met.; see fig., e),

with its five orders of carving. The stylized flattened flowers correspond with those in the Emilian

‘Albani’ pattern (c).

(v) Tondo frames.

Beside oblong frames a peculiarly Tuscan form of setting developed: the circular frame for painted

tondi, frequently of the Virgin and Child. This adapts the profiles and enrichments of the straight-

railed frame, yet it is the descendant of much older forms. Circular wreaths and abstract bands of

ornament are found in Greek vases as early as the 6th century BC; set into Roman mosaic floors;

carved on the 4th-century AD Arch of Constantine, Rome; on Byzantine and Carolingian ivory

plaques; in Anglo-Saxon and Romanesque illuminated manuscripts; and around the windows of

Gothic cathedrals. Painted roundels—with raised or punched edges—are used on altarpieces from

the 13th century and feature in architectural sculpture and wall paintings of the early Renaissance.

One of the most interesting forms, combining painted panel and gilded wooden border, is the birth

tray (desco da parto) of the 14th and 15th centuries, on which food and gifts were presented to a

new mother. At first twelve-sided, it became circular in the early 15th century, an example being

the Medici birth tray of 1449 (sold, London, Sotheby’s, 1995), ascribed to the Master of Fucecchio,

the Master of the Adimari Cassone, or Scheggia, after Domenico Veneziano. Its flat is painted with

coloured feathers, the emblem of Piero de’ Medici, between cable and reeded mouldings—just as a

cassetta would have been—and, except that it is painted on both sides, it is otherwise exactly the

same as a contemporary framed easel picture.

Filippo Brunelleschi: interior of the Pazzi Chapel (designed 1420s), Santa…

Other influences on the tondo frame are sculptural: the tomb of Leonardo Bruni (c. 1444–51;

Florence, Santa Croce) by Bernardo Rossellino popularized the stone ‘Madonna tondo’ in a plain

circular moulding, and at the same time architectural roundels designed to hold carved or

polychrome scenes appeared in Brunelleschi’s interiors. The latter worked with Luca della Robbia,

who produced enamelled terracottas for the simple round frames of the Pazzi Chapel, Santa Croce,

Florence. Della Robbia tondi from the mid-15th century onwards have extravagantly moulded,

colour-glazed frames in the form of fruit or flower garlands, almost overwhelming the modelled

plaques. These usually show the Virgin or scenes from the Nativity, the circular frame being

emblematic of eternity. The garlands are also symbolic: della Robbia’s Adoration of the Shepherds

(London, V&A) is wreathed in roses, the Virgin’s attribute; and the artist used various fruits on

other examples—pomegranates or quinces for the Resurrection, grapes for the Eucharist, apples for

the Fall and Salvation, citrons and pine for the Virgin again, and pears for Christ’s love. These

appear too on secular works: the circles of fruit between white architectural enrichments around the

23

stemme or devices used to identify the palaces of prominent families (e.g. Stemma of René

d’Anjou, c. 1470; London, V&A). Brilliantly coloured and observed, these fruits and vegetables

express, besides their religious symbolism, various enthusiasms of the later Renaissance: the

classical revival in which fruits were attributes of the Olympian gods; the concern with the natural

world in the face of scientific discoveries; the recent obsession with gardens; and finally, the power

of Neo-Platonic philosophy to interpret and transform, to cultivate the soul and make it bear fruit.

Such ideas encouraged a widespread use of gilded fruit-and-flower tondo frames in the late 15th

century (e.g. on Francesco Botticini’s Virgin and Child (the Benson Tondo); Cincinnati, OH, A.

Mus.) and the early 16th (e.g. on the Holy Family (1510–20; Florence, Accad.) by Girolamo del

Pacchia (1477–1533)). The Botticini has a garland of many small fruits with flowers and leaves

bound in a spiral ribbon and is a Florentine version found also on works by Ghirlandaio,

Franciabigio and others. The Pacchia has a looser band of fruit and pine-cones, growing from two

ribbon-bound urns at the base and meeting in a rose above the Virgin’s head; this is a form used

mainly by Sienese carvers but also by some Florentines (see 1990 exh. cat.). Both frames have rais-

de-coeur enrichments and an outer scale pattern and, like the della Robbia wreaths, both employ

fruit and flowers as attributes of the Virgin and Christ.

There are also architectural pastiglia and stucco tondo frames, closer to the deschi da parto and to

ordinary cassettas; for example a 16-sided moulding frame with pastiglia scrolling of the flat on a

Beccafumi Virgin and Child Reading (untraced; sold Nice) and a round flat border with multiple

rows of cabling and raised flower patterns on a Florentine school Virgin and Child with St John and

an Angel (16th century; London, N.G.). Like the garland frames, these are almost certainly original,

the expense of replacing a circular frame being prohibitive, and are therefore good standards for

comparisons of date and style with rectangular frames. In addition, there are rare examples that

seem to transcend any relationship with the linear frame, such as the frame of the Doni Tondo. This

was carved c. 1506–8 for the patron Agnolo Doni to frame Michelangelo’s Holy Family with St

John the Baptist (1506; Florence, Uffizi). Traditionally ascribed to the Sienese master carver

Antonio Barile (1453–1516), it has been re-attributed to the Florentine family of del Tasso, who

decorated the bridal suite where the picture hung (Cecchi, 1987; Baldi and others, 1992). It consists

of a shallow cushion between antique ornaments and is gilded and decorated with richly carved

vertebrate scrollings in which symbolic pelicans and winged bulls play. At five points, three-

dimensional polychromed heads (of Christ, two prophets and two sibyls) emerge from roundels,

possibly deriving from Ghiberti’s heads on the east doors of the Baptistery, Florence, or even from

the painted versions on frames by Cimabue and Duccio.

Even such a singular example of sculpture and design has a clear connection with the cassetta frame

and can be traced through other tondo frames, such as those on Beccafumi’s Holy Family (Florence,

Mus. Horne) and Giuliano Bugiardini’s Holy Family with St John (Turin, Gal. Sabauda). The latter

has a central flat (decorated, like the Doni Tondo, with scrollings, pelicans and grotesques) and

instead of square cassettes has analogous roundels with rosettes at four points equivalent to the

corners of an oblong frame. Similar to both the Bugiardini and Michelangelo frames is that on the

Beccafumi. This also has four roundels, from which spring heads like those on the Doni Tondo,

possibly symbolizing the four quarters of the world. Once also attributed to Barile, it may now be

dated 1533–5 and ascribed to the sculptor Lorenzo di Girolamo Donati (fl 1516–41), showing the

influence of the Doni Tondo (see Cecchi).

24

Sandro Botticelli: Madonna of the Pomegranate, tempera on panel, diam.…

Almost any profile or pattern might be adapted to a tondo frame. Two Florentine examples are

related to those luxury rectangular frames with a pierced, undercut torus moulding, laid on a plain,

painted ground: those on Filippo Lippi’s Virgin and Child (1452–3; Florence, Pitti) and Botticelli’s

Madonna of the Pomegranate (Virgin and Child with Six Angels, 1487; Florence, Uffizi). Both have

a central undulating leaf chain containing fleurs-de-lis on a blue ground. That on the Botticelli is

ascribed to the workshop of Giuliano da Maiano (see Cecchi, 1987), who had, with the del Tasso

brothers, decorated the Sala dei Gigli in the Palazzo Vecchio with the identical motif of lilies—an

emblem of Florence since the early 14th century—in a leaf chain. The Botticelli and the earlier

Lippi may both have hung in these chambers as part of an integrated decorative scheme reflecting

the status and wealth of the city.

Tondi continued to be made, although less frequently after the late Renaissance. They revived in

popularity during the 18th century, when oval forms became common for portraits, but otherwise

circular frames are found as rare variants of particular styles. For example, those on Baldassare

Franceschini’s pair of allegorical figures (Florence, Mus. Bardini) are Mannerist frames, using

tongued leaf ornaments boldly across the main cavetto to give the effect of a stylized daisy.

(vi) Compound profile frames.

Italian compound profile frames, 16th century: (a) Venetian frame with…

The entablature and torus profiles discussed form the basis of cassetta and tondi frames.

Concurrently a number of patterns (see fig.) developed, based on the combination of enriched

architectural mouldings—ogee, convex torus, concave scotia or cavetto etc—each creating different

degrees of depth and movement. A typical Venetian 16th-century ogee profile frame (a) has a

ribbon-and-leaf sight with a continuous undulating pattern of bunches of fruit alternating with floral

scrolls. The play of light is further enhanced by the flower heads projecting from the outside edge,

enlivening the silhouette.

Veronese’s gigantic canvas (2.4×4.1 m) of the Supper at Emmaus (c. 1560) has a classic

architectural compound profile frame (b) with a central raised torus of spiralling leaves bordered by

a leaf-carved ogee and, symbolically, an inner moulding of scallop shells, alternating face-up and

face-down. In antiquity the scallop shell was the attribute of Venus (see Botticelli’s Birth of Venus,

1484; Florence, Uffizi); but in Renaissance art it also identifies the pilgrim and is thus worn by

Christ in Veronese’s painting. The original frame for the Last Supper (c. 1530; Memphis, TN,

25

Brooks Mus. A.) by Tommaso di Stefano (c. 1495–1564) is a Tuscan variant carved with shells in

parcel-gilt walnut. Many Venetian frames have shells as a symbol of the maritime republic. A

superb ogee moulding frame, with alternating shells and winged cherubs, surrounds Titian’s

Education of Cupid (Rome, Gal. Borghese).

The waveband ornament known as strigillation, deriving from 3rd-century AD Roman sarcophagi,

was also employed in frames to great effect. The faceted surfaces of this near-abstract device

provided a rapid and eye-catching movement of light; see, for instance, the frame (c) on Giovanni

Battista Moroni’s A Man and a Boy (c. 1570; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). This striking ornament

appealed to Mannerist designers and forms the entire surface decoration of a rare surviving

example—original to the picture—on Francesco Salviati’s Portrait of a Man (c. 1550–55; Malibu,

CA, Getty Mus.).

4. Mannerist.

The development of the compound profile introduces a transitional stage between Renaissance and

Mannerist forms as well as foreshadowing later Baroque patterns. The structures and aims of

Mannerism, subverting the classicism of the High Renaissance, are well expressed in the rich,

energetic rhythms and imaginative use of ornament in the picture frame. The interior of the Palazzo

Vecchio, Florence, partly decorated by Giuliano da Maiano, was a fertile source of Mannerist

elements. The dramatic convex double flutes of the white and gold stucco frames set into the cove

and walls of Francesco I de’ Medici’s studiolo there reappear on countless picture frames, such as a

Tuscan parcel-gilt walnut frame (see fig., d) with cabled fluting returning over a deep undercut

scotia.

A superb example of the Mannerist interpretation of ornament for dynamic effect appears on the

contemporary Tuscan frame now on Pontormo’s celebrated Portrait of a Halberdier (c. 1537;

Malibu, CA, Getty Mus.). A reverse parcel-gilt walnut frame dating from the second quarter of the

16th century, it uses a theatrical enrichment of raking convex within concave tongues running from

centre to corner of each rail. The effect is of a sharp spatial recession, pulling the eye towards the

arrogantly poised head and abrupt foreshortening of the subject. Both painting and border play with

the visual effects resulting from strong and opposed diagonals, in a typically Mannerist

exaggeration of Classical motifs. Similar effects are seen in buildings and furniture of the time: the

cornice of the Map Room in the Palazzo Vecchio features a gadrooned moulding in walnut. Tuscan

cassoni of the mid- to later 16th century are neither painted nor gilt but covered with vast swooping

hooks and curved flutes. These echo Mannerist architecture, notably that by Michelangelo (stairs of

the Biblioteca Laurenziana, c. 1524–34, completed 1550s), Bernardo Buontalenti (trompe l’oeil

altar steps in S Stefano) and Bartolomeo Ammanati (façade of S Gaetano; all Florence). The deep

volutes seen in these buildings reappear on frames, such as that now on Agnolo Bronzino’s portrait

of Giovanni de’ Medici (1551; Oxford, Ashmolean). The raking, hooked outer moulding reinforces

the diagonal lines implied between the grotesque masks in each corner and the cartouche ‘frames’

around the painted inset panels, both features of Mannerist architecture.

26

Italian Mannerist aedicular frames, 16th century: (a) Venetian or ?Lombard…

The creation of aedicular picture and mirror frames in the Mannerist style offered architects and

designers endless opportunity for improvisation. As one-off architectural experiments in miniature,

they became a fertile medium of expression, allowing more flexibility than the fixed frames in

actual buildings. They developed mainly in Tuscany from around the 1540s and later in the Veneto

and Lombardy. Florentine examples were generally walnut, parcel-gilt walnut or polychrome and

often related to the stone pedimented windows set into the light stuccoed walls of Mannerist

buildings, such as Michelangelo’s Biblioteca Laurenziana. This dramatic subversion of Classical

structures is seen by comparing examples (see fig.) with their Renaissance predecessors (see

above). Conventional pilasters, columns, capitals and bases have disappeared or become greatly

simplified.

Italian Mannerist aedicular frames, 16th century: (a) Venetian or ?Lombard…

One of the finest surviving large-scale aedicular frames surrounds Rosso Fiorentino’s Dead Christ

(1525–6; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). Here the contrasts of parcel gilding and the eccentricity of the

enrichments form a satisfyingly dramatic foil to the Mannerist use of colour and line in the painting;

similarly the sensuous contours of the more curvilinear frame motifs echo the spiralling forms of

Mannerist compositions. Drawings for frames designed by Ammanati for the Riccardi Library,

Florence, show the open pediments, eared silhouettes, lateral volutes or caryatids and scrolled

aprons (see fig., b) that characterize the frame of Rosso’s work, and also that on Michelangelo’s

Entombment (London, N.G.). Such frames negate the idea of the frame as window because of their

great decorativeness; this rejection of illusion is repeated in contemporary paintings through the

Mannerist artist’s elimination of ‘real’ space and depth and the distortion of form in a search for

ideal truth, pure emotion or dynamic composition. (The same denial of illusion appears in later

Mannerist architecture: Michelangelo’s Porta Pia (1561–4), Rome, incorporates blind first-storey

‘windows’ in eared frames with side volutes and pediments of combined swan’s-neck and

segmental form.)

(i) The ‘Sansovino’ frame.

Jacopo Sansovino’s work in Venice on the Libreria Sansoviniana (designed 1537), the façade of S

Giuliano (1553) and other buildings became the focus for a group of Venetian artists whose style

brought together certain elements of Mannerism, producing the most characteristic of Mannerist

picture frames. Of these elements one is Sansovino’s manipulation of architectural chiaroscuro; one

is his use of such Mannerist features as the peltlike cartouches with scrolling clasps at S Giuliano.

27

Another is the Moorish strapwork motif, which entered Europe c. 1500 via Venice; yet another is

related to the Mannerist use of this motif by such designers as Baldassare Peruzzi. The exuberant

stucco interiors of Giulio Romano (Mantua, Pal. Te, mid-1520s) were an influence, as was the work

of Rosso and Francesco Primaticcio (Fontainebleau, from 1530), where stucco strapwork was first

used three-dimensionally. These threads were woven together in Venetian interiors such as the

Council Chambers of the Doge’s Palace by, for example, the stuccoists Alessandro Vittoria and

Marco del Moro, and the wood-carver Cristoforo Sorte. They can be seen in the vast stucco ceiling

frames, with their geometrical parcel-gilt mouldings, the voluted clasps that curve across these

mouldings and the curling, peltlike outer cartouches.

Italian Mannerist aedicular frames, 16th century: (a) Venetian or ?Lombard…

The ‘Sansovino’ picture frames that followed in Venice and Florence—the first to be identified by

association with a name—date from the mid-16th century (see fig.) and were at first a development

of the Mannerist aedicule. Like this, they begin with a lateral symmetry but end, in their typical

incarnation, as four identical rails. They became so popular in Venice as to be adopted as a ‘gallery’

frame. An example of the gilded aedicula frames Palma Vecchio’s Mars, Venus and Cupid (priv.

col., on loan to Southampton, C.A.G.); loaded with cherubs’ heads, floral festoons and deep voluted

bands that curl and clasp each other, it has the weight of a stonework cartouche. Other early

examples, such as the adapted parcel-gilt frame now on Veronese’s Portrait of a Gentleman

(Malibu, CA, Getty Mus.), have the grotesquerie and inelegance of northern Mannerist furniture,

with their caryatids and crammed surfaces. In the versions that are symmetrical on all four sides this

inelegance is lost, and the heavy black scrolls with their gilded highlights and fanned rustication

form the perfect complement to 16th-century portraits of men in gold-trimmed armour . The

elements of the ‘Sansovino’ frame were diffused through such engravings as Giulio di Antonio

Bonasone’s Amori sdegni e gelosie di giunone (1568) and Federico Zuccaro’s Recueils de divers

cartels.

(ii) Auricular and leaf frames.

The interconnection of Mannerism and the Baroque, with all their oppositions and contradictions, is

fully expressed in the Auricular style and particularly in its application to frames. This style, a

confection of melting cartilaginous and marine shapes, masks, leaves, scrolls and metamorphosing

human forms, was developed by silversmiths in Holland and Bohemia c. 1600, and from the output

of engraved Auricular designs, especially from the 1620s, it is reasonable to assume that frames in

the style would have been produced in the first half of the 17th century. They would have formed

appropriate settings for portraits of the prosperous bourgeoisie: for example merchants, particularly

in Venice and Holland, whose connection with the sea is emblematized in marine forms. The

earliest surviving Auricular frames, however, date from 1654 and are Dutch (see §V below); it was

not until the collective reframing by Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici in the later 17th century of his

works by Titian, Bronzino, Rembrandt and Caravaggio that Italian versions appear (Mosco, 1982,

1987). In the frames commissioned by Leopoldo the marine element is particularly emphasized: the

broad frame on Dosso Dossi’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Florence, Uffizi) has a heavy reverse

rabbet on which fishlike forms curl, dissolving into cartilage, conches and seaweed; the corners are

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set with pelts or amorphous masks, segmented tails and voluted eyes. There is also the amazing

frame of pleated shell forms and spiny tails on Veronese’s Holy Family with St Barbara (Florence,

Uffizi), where putti holding the instruments of the Crucifixion emerge from corners carved with

vertebrae and monstrous snouts. This develops from the Mannerist fondness for shell motifs and

masks. (Buontalenti’s work for the Medici in the later 16th century includes a grotto, as well as pre-

Auricular ornament.)

Others of Leopoldo’s frames—an early ‘gallery’ or ‘livery’ framing, lending unity to the

collection—are related to early 17th-century Bolognese and Florentine leaf frames (g pls 100–103,

112–16). There is a fine collection of later versions in the Palazzo Davia-Barghellini, Bologna (see

Sabatelli, Colle and Zambrano, 1992, pls 70–72). Leaf frames emerged from the Mannerist

development of the ‘moulding frame’; they have a looser, rolling style that is organic and Baroque

rather than Mannerist and abstract. They are formed entirely of acanthus-derived foliage, cross-cut

on a chunky reverse profile in the Bolognese style, or pierced and scrolling in the Florentine. Many

of Leopoldo’s larger frames are expanded into pierced foliate borders incorporating stylized

aegricanes and mascarons, as on Dosso Dossi’s Stregoneria (c. 1540; Florence, Uffizi) and Vasari’s

Toilet of Venus (Stuttgart, Staatsgal.). These are similar to Auricular cartouches by Stefano della

Bella, who worked for the Medici in the 1630s, 1650s and 1660s.

Such frames are powerful settings for the Cardinal’s Renaissance and Baroque paintings (more than

half of which were Venetian). They glorify the patron, the picture and its surroundings but at the

same time create a competition between picture and frame, which the latter often wins. They could,

however, very well hold their own in the Baroque painted and stuccoed interiors of the Palazzo

Pitti, Florence, enlarged by Ammanati and Giulio Parigi and decorated by Pietro da Cortona. There

are other styles connected both to the Medici and to the leaf frames, blending elements of

Mannerism, Baroque and the Auricular, and feeding a generalized contemporary taste less eccentric

than that of Cardinal Leopoldo. A weighty version of the cassetta, for instance, with plain rails, a

leaf torus or multiple architectural mouldings, all enriched by corners and centres of Mannerist

masks or scrolling Auricular cartouches, frames Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (c. 1484; Florence,

Uffizi) and Bernardo Strozzi’s portrait of Bishop Alvise Grimani (Washington, DC, N.G.A.).

5. Baroque.

Italian Baroque frames with bolection profile, 17th century: (a) north…

Apart from these sophisticated Mannerist and Baroque openwork leaf frames with their irregular

silhouettes, the majority of 17th-century Italian frames were straight-sided bolection mouldings,

consisting of ogee, torus and astragal sections with varied leaf-and-bud enrichments (see fig.). In

contrast to the earlier generation of flat section cassetta frames—which also continued into the 17th

century—these reverse rebate profiles project the picture plane forward from the wall surface. The

spectator’s eye is then drawn into the illusory depth of the picture’s composition. Such frames, with

their evocation of three dimensions, rich decoration and focusing power, exemplify the Baroque

style. Although the patterns in general appeared widespread, regional affinities can be detected.

Probably in use in the earlier 17th century is pastiglia from north Italy (a); and then gadrooning with

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outer leaf spiral from Rome or central Italy (b); spiralled leaves, often with punchwork, from Emilia

and the north (c); and overall stylized acanthus with or without a leaf torus, from Tuscany and

Emilia (d). Large-scale Baroque pictures, such as altarpieces, were given corner and/or centre

emphasis with bold acanthus cartouches, fine examples being found in Bologna (e). By contrast, the

basic bolection moulding was widely used in its most economical unadorned form (g): either gilded,

with or without punchwork, parcel-gilt or marbled. In the late 17th century it was applied, mainly

all gilt, as a ‘house frame’ virtually throughout the Galleria di Palazzo Spinola and the Palazzo

Rosso, both in Genoa, where it may be seen alongside a few versions enriched with fruit, leaves and

husks (f), which also occur in Lombardy.

The Baroque interiors for which these frames were designed expressed the splendour of the 17th-

century Medici courts and the ‘secularized’ papal courts of Paul V, Urban VIII and Alexander VII,

just as the courts of Charles I of England and Louis XIV of France were celebrated through a

propagandizing art. Such patrons saw encouragement of the arts as an attribute of royalty and an

enhancement of their prestige; for this reason, and because the Counter-Reformation had hobbled

artistic freedom, artists were more in thrall than the great Renaissance artists had been to their

employers, and the latter exerted more influence on the works created for them. Rudolf II of

Bohemia and Leopoldo de’ Medici both influenced, to differing extents, the development and

course of the Auricular style, Leopoldo more specifically with respect to frames. The Baroque was

nurtured particularly at the papal courts, and the harnessing of all arts there to enhance prestige led

both to a unity of style—painting, frame and setting were all of a piece—and to a versatility of

talent: Bernini designed buildings, interiors, sculpture, silverwork, cartouches and occasional frame

patterns (e.g. a richly carved, gilded frame with Baroque fluting and acanthus for a marble relief

executed by his son Domenico Bernini). At the same time, the pressure of patronage moved the

whole process—and thus the artistic centre—inexorably from Florence towards Rome and the

Vatican, so that the great paintings and frames of the later Baroque period tend to be Roman rather

than Tuscan or Bolognese.

The growing prestige of France was also important; as the national focus moved within Italy to

Rome, so the international focus was increasingly moving from Italy to France. This is discernible

in the French-derived frame profiles that appeared in northern Italy (Piedmont was actually ruled by

France), where hitherto the influence had been all but exclusively the other way. French variants of

Louis XIII and Louis XIV profiles appear in Italy in the late 17th century and early 18th, with a

main torus and small ogee separated by a narrow scotia; they can be plain, engraved, enriched with

strapwork on a hatched ground (also French) or naturalized with Baroque centre/corner cartouches.

They were used for architectural mouldings as well as for frames. Examples of these types of frame

can be found on Matthias Stom’s Adoration of the Shepherds (Turin, Pal. Madama), Giovanni

Benedetto Castiglione’s Hagar and the Angel (Genoa, Pal. Rosso) and Jacopo Bassano’s Il piccolo

mercato (pair; Turin, Gal. Sabauda). The Galleria Sabauda in Turin has a large group of frames that

are Italian interpretations of the later Louis XIV and Régence style; they amount almost to a house

style. It also holds some enriched Piedmontese variants, in black and gold, or with gadrooned rails,

as on Orazio Gentileschi’s Annunciation (1622–3; Turin, Gal. Sabauda).

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Italian ‘Salvator Rosa’ frames, 18th century: (a) Roman plain moulding…

Similar to this ‘Louis XIII’ Piedmontese profile is perhaps the best known of the Italian frame

types, most typical of the Roman Baroque in its richness, symmetry and classicism. Known as both

the ‘Salvator Rosa’ and the ‘Carlo Maratta’ pattern, it has a severely linear pattern of stepped ogee

and convex mouldings around a broad scotia. It dates from the late 17th century, remaining popular

throughout the 18th and into the 19th. It is common in English interiors around paintings acquired

on the Grand Tour, either in an original Italian version (as at Burghley House, Cambs) or as an

English copy. It was the most versatile and widely produced pattern employed on all categories of

work, from church altarpieces to miniatures. As might be expected, according to use and cost, the

main theme had several variations, each with a regional change of key (see fig.).

In its purest form, where the moulding is entirely unenriched, the profile may be seen to derive from

the section of the base of an Ionic or Corinthian column (a). These plain versions were commonest

from c. 1680 to c. 1750 in most of Italy, but especially in Rome, where the great papal collections

were reframed en masse in the 18th century. Here the ‘Salvator Rosa’ became the ‘house frame’ for

the majority of pictures in the Barberini, Doria-Pamphili, Colonna, Spada and other collections.

Most were gilded overall, but they are often found in silver leaf or—for contrast and economy—

with the back edge and scotia painted in yellow ochre or raw sienna. Giovanni Paolo Panini, the

great topographer of Roman views and interiors, faithfully depicted the Maratta frame in galleries

crammed with paintings, as in the Gallery of Cardinal Valenti-Gonzaga (1749; Hartford, CT,

Wadsworth Atheneum). Panini himself might have some claim to name the pattern, his own

canvases virtually all bearing ‘Salvator Rosa’ frames.

Many of the frames Panini illustrated show the most regular enriched version, having finely cut

acanthus leaves alternating with tongues (or shields) on the sight edge, with a delicate ribbon or leaf

spiral next to the outer rail (b). The back edge could be a plain ogee, or carved with egg-and-tongue,

or (as in b) with stopped-fluting and leaves, a motif generally found in works by Pompeo Batoni,

the portraitist of the English Grand Tourist. The variant appears on the set of ten Evangelists

painted for the Marenda family gallery at Forlí. The most elaborate variation, as popular in England

as Italy (see §IV), has an ogee moulding of acanthus set in the front scotia (c). The combination of

runs of carved leaf, ribbon, beading and egg mouldings alternating with plain gilt surfaces creates

an opulent effect, wrapping the pictures in a rhythmical play of light.

Further patterns were developed by carving the upper convex moulding (d–f). The most dynamic or

Baroque effect employed gadrooning, often parcel gilt and occasionally combined with pierced

scrolling foliage set at corners and centres of the scotia, usually for portraiture (d). The use of

cabochons set in C-scrolls alternating with flowers, together with complementary leaf and spiral

mouldings, exemplifies the richness and exquisite detail that characterizes Roman Maratta frames

(e). At their most luxurious, these resemble metalwork more than wood-carving and were surely

related to the design and production of ormolu frames and miniatures from such Roman workshops

as that of the Valadier family. The tradition of pierced-gilt applied carving, or metalwork, on walnut

mouldings dates to late 17th- and early 18th-century Roman and Genoese Baroque frames and

furniture, examples being the exuberant mirror frame in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the

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showcase or scarabattolo in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. An example of this Baroque

version of the Maratta, combining the pierced applied ornaments of (d) with the cabochons in (e) on

a reverse profile, surrounds the Flea Hunt (Paris, Louvre) by Giuseppe Maria Crespi. The use of

elaborately carved applied pierced foliage in the Maratta frame is seen to greatest effect in the

spandrels for shaped canvases, such as Francesco Albani’s lunette Figures in a Classical Landscape

(Rome, Gal. Doria-Pamphili) and the eye-shaped modello by Giovanni Battista Gaulli of the

Adoration of the Lamb (San Francisco, CA Pal. Legion of Honor) for a ceiling in the Palazzo

Barberini, Rome. The third variant with a carved upper rail is generally associated with Neapolitan

frames (f). Here, overlapping leaves, running out from bound centres, are generally combined with

inner acanthus-leaf and outer egg-and-dart ornaments, usually finished in lacquered silver leaf

(mecca). This pattern, with its more distinctly Neo-classical motif, also appears in Germany and

northern Europe.

In a delightful and typically Emilian treatment of the plain Maratta section, the sight edge is

adorned with a shimmering motif known as labbretto (‘little lip’). This scalloped effect, attributed

to the Bolognese carver Pietro Roppa, is both decorative and simple, with a Rococo sense of

movement. The pattern is found mainly on Emilian pictures: several can be seen in the Palazzo

Davia–Barghellini, Bologna, and many originals survive on works by Gaetano Gandolfi (see fig.,

g). A fine undisturbed pair surround Triumph and The Funeral (both Nantes, Mus. B.-A.) by the

Bolognese-trained painter Nicola Bertuzzi.

6. Rococo.

This period of transition from the Baroque to the Rococo ended the primacy of Italian art; with the

building of Versailles (from 1678), France had become the centre of European art, and art itself

more homogeneous. The integrity of style begun in the Baroque period is evident in the continuing

correspondence between frames, furniture and carved or stuccoed interior decorations, particularly

in such centres as Parma, Venice, Florence, Bologna and Rome. Italian Rococo framing follows the

general development of the style in the country. In Rome, which ignored the Rococo, the classical

Maratta was the most common. It was in the north, with its nearness to France (particularly the

Veneto), and in the extreme south that Rococo forms built on the tendencies preceding the style:

elements of the Auricular, the curvilinear detailing of Francesco Borromini’s and Guarino Guarini’s

architecture, the asymmetry of Giacomo Serpotta’s work in Palermo, the use of C- and S-scrolls in

early 18th-century Emilian carving, and so on. French strapwork ornament in the style of Jean

Berain I and versions of Louis XV frames soon appeared, but Italian designs include an original and

refined use of the style, with rocaille or flower carvings lighter than the most delicate French

Rococo.

Venetian Rococo frames, c. 1715–65: (a) ‘Longhi’ pattern frame with…

Three principal patterns developed in the Veneto that mark the progress to full Rococo style (see

fig.). The simplest, which may be seen as a Venetian equivalent to the Bolognese labbretto frame,

appears almost exclusively on the small-scale portraits and genre subjects by Pietro Longhi (a).

Invariably of a narrow ogee section with gadrooned back, a pierced scrolling acanthus leaf curls

32

back from the sight edge. The pattern also occurs on works by the Guardi and as a shaped boiserie-

like moulding in such works as Giambattista Tiepolo’s ceiling decoration (c. 1755–60) for the

Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice (reconstructed, Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.).

The most typical and versatile design—the so-called ‘Canaletto’ frame—dates from the first quarter

of the 18th century (b) and was developed from the same ogee section as the ‘Longhi’ pattern with a

gadrooned back, having corner and centre sections carved in low relief with undulating stems and

flowers on a punched ground. The remaining panels were burnished and are thus often described as

mirrors. Simple in concept, the design created a pronounced movement of light around the subject

and, when embellished with elaborate pierced rocaille carving at top and sides, became a standard

frame for mirrors themselves, as in the example (c. 1725; New York, Met.) from the Palazzo

Sagredo. The same motifs occur in the edges and aprons of contemporary console tables (for

variations on these Venetian frames, see 1993 exh. cat.).

The flowering of Venetian Rococo can be seen in the frame now on Michele Giovanni Marieschi’s

View of the Grand Canal with S Maria della Salute (Madrid, Mus. Thyssen–Bornemisza; see fig.,

c). Although the inner edge and back recall the previous models, the surface here flows with peltlike

rocaille panels bordered by continuously swept asymmetric scrolls retaining elements of earlier

Auricular Mannerism. The liquid Venetian light is perfectly reflected in such melting sculptural

borders. The apotheosis of the Rococo style is a magnificent frame (see Sabatelli, Colle and

Zambrano, 1992, pl. 79) by the Venetian master carver Antonio Corradini. Commissioned c. 1775

by Count Perulli as a gift of gratitude to the Procurator Pietro Barberigo and gilded with two shades

of leaf, this vast (c. 4.5×3.0 m) and flamboyant work is a compendium of Rococo ornament, given a

peculiarly Italianate air by its use of slender swept rails and openwork. It looks back to earlier forms

in the Barberigo device supported by putti at the crest, and in the figures of six Cardinal Virtues at

the sides; but the delicacy and asymmetry is innately Rococo, while the treatment of the figures

themselves anticipates Neo-classicism.

The Rococo style in northern Italy comprised a number of light-hearted, eccentric variations on the

Louis XV frame, with engraved flowers on a hatched ground, wildly scrolling swept sides, striated

rocaille hollows and asymmetric acanthus crests in the manner of Andrea Brustolon, as in the frame

on Francisco Vieira Portuense’s Diana and her Nymphs (Parma, G. N.). Such motifs are found in

abundance in the great palaces of Piedmont and Liguria. The sumptuous interiors of the palazzi

Reale, Stupinigi and Chiablese in Turin and the Palazzo Reale in Genoa combine superb shaped

Rococo picture and mirror boiseries with corresponding independent frames, all flamboyantly

carved in the French taste popular at the time of Charles Emanuel III (reg 1730–73).

7. Neo-classical and Empire.

The Neo-classical movement, although developed in and diffused from France, was actually

catalysed in Italy. The Roman dislike of Rococo prettiness and frivolity, and the classical

preferences that made the Maratta so popular there, encouraged in the 1740s the design of ‘antique’

ornament by students at the Académie de France in Rome (see §III). The work of Piranesi was also

influential, and the systematic excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii from c. 1748 boosted

interest in the Classical. In the last third of the 18th century, Italian furniture in the Neo-classical

style began to appear; and then in northern Italy frames in the same, international, French-based

design. Examples with characteristic oval format and architrave profile are found on the portrait of

Maria Luisa of Savoy (Genoa, Pal. Reale) and on the portrait of Giuseppe Placido, Son of Victor

Amadeus III (Piedmontese school, 1760; Stupinigi, Mus. A. & Ammobil.), which has a magnificent

fluted trophy frame opulently carved by Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo with an eagle, snake and sword

festooned with laurel branches and garlands.

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Italian Neo-classical and Empire scotia frames, late 18th century–early 19th:…

Because of the prolonged use of the Maratta frame, Neo-classical patterns (see fig.) developed later

in Italy than France. A new standard section emerged, based on the Maratta but wider and more

severely classical with a broader, deeper scotia and straight back edge. The upper step was

invariably carved in egg-and-dart or leaf ornament, with a moulded bead sight edge (a). Apart from

this beading, the tradition of hand-carved ornament survived in Italian workshops far longer than in

France and elsewhere. The contrast may be observed in the application of finely carved acanthus

leaves in the scotia of some of the more de luxe gallery frames on works by Italian Old Masters in

the Musée Condé, Château de Chantilly (b). A more economical pattern was employed as a ‘house

style’ for the set of ten Battle Scenes (Turin, Gal. Sabauda) by Jan Huchtenburgh (1647–1733). This

profile is found predominantly in Lombardy (many examples in the Brera, Milan), Florence and

Rome. Less frequent, and reminiscent of English frames, is the use of fluting with a feather or leaf

moulding (c).

The gusto greco was briefly important; but although Italy was no longer giving contemporary

leadership in style to Europe, it was fast becoming the European repository of archaeological

references. Thus, when most of Italy was annexed by Napoleon in 1796–7, a Roman Neo-classicism

triumphed and—in the form of the Consulate, Directoire and Empire styles—spread from the court

of France back to that of Italy (see §III). Examples of French-inspired Neo-classical-style gallery

reframing are seen in two sets of four tondi by Francesco Albani. In the Four Elements (1625–8;

Turin, Gal. Sabauda; see fig., d), the scotia profile is bordered with laurel, repeated in the spandrel

with a garland festooned with olive branches. Significantly, the ornament of this de luxe set is

crisply moulded, showing the mastering of French techniques. The four Loves of Venus and Diana

(c. 1617; Rome, Gal. Borghese) have French Empire frames with palmettes and similar olive-

branch spandrels.

The ogee profile, with minimal applied composition corners (sometimes with centres or continuous

decoration) of scrolling acanthus or palmettes, is typical of the Empire style, as seen in Mauro

Gandolfi’s Self-portrait with a Lute (Bologna, Pin. N.). It constitutes the vanguard of the mass-

produced frame, used as a gallery-framing from the early 19th century (like the Medici Auricular

frame in the 17th century and the Maratta frame in the 18th). It signals the rise of a bourgeois

picture-buying public, given wealth by the industrial revolution but still unable to afford hand-

carved frames for their paintings or prints. It is in some senses the nadir of framemaking in Italy, as

elsewhere; the use of plaster or composition-moulded ornament caused a sharp diminution in the

production of carved frames and the numbers of those making them. The boxwood moulds,

exquisitely sculpted in reverse with the vocabulary of the ornamentalist, are among the more

aesthetic products of this era.

8. 19th and 20th centuries.

Recovery was gradual during the 19th century, but the trend for artist-designed frames, which began

in Britain in the 1850s and on the Continent in the 1870s, slightly restored the situation, aided by

the thrust for survival of the craft itself. Florence remained a centre for historicizing frames, which

34

were often still hand-carved by such sculptors as Francesco Morini and Luigi Frullini, who

produced finely executed examples in the Renaissance Revival style (g pls 401–3). Neo-Mannerist

and Neo-Baroque designs were also produced (e.g. the 20th-century version of a 16th-century

Emilian eared frame; see Sabatelli, Colle and Zambrano, 1992, pl. 51). Nineteenth-century Baroque

Revival patterns (see Baldi and others, 1992, pl. 172) can be seen, in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, for

example, in the pierced and undercut scrolling leaf frame on Giovanni Fattori’s Sheep Jumping. In

the 19th century British artists were also clients for a skill that had all but disappeared at home. For

the last quarter of the century the ‘second generation’ Pre-Raphaelites, including John Melhuish

Strudwick (1849–1937), Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Evelyn De Morgan and G. F. Watts, imported

carved Florentine frames in traditional patterns for their work. These were either cassettas enriched

with candelabra and arabesques, or torus frames, the central, sometimes pierced, moulding

surrounded by multiple rows of ornament.

The contemporary designs produced by 19th-century British and French artists had few counterparts

in Italy, and there seems to have been little original native design in the 19th century until the

arrival of Symbolism and Art Nouveau (known as the Stile floreale or Stile Liberty in Italy). Liberty

designers were creating Art Nouveau interiors for Italy in the 1890s, and by 1899 the Esposizione

Internazionale d’Arte Decorativa, Turin, finally mounted in 1902, was conceived, with entries by

the British Walter Crane and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Belgian Victor Horta and such

Italians as Eugenio Quarti and Carlo Bugatti. This stimulated the design of such frames as that on

the portrait of Signora Bruno Pagliano (Florence, Pitti) by Edoardo Gelli (1852–1933). Influenced

by repoussé metalwork, such as Liberty’s silver and pewter mirror frames, and almost certainly by

the copper frame devised by William Holman Hunt for his painting May Morning on Magdalen

Tower (1888–91; Port Sunlight, Lady Lever A.G.; see §IV), Gelli’s frame is typical of Art Nouveau

design. Based on a cassetta-like form with a large flat, wider at the top and base than at the sides, it

is decorated in relief with mermaids at the bottom, waterlilies along the top and swimming carp

down the sides. The watery background is emphasized by being silvered, while the reliefs are

picked out in gold. Here, the roots of Art Nouveau in the Auricular and Rococo styles are revealed.

The frame’s suitability to the society portrait it contains is less clear.

Bugatti produced mirror and picture frames for his interiors, which moved from the Stile Liberty

towards Art Deco and the Machine Age; an example of an Art Deco frame, with relief lozenges on

a stained bare wood ground, can be seen on Giacomo Balla’s Borghetto Stream (1938; Rome,

G.N.A. Mod.). Balla also, like the Romanian Arthur Segal, used the frame as part of the picture

surface, symbolically liberating his dynamic Futuristic images from the constraints of a retaining

border (see 1995 exh. cat., pp. 228–9). Generally, however, 20th-century collections of

contemporary Italian art—like French and British ones—display five main framing types. These are

antique frames (often Louis XIV) or modern copies, frequently stripped of their gilding or colour-

washed; 19th-century historicizing styles; late 19th- or 20th-century stained or polished wooden

frames of austerely simple profiles; collectors’ house frames; and modernist frames. The stained

wooden frame is international, anonymous and basic to a degree; characteristic of the Bloomsbury

Group in England, it can be found in all countries and settings of the period. It derives from the

early Netherlandish wooden setting, with a profile composed of deep bevels and flats, or an ogee

section, as can be seen, for example, on Elisabeth Chaplin’s Landscape (1907; Florence, Pitti) and

on works (Rome, G.N.A. Mod.) by Umberto Boccioni. It provides a plain, wide transitionary border

between picture and wall and is applied to all genres of work, from portrait to still-life. Examples of

the collector’s frame can be seen in the Mattioli private collection, Milan, on such paintings as

Boccioni’s Materia and Gino Severini’s Blue Dancer (1912). Modernist frames include a hotch-

potch of settings: late 20th-century mass-produced mouldings of wood, metal or perspex; and non-

frames—strips of plywood nailed to the outer edge of the canvas solely as a protective measure, or

shadow-boxes that reveal the entire naked canvas while still ironically isolating it from the

spectator’s world (e.g. Lucio Fontana: Spatial Concept—Expectations, 1959; Roberto Melli:

35

Composition, 1918–19; both Rome, G.N.A. Mod.). Alberto Magnelli’s Workers on the Cart (1914;

Paris, Pompidou) is an instance of the frame surviving as a minuscule black moulding, outlining the

painting in the way the flat areas of colours within the picture are themselves outlined and thus

providing a last rare example of correspondence between the work of art and its setting.

Bibliography

C. Cennini: Il libro dell’arte (MS.; c. 1390); ed. F. Brunellli (Vicenza, 1971); Eng. trans., ed. D. V.

Thompson, as The Craftsman’s Handbook: Il libro dell’arte (New Haven, 1933/R New York, 1960)

M. Guggenheim: Le cornici italiane dalla meta del secolo XV allo scorio del XVI (Milan, 1897)

W. von Bode: ‘Bilderrahmen in alter und neuer Zeit’, Pan, iv (1898–9), pp. 243–56

E. Bock: Florentinische und venezianische Bilderrahmen (Munich, 1902)

G. M. Ellwood and A. A. Braun: ‘Italian Frames of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’,

Connoisseur, lxxxiii (1929), pp. 205–11

M. Hauptmann: Der Tondo: Ursprung, Bedeutung und Geschichte des italienischen Rundbildes in

Relief und Malerei (Frankfurt am Main, 1936)

G. Morazzoni: Le cornici veneziane (Milan, 1940)

G. Morazzoni: Le cornici bolognese (Milan, 1953)

M. Cämmerer-George: Die Rahmung der toskanischen Altarbilder im Trecento (Strasbourg, 1966)

J. White: ‘Measurement, Design and Carpentry in Duccio’s Maestà’, A. Bull., lv (1973), pp. 334–

66

E. Fahy: ‘Les Cadres d’origines des retables florentins du Louvre’, Rev. Louvre, 26 (1976), pp. 6–

14

Italienische Bilderrahmen des 14.–18. Jahrhunderts (exh. cat., Munich, Alte Pin., 1976)

C. Gilbert: ‘Peintres et menuisiers au début de la renaissance italienne’, Rev. A., 37 (1977), pp. 9–

28 [18 figs]

M. Mosco: ‘La Galleria Palatina: Il quadro e la cornice’, La città degli Uffizi (exh. cat., Florence,

Uffizi, 1982), pp. 71–83

F. G. Conzen and G. Dietrich: Bilderrahmen: Stil—Verwendung—Material (Munich, 1983)

P. Mitchell: ‘Italian Picture Frames, 1500–1825: A Brief Survey’, Furn. Hist., 20 (1984), pp. 18–27

[30 figs]

T. J. Newbery: ‘Towards an Agreed Nomenclature for Italian Picture Frames’, Int. J. Mus. Mgmt &

Cur., iv (1985), pp. 119–28 [12 figs]

R. Foster and P. Tudor-Craig: The Secret Life of Paintings (London, 1986)

36

A. Cecchi: ‘Les Cadres ronds de la renaissance florentine’, Rev. A., 76 (1987), pp. 21–24

M. Mosco: ‘Les Cadres de Leopold de Medicis’, Rev. A., 76 (1987), pp. 37–40

Italian Renaissance Frames (exh. cat. by T. J. Newbery, G. Bisacca and L . Kanter, New York,

Met., 1990) [108 figs]

Antiche cornici italiane dal cinquecento al settecento (exh. cat. by M. Mosco, Tokyo, Affari Cent.

ICE, 1991)

R. Baldi and others: La cornice fiorentina e senese: Storia e tecniche di restauro (Florence, 1992)

F. Sabatelli, E. Colle and P. Zambrano: La cornice italiana dal rinascimento al neoclassico (Milan,

1992) [232 figs]

H. Locher: ‘Das gerahmte Altarbild im Umkreis Brunelleschis: Zum Realitätscharakter des

Renaissance–Retabels’, Z. Kstgesch., lvi (1993), pp. 487–507

P. Mason: ‘Smith’s Picture Frames’, A King’s Purchase: King George III and the Collection of

Consul Smith (exh. cat., London, Queen’s Gal., 1993)

M. Ciatti: ‘Problemi di conservazione e di presentazione dei dipinto: Le cornici’, OPD Restauro, vi

(1994), pp. 114–25

‘Frames’, Burl. Mag., cxxxix (Feb 1997), p. 83

R. Lodi: La collezione di cornice: Catalogo n. 6 (Modena, 2000)

R. Lodi: La collezione di cornice: Catalogo n. 7 (Modena, 2001)

L. B. Kanter: ‘Issues in Presentation: Frames, Fragments, and Contexts’, Early Italian Paintings:

Approaches to Conservation, ed. P. S. Garland (New Haven and London, 2003), pp. 173–274

R. Lodi and A. Montanari: Repertorio della cornice europea: Italia, Francia, Spagna, Paesi Bassi,

dal secolo XV al secolo XX (Modena, 2003)

Paul Mitchell, Lynn Roberts

Copyright © Oxford University Press 2007 — 2015.

37

Frame, §III: France

article url: http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T029196pg3

Frame, §III: France

III. France.

1. Precursors and Gothic.

The earliest examples of French frames are probably those on Carolingian ivories of the 9th–10th

century (see Carolingian art, §VI). These employed various types of ornament, which were related

to those in illuminated manuscripts, as paintings and carvings often issued from the same religious

houses; the borders of the manuscript illustrations were decorated with the same ‘frames’ of

acanthus leaves, fillets, scrolled runs with trompe l’oeil gems, chains of rosettes and lozenges, vine

leaves and columned niches, which are found around the ivories. In both cases, the format—if not

the style—of the borders was a foretaste of the simpler Italian cassetta frames of the 16th century,

while the use of ornament derived from Classical art was hardly less sophisticated than that of the

18th century. In France, as elsewhere in Europe, wooden picture frames did not appear until the

12th–13th century; they took, at first, the same forms of integral, raised border, with decoration

greatly influenced by Italian models. The eponymous paintings (c. 1340; New York, P. Lehman

priv. col.; Aix-en-Provence, Mus. Granet) by the Master of the Aix Panels, a member of the Sienese

school in Avignon, show Italian influence in their delicate punched borders with chains of paterae

between and inscribed on the gilded picture surfaces, and also in the grooved and reeded mouldings

surrounding them. Because of the iconoclasm of the French Revolution, such survivals from the

Gothic and Renaissance periods are rare; another is the French Virgin and Child (c. 1390–1400;

New York, Frick). This limits the punched border to a vestigial edging on three sides, but the frame

itself is far more ambitious: the main hollow holds a carved run of scrolling vine leaves (an attribute

of Christ), of the type seen carved in stone in Gothic cathedrals, offering a relatively early example

of full-blooded undercutting. This frame stands out from, for example, Italian designs of the period

but may be exceptional in having survived, rather than in its style. The simple flat/hollow/ogee

moulding of the Wilton Diptych (1390s; London, N.G.) represents a more mundane type of

survival.

Gothic and Renaissance architectural frames are also rare, but enough remain to show how they

resembled or differed from Mediterranean and northern European altarpieces. The earliest is

probably the Carrand Diptych by the school of Paris (late 14th century; Florence, Bargello, see

1986 exh. cat., fig.). This resembles German and Netherlandish altarpieces in the wealth of carved

architectural detail applied to the painted panels; its scenes are dwarfed beneath double aspiring

gables with Flamboyant French crockets, finials, trefoiled arches and pendants. Unlike German and

Flemish specimens, however, the outer frame of each panel is not rectangular but a slender irregular

pentagon, a rectangle with a peaked top, recalling earlier Italian altarpieces, such as those of

Cimabue and Duccio; the frame thus gives the impression of a soaring Gothic chapel in cross-

section. It has the steeply sloping bottom rainsill of northern works and, on the other rails, an inner

run of decorative Flemish-type motifs. The Carrand Diptych is in size and shape more like a shrine

than a monumental altarpiece; but even smaller devotional objects were produced for domestic use.

The gold and enamel household triptych by the school of Paris (c. 1400) in the Rijksmuseum,

Amsterdam, is very different. It has a simple rectilinear frame, with a trefoiled inner arch and a

plinth; the cresting above depicts in gold the Coronation of the Virgin. This general form, apart

from the crest, is representative of 15th-century French altarpieces, which tended to adopt the

rectangular shape of northern works, often replacing their inner traceried gables and roses with an

38

arcaded gallery of Gothic arches running above the painted panel, like a French cathedral façade.

This band of ‘windows’ was often filled with a background glaze of red, blue or green over the

gilding, imitating stained glass, a practice similar to contemporary Spanish works, where even more

elaborate arcades and coloured rose ‘windows’ were common.

2. Late Gothic and early Renaissance.

The international character of art at this period was demonstrated in France by the frequency of

such stylistic exchanges. Among its sources was the work of sculptors from the provinces of

Brabant and Flanders, which were then dependencies of the Duchy of Burgundy; influences such as

these were more obvious in wood-carving even than in painting. Thus secular French paintings,

such as portraits, tended, like Flemish and German portraits, to be framed in moulded architrave or

entablature profile frames, sometimes round-arched, sometimes with the northern rainsill (imitating

a window) and often inscribed. An example is Jean Fouquet’s portrait of Charles VII of France (c.

1444; Paris, Louvre). Its original flat, black frame with a slight hollow to the sight is butt-jointed

and held with pins at each corner. The King is depicted between drawn white curtains within the

frame, as though at a window; the inscription on the frame proclaims him as le tres victorieux roy

de france on the top rail and charles septiesme de le nom on the bottom rail. Examples of this type

are found from the 15th century well into the 16th; in that time the only changes were the advent of

the northern arched top and the use of more sophisticated mouldings.

Italian influences, already apparent in the Aix panels, were also important. The brothers of Charles

V of France, Jean, Duc de Berry, and Philip the Bold of Burgundy, built up much of their

collections through Italian dealers, while Genoa and Savona were in the protection of Charles VI.

The result of Fouquet’s visit to Rome c. 1455 can be seen in the splendidly classical aedicular

‘frames’ containing his miniatures of the Evangelists in the Book of Hours of Philippe de

Commynes and also in his painting of Guillaume Juvenal des Ursins (c. 1460; Paris, Louvre). The

sitter’s head is ‘framed’ by a faux-marbre panel held in carved and gilded Renaissance woodwork,

with a classical cornice. The Italian campaigns of Louis XII and Francis I in the late 15th century

and the early 16th also reinforced artistic connections with Italy. France of the Flamboyant Gothic

period found the art of North Italy more sympathetic than the intellectual art of Florence; thus

Renaissance motifs filtered into France via Piedmont and Lombardy, along with the decorative style

of Venetian Gothic. The Genoese sculptor Jéróme Pacherot was employed by Cardinal Georges I

d’Amboise at the château of Gaillon to carve a stone frame for Michel Colombe’s relief altarpiece

of St George and the Dragon (1508–9; Paris, Louvre): a pure Renaissance aedicula decorated with

bucrania, flower scrolls and candelabra.

Wood-carvers were subject to the same influences, using the vocabulary of the Italian Renaissance

alongside and even mingled with the Late Gothic idiom. For instance, a group of altarpieces (1519–

25), commissioned by the Confrérie du Puy Notre-Dame d’Amiens for the cathedral, includes four

elaborate High Gothic frames (g 253), and another—the earliest—with a range of Renaissance

elements modified by Gothic (g 254). It has a Northern ogee-arched opening, surmounted by a

curving canopied entablature in three double-ogee sections, with a frieze of medallion heads, horns

and fabulous beasts sandwiched between classical mouldings. The side supports are neither

classical pilasters nor Gothic colonnettes but a collection of Renaissance motifs, such as putti and

medallions, stacked one above the other to give an impression of medieval grotesquerie. The four

later frames are in full Flamboyant style, arched and gabled, with multiple finials and pendants in

the French manner, although the canopy of one has a vestigial pediment, and another has urns and

candelabra carved on the arched voussoir. This eclecticism echoes contemporary painting, where

Late Gothic mannered realism shaded into Renaissance naturalism. The transition was encouraged

around the end of the 15th century by the influx of Italian engravings by, for instance, Zoan Andrea

and Nicoletto da Modena, and by Italian craftsmen capable of reproducing Renaissance ornament,

39

although without a full understanding of Classical form and proportion. Until c. 1530 frames

continued to be characterized by the combination of Gothic form with classical ornament (e.g. on

the Burgundian school painting of SS Peter and Malchus, c. 1520; Dijon, Mus. B.-A.).

3. Mannerist.

Following the arrival in France of the Italian artists Rosso Fiorentino (1530) and Francesco

Primaticcio (1532), and the institution of the Fontainebleau school, Mannerism became the leading

style of the French court. It was probably Primaticcio who introduced at Fontainebleau a richly

complex and individual method of framing wall paintings in stucco, a use that proved highly

influential (see Stucco and plasterwork, §III, 10(i)(b)). The pictures were held in gilt and painted

stucco frames composed of classical mouldings, Renaissance ornament, della Robbia garlands and

Rosso’s fantastically shaped and scrolled strapwork. These were further enclosed in stucco and

painted frames and surrounded by relief figures, grotesque masks and more strapwork cartouches,

which were echoed in the panelling by the Italian wood-carver Scibec de Carpi. Strapwork frames,

as Rosso developed them, were three-dimensional voluted panels or borders, derived from stylized

animal skins and scrolls, Moorish and Gothic interlacing and earlier wooden frames, such as

Florentine leaf and Sansovino frames (see §II above). They, too, were influenced by decorative

engravings; their ancestry was Italian, Netherlandish, German and Hispano-Moresque, and variants

were appearing in both northern and southern Europe during the 1520s, before the definitive form

emerged at Fontainebleau. The decorative work there, such as Primaticcio’s chimney-piece in the

Chambre de la Reine (c. 1533–7; Fontainebleau, Château), plays with the frame itself as a work of

art; the inset paintings are almost incidental to it and, in the spandrels, are actually part of it. Such

work blurs the distinction between wooden movable frames, the painted borders of murals and

architectural ornament, and it is hardly possible to say where the frame begins or ends.

In 1542 the collection of Francis I, set in suites of decorative frames, was hung in the withdrawing

rooms of the Chambres des Bains at Fontainebleau: an early instance of the picture gallery as an

emblem of monarchical power and prestige, in which opulent frames would emphasize the King’s

glory (see Valois, (14)). In the reign of Henry II there was a fashion for small portraits by François

Clouet and Corneille de Lyon of courtiers and the royal family, placed in elaborate Mannerist

aedicular frames . These frames, called after these two artists and the first instance of French

‘named’ frames, derived from North Italian prototypes and were often made in Italy; they look like

miniature versions of full architectural aediculae. They have broken or open pediments, free-

standing lateral columns and deep friezes and plinths set with plaques of pietra dura, mother-of-

pearl and tortoiseshell. The columns, which can be marbled, fluted and parcel-gilt, or ornamented

with scagliola, use the Tuscan, Doric, Corinthian and Composite orders, and the body of the frame

is painted black, with delicate gilt or coloured patterns. Pictures with frames of this type include

Corneille’s Jean de Rieux (Paris, Louvre); his Duchess of Châtillon (Indianapolis, IN, Mus. A.); and

Portrait of a Lady in the style of Corneille (London, N.G.). The portraits, with their backgrounds of

flat blues and greens, shine like icons in these settings, the costume details and women’s

headdresses echoed in the gilt-on-black ornamentation. They formed the basis of decorative

schemes, variants on the formal picture gallery—such as Catherine de’ Medici’s ‘portrait rooms’ in

the Hótel de la Reine (later Hótel de Soissons, 1572; destr.) in Paris, one combining paintings and

Limoges enamels, the other portraits and mirror panels.

Schemes such as these underline the growing connection not only between picture, frame and room

but also between frames and pieces of furniture. While Gothic reigned, furniture echoed

architectural motifs pertaining to the frame as door or window; when cabinetmakers adopted a

Renaissance vocabulary, it was the frame, now more a decorative object, that borrowed ornament

from chest and armoire. This can be seen most clearly in provincial works, such as those by Hugues

Sambin of Dijon. In 1572 he published in Lyon L’Oeuvre de la diversité des termes dont on use en

40

architecture, illustrated with 36 rich, Mannerist plates, which greatly influenced the local carvers of

Dijon and Lyon. The effect of his decorative pieces may be seen by comparing those in the Musée

des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, with a 16th- or 17th-century frame on a Tintoretto portrait in the Musée des

Beaux-Arts, Orléans. The all-over shallow carving and the stylized leaf-and-dart runs are identical

on furniture and frame, and demonstrate how the idiom of a provincial school might be used to

integrate a painting with its surroundings. The influence here is still Italian, blended with the rich

Renaissance style of the Burgundian court, as is generally true of French art and ornament at this

period. Henry II and Henry IV had queens from the Medici family, who became patrons of

architects and artists, and thus the influence of Italy permeated polite society.

4. Louis XIII and Louis XIV.

Marie de’ Medici was Regent (1601–17) during the minority of Louis XIII, thus continuing the

Italian influence into his reign. Consequently, the Auricular style came to France from Italy, rather

than from Utrecht and Bohemia, its places of origin. It can be seen architecturally in Marie de’

Medici’s additions (1615–25) to the chapel of the Trinity, Fontainebleau, and also in engraved

frames to portraits, landscapes and scenes by artists of the first third of the 17th century. Claude

Mellan, Jacques Callot, Daniel Rabel and Abraham Bosse all published prints ‘framed’ in varying

degrees of Auricular ornament, Rabel’s being particularly scrolly and cartilaginous. Bosse produced

a sketch for painted panels in Auricular boiseries (London, V&A), but there are few, if any, known

examples of actual picture frames in the style. By the mid-17th century, when Auricular frames had

begun to appear on paintings in Holland, a coherent style (Louis XIII) had emerged in France: this

modified Roman pattern, which overwhelmed other outside influences, led to the full-blown

Baroque of Louis XIV and spread to Italy, Germany and England.

Louis XIII frames, second and third quarters of the 17th…

Early Louis XIII frames, of exceptional rarity, blend medieval and Renaissance sources in a highly

complex sculptural interplay of stems, leaves and flowers, as on the frame of Raphael’s Baldassare

Castiglione (c. 1514–15). This may be seen as a sophisticated version of the late 14th-century vine-

leaf frame in fig. ; the motif is fully developed with bunches of grapes and a front flowered

guilloche moulding in another early Louis XIII frame, probably Burgundian, surrounding Titian’s

Portrait of a Young Man (London, N.G.; see Roche, pl. 3). Apart from such opulent examples, the

two principal Louis XIII frame designs consist of straight-sided ogee, convex and torus profiles

enriched with foliage, and decorative borders divided by hollows, friezes and fillets (see fig.). In the

first type, the convex profiles were carved with acanthus or leaves at right angles to the moulding

(‘cross-cut’) and, occasionally, projecting forward (a). The leaves varied from broad and stylized

(b) to detailed and refined (c). Greater movement was given by raking the leaves diagonally across

the moulding from the centres of each side, here with alternating floral sprays (d). Occasionally the

leaves were carved only at corners and centres (e). This more dynamic pattern was generally used

for portraits. Borders were usually ribbon, husks, leaf tips or guilloche; the last (c), rarely seen, is

the most conspicuously classical motif. These rhythmical borders clearly defined and contrasted

with the broad band of luxuriant foliage between them, giving a rich play of light, heightened by the

varied surface treatment—burnished hollows and cross-hatched and textured grounds. Although

41

these designs and finishes were related in principle to Italian foliate frames, notably Bolognese and

Florentine, they were nevertheless novel in their profiles, combining traditional ornament with

refinement of execution.

Louis XIII frames with bunched-leaf torus: (a) arched-top frame with…

The second, more common type of Louis XIII frame pattern (see fig.) consists of a torus section

enriched with garlands of laurel and/or oak leaves, bordered by ribbon, husks or leaf tips. This style

developed during the middle third of the 17th century, in the train of French classicism, when the

Roman-influenced style of Simon Vouet and the sober naturalism of Philippe de Champaigne were

fashionable. The tension between line and ornament suited a reaction against the Baroque and could

be adapted to both the Le Nain brothers’ peasant scenes and the work of Nicolas Poussin. This is

the most purely architectural of all French 17th-century frame patterns, deriving its form from

Baroque ceilings and door-frames, such as those in the Hótel de Lauzun, Paris. Transferred to a

picture frame, its confined richness marries satisfyingly with classical paintings. It has little

relationship to the furniture of the period; the latter, heavy and geometrical, has more in common

with Northern pieces, while these frames, Italian in origin but already characteristically French in

the floral detail introduced by Vouet, anticipate the ornamental designs of Charles Le Brun and the

style of Louis XIV. The raised profile creates a strong feeling of depth around the subject,

enhancing the picture’s illusory perspective, and is appropriate for apsidal formats (a); this arched-

top pattern occurs also in the framing of carved Crucifixes. Large examples were sometimes

bordered by a strong geometric ribbon contrasting with the leaves (b). The frame for the Le Nain

brothers’ Return from the Baptism (signed and dated 1642; Paris, Louvre), densely carved with

laurels and flowers, is exceptionally fine. A rare, early and beautiful southern French variation (c),

with ivy on a cross-hatched ground, recalls Gothic decoration.

Occasionally the characteristic ornaments of the two main styles, running acanthus leaves and

burnished-leaf torus, are combined (see Roche, 1931, pl. 6). As with all basic patterns, both motifs

are used unchanged on all sizes of frame, from the largest to the smallest, and are the first example

of a national standardized pattern. However, the moulding can also appear without decoration (e.g.

on Paolo Veronese’s Martyrdom of St George; Lille, Mus. B.-A.) or with textured mouldings and

shallow-relief flowered panels between reposes, imitating armorial decoration (e.g. on Jacob van

Loo’s Coucher à l’italienne, c. 1650; Lyon, Mus. B.-A.). Louis XIII patterns were employed until

the end of the century—as with all 17th- and 18th-century designs, which ran concurrently with

earlier and later styles.

42

Louis XIII–Louis XIV frames, c. 1650: (a) convex frame with…

During the reign of Louis XIV there emerged two distinctive designs of frames (see fig.) that may

be considered transitional between Louis XIII and Louis XIV styles. The novel feature in both was

the projecting corners and/or centres, which create a new dynamic Baroque interplay, diagonally as

well as vertically and horizontally, with the pictures’ composition. The more frequently produced in

all sizes and formats was (a), where the raised corners were carved with a profusion of flowers,

often including the symbolic Louis XIV sunflower, with an artificial triple leaf in the corners in the

form of a foliated, fanned lambrequin. Often the sight edge was carved, as here, to a corresponding

length. The intermediary moulding, close in section to the Louis XIII convex patterns, was

delicately incised with leaves and flowers, to echo the corners. Such frames were used for

Hyacinthe Rigaud’s portrait of Martin Desjardins (1692; Paris, Louvre) and Georges de La Tour’s

Cheat with the Ace of Clubs (c. 1620–30; Fort Worth, TX, Kimbell A. Mus.). The other and rarer

pattern (b) appeared in boiseries and mirrors (see Roche, 1931, pl. 15). It was distinctly

architectural and consisted of a torus over a flat base bordered by friezes and leaf tips. Unlike the

bunched leaves of the Louis XIII model (see fig.), this torus was enriched with spiralled leaves on

strapwork and flowers, elegantly bound at corners and centres with clasplike cartouches, normally

not projecting beyond the perimeter of the back edge. An example frames Thomas de Keyser’s

portrait of Pieter Shout (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.).

Louis XIII, Louis XIV and Régence style frames, c. 1650–1720:…

The most typical and widely produced frame patterns of the Louis XIV period (see fig.) developed

countless variations, which may be broadly divided by their silhouettes into two types: straight-

sided and with projecting cartouches. Although the underlying sections were basically the same as

in the Louis XIII frame, they were decoratively quite different. The straight moulding was now

carved with a complex but symmetrical rhythm of facing foliate C-scrolls (a), linked with strapwork

and flower heads on a cross-hatched ground, repeated in miniature on the sight and back edges, with

corner acanthus leaves. Examples are found on Anthony van Dyck’s Judas (Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.)

and in the grand luxe frames on the Domenichino landscapes in the Guise bequest (Oxford, Christ

Church Coll.). These patterns are echoed in Antoine Le Pautre’s designs for friezes and carved

ornament published in the 1650s (Desseins de plusieurs palais). The corner-and-centre frame that

resulted from the addition of projecting cartouches to the straight-sided design (b, c, d) became the

most regularly employed type, synonymous with the Baroque style of Louis XIV; it became the

dominant formula for portraiture. The cartouches contained shells, leaves, anthemia or fleurs-de-lis,

43

accentuated by a broadly hatched ground (quadrillage). Earlier provincial patterns had a dentil sight

edge (b). Other examples include Philippe de Champaigne’s Good Shepherd (Dijon, Mus. B.-A.)

and Louis Le Nain’s Adoration of the Shepherds (Dublin, N.G.). The main variation, heralding the

Régence style, had an ogee section and introduced a three-quarter round rail between the corners

and centres (c). This accentuated the projection of the cartouches, while giving a lighter effect. For

large frames such as this, with elongated proportions, a demi-centre was introduced on the long

sides to balance the distances between these accents.

As a later and distinguished counterpart to these patterns, there evolved a convex architectural

section with a prominent hollow on the back edge extending to an outer rail of bound rods: the

classical fasces moulding. This appears as a straight profile with alternating leaves and shells on

Poussin’s Four Seasons (Paris, Louvre) and occurs in boiseries, notably in Versailles and in the

later decoration of choir-stalls at the cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris, designed (c. 1790) by Robert

de Cotte and carved by Jules Degoullons and others. Figure 29d shows how a contrasting pattern,

modified with cartouches and plain rests in the Régence manner, could be derived from the same

profile. The parentage of such specific designs is difficult to determine, for although elements

appear in designs by Le Brun and Le Pautre, their use is different in tone—more grandiose,

monumental and sober—from their use on frames. The same seems true of any relationship with

silverware, often a source for framemakers, and with gilded wooden furniture. There may be a more

direct link with designs by Pierre Mignard, who was, like Le Brun, a pupil of Vouet, and with

precursors of André Charles Boulle, who evolved their own style from the vocabulary of mid-17th-

century ornament. In the work of both, there is an overall effect reminiscent of early Louis XIV

frames, one quite divorced from the ‘antique’ fixed borders of Louis XIV ceilings and wall

paintings. Such frames were used in the 1670s style of interior decoration seen in Le Brun’s Grands

Appartements at Versailles. In the Salon de Mars and the Salon d’Abondance the walls were hung

with velvet or silk according to the season; against these damasked materials the answering patterns

of early Louis XIV frames formed the perfect transition from the jewelled and golden colours of

works by Titian and Veronese to the opulent setting of the palace. The textured surfaces of these

sophisticated frames, with their varied matt and burnished gilding, and the raised contours of

convex and ogee mouldings, combined to catch light and throw it on the paintings, creating

movement and animation. Simpler versions of such frames were also produced, of course, their

patterns being governed by cost, suitability of setting or the status of the recipient. Anonymous

menuisiers employed the same moulding profiles as the major carvers but cut costs by restricting

decoration to the centres and corners; the ‘rests’ between these might be plain burnished gold or

engraved with subtle patterns of flowers and foliage.

At the further extreme from such models the frames used for royal portraits and for the jewels of the

King’s art collection employ the full panoply of ornament in the mid- to late style of Louis XIV.

They betray the influence of Jean Berain, Dessinateur du Cabinet du Roi from 1674, in their use of

slender, grooved strapwork joining foliate C-scrolls, their lambrequin borders and panels of ornate

diapering, their light festoons of husks and flowers and their fantastic flourishes: tiny têtes

espagnolettes, cornucopias etc. The style was again accommodated either to a convex or bird’s-

beak profile, as in the frames of Veronese’s Finding of Moses (Orléans, Mus. B.-A.) and of Claude

Lorrain’s Sunset Harbour and Village Fête (Paris, Louvre), monogrammed with the entwined Ls of

Louis XIV’s cypher, or to an ogee. This style was also adapted to trophy frames, which, like the

early inscribed frames, offered a gloss on their contents. Examples are the musical trophy frame of

Veronese’s Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (Oxford, Christ Church); the frame, appropriately

carved with palm and olive branches, of Poussin’s Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem (Nancy, Mus. B.-

A.); and that of Joseph Parrocel’s Hawking Party (London, N.G.), one of a pair, with boars’, rams’

and dogs’ heads in the centres and corners (these frames have been attributed to Philippe Cayeux

[1688–1769]). Frames of the luxury class appeared more frequently in the 30 or so years following

44

1695, the date when the Surintendance des Bâtiments du Roi ordered two magnificent emblematic

settings for Annibale Carracci’s Hunting and Fishing scenes (Paris, Louvre).

5. Régence.

During the last 20 years of Louis XIV’s reign, framemakers had begun to emerge from their

anonymity. Slightly earlier, Laurent van der Meulen (1645–1711), a carver from Mechelen, had

been commissioned to make the frames in the Chambre du Roi, Versailles, but the accounts of the

Bâtiments du Roi name a number of indigenous artists, such as Robert Lalande (fl 1679–1715) and

Jean-Baptiste Pineau (1652–94). During the Régence and the subsequent reign of Louis XV, some

two dozen carvers, including Edmé Chollot (maître, 1723), Jean Chérin (maître, 1760), Etienne-

Louis Infroit (maître, 1768) and Joseph Cercueil (maître, 1787), are known from the stamps signing

their frames. Even where the artists remain anonymous, it was in the grand luxe frames of the late

Louis XIV and Régence period that a peak of the art was reached. The stages of making a frame

multiplied. The rough body of a luxury frame was made by the charpentier or menuisier, but the

carving was done by a sculpteur. Gesso was applied in many thin layers; when it had hardened, a

repareur recut it to make the ornaments stand out in sharp and minute detail, adding cross-hatching,

leaf veins and punchwork etc (see Shipounoff). Sand might also be applied to the gesso in the front

frieze, thereby helping to separate visually the sight-edge carving from the textured body of the

frame. After the application of a red and/or yellow bole as a ground tone for the gold, water gilding

followed. Parcel burnishing, aided later in the 18th century by the application of gold leaf in two or

more shades, produced still greater definition, illumination and splendour. The most stunning and

majestic of all these great frames is that surrounding Poussin’s Adoration of the Golden Calf

(London, N.G.), owned by Philippe II, Duc d’Orléans, Regent during the minority of Louis XV. It

offers the strongest argument for the retention of patrons’ frames (where suitable or significant) as

against the absolute of period framing. It measures over 1.5×2.0 m and is proportionately deep; its

weight, sculptural detail and fine execution balance the tension of subject and composition and set

off the dancing rhythms and rich colouring.

Paradoxically, such objects were created in a time of decline and change. In the last years of Louis

XIV’s reign, court patronage had begun to decline; and the nouveaux riches and dealer–collectors

who filled the gap tended to prefer small easel paintings, suited to the informal bourgeois room, to

large-scale history paintings. Similarly, decorative taste was moving from the Baroque

magnificence of Le Brun’s Grands Appartements, through the lighter style of Jules Hardouin

Mansart and Robert de Cotte, towards the Rococo. This is expressed in the engravings of Pierre Le

Pautre, designer under Mansart for the Bâtiments du Roi. In his designs, verticals predominate: in

tall chimney-glasses with delicate frames, and in pale and gilded panelling that increasingly

diverges from the heavy geometrical mouldings of Le Brun’s Versailles.

The change in frame styles was slower, and, as before, each was produced concurrently with its

predecessor. Around 1710–20, Louis XIV ogee-profile patterns had a greater tendency towards

straight top rails, with three main variations: continuous decoration along the ogee; corner and

centre ornament only within the rail, as on Nicolas de Largillierre’s The Magistrate (Amiens, Mus.

Picardie); and corner and centre cartouches projecting through the rail with plain rests, as on

Largillierre’s Self-portrait (1711) and Hyacinthe Rigaud’s Self-portrait (1716; both Versailles,

Château). These blended into and overlapped with the Régence style. Régence frames emphasize

the same linear form on a large ogee or convex moulding; their decoration is less calligraphic and

flowing, and uses panelled areas of ornament in the manner of Berain, while corners and centres

acquire greater importance and sculptural weight—often overlapping the frieze to merge with the

sight edge (e.g. Rubens’s Village Kermis; Paris, Louvre). Elaboration of motif underlines this

importance: centres and corners may have cabochons in shells, or both within a curving cartouche;

fans, palmettes and diapered panels are held in C-scrolled borders of foliate, chain and egg carving

45

(e.g. Louis Tocqué’s Marie Lecszinska, 1740, and Jean Baptiste Nattier’s Duchesse de Chaulnes as

Hebe, 1744; both Paris, Louvre).

Such virtuosity of work was encouraged by the creation in 1705 of the Académie de St Luc as a

school for the guild of painters and sculptors; its councillors included such prominent wood-carvers

as Mathieu Legoupil, Nicolas Pineau and François Roumier; while the framemaker Guillaume

Bouclet subsequently became its senior director. It provided a valuable training ground for such

early 18th-century carvers and designers as Thomas Laîné (1682–1739), François-Antoine Vassé

(1681–1736), Gilles-Marie Oppenord and Bernard Toro. Laîné and Toro both worked in Provence,

in Avignon, Aix and Toulon, thus encouraging a diffusion of talent and style. So skilfully did Laîné

execute both carving and gilding for the Crown at Versailles and Fontainebleau that even after his

move to Avignon he was commissioned to carve an important cartouche frame for a painting of the

young Louis XV with his court for a church in Paris. In 1740 he published in Aix-en-Provence a

book of ornament that includes frames and mouldings with profiles; the ornament is in full Régence

style, at once opulent and delicate. Laîné was influenced by Toro, whose designs (published 1716–

19) already display Rococo fantasy and asymmetry; Laîné’s own carvings (1709–10) and those of

Vassé (1714) in the chapel at Versailles developed the palm ornament so characteristic of later

Rococo frames. Similarly, Oppenord’s designs signal the early Rococo; they have the rough,

hollowed shells that replaced the flat, stylized Louis XIV coquilles, as well as linked S-scrolls, and

frames in which foliage and volutes begin to encroach on the framed surface. Two important

designs for Régence interiors show these motifs emerging in transition to the full Louis XV style.

One is Vassé’s Galerie Dorée (1718–19) of the Hótel de La Vrillière (now the Banque de France),

Paris, with its curvilinear chimney-piece and tall, shouldered mirror, its pilaster plinths scrolled at

the base in three dimensions, and its delicate, cartouche-shaped mural frames, with swan’s-neck

pediments and trophy bases. The other is Oppenord’s scheme for the Palais Royal, Paris;

particularly the designs for the Grands Appartements (1720), also with a curving fireplace and a

chimney-glass, the slender mouldings of which rise to a great height to break out in a wealth of

tendrils, diaperings and interlacings.

6. Rococo.

With the flowering of the Rococo in the 1730s, the distinction between picture and frame became

blurred. As integrated schemes of delicately scrolled and festooned panelling were devised, in a

complex dance of pier and door, mirror, trumeau and overdoor, the room itself became the frame

for decorative painted pastorals and singeries, which merged into the carved flowers and trophies

that surrounded them. Early examples, both in Paris, are the Hótel de Villars by Robert de Cotte and

the Hótel de Parabère designed by Anges-Jacques Gabriel and carved by Taupin, Degoullons and

Legoupil of the Bâtiments du Roi; both show a Rococo integrity in which ornament hesitates

between Régence and Louis XV. These were expensive works; the panelling of a room was charged

not only by the panel or frame but also by the elements of each. Likewise, the cost of a picture

frame was related to the complexity of the moulding; sometimes parallel runs of ornament were

charged for separately, while additional decorations, such as centre or corner cartouches, diapered

panels, festoons, masks, dragons and ribbons, were individually priced. It is therefore not surprising

that attempts were made to reduce costs by replacing carved wood with moulded composition. In

1722 frames purchased as wooden from the framemaker André Tramblin (d 1742) and his son-in-

law Pierre Delaunay (d 1774) were found to be of composition, and a case ensued in the criminal

courts of Paris. In spite of opposition by the master carvers, the court decided that ouvrages de

composition were legal products but must be labelled accordingly, and the Académie de St Luc

voted to allow the use of ‘compo’ and varnished silver by its members. In 1727 this vote was

rescinded, although carton-bouillé or carton-pierre had for a long time been accepted as a

46

supplement to carved boiseries (see Papier mâché, §2). Legality brought acceptance, however, and

by mid-century Delaunay’s compo frames were being recommended to aristocratic patrons.

François Roumier, who was a member of the Académie de St Luc, a sculptor in the Bâtiments du

Roi and a creator of frames for pictures and mirrors, published in 1724 the Livre de plusieurs coins

de bordures, which illustrates patterns for mouldings cut by the mitre (no profiles are given). The

relationship of the designs to silverware is close, especially in the decoration of the title plate, where

gadrooned C-scrolls appear with peapod ornament and with diapering, of which Roumier produced

many elaborations. This is embryonic Rococo; tiny dragons and birds dart from the scrolls, but as

yet there is no suggestion of asymmetry, which the royal framemakers seem to have adopted quite

late, or of Rocaille. However, both appear in Roumier’s next suite of plates, showing the trophies he

carved (1723–5) in the Jacobin church (destr.) in the Faubourg St Germain, Paris. Seven of the nine

trophies have extremely asymmetrical frames, while the Crucifixion scene is like a conch in section,

surmounted by an irregular scallop shell. Artists worked in different styles for different patrons; and

while the prevalence of the Régence frame may indicate the conservatism of framemakers,

Roumier’s trophies demonstrate, conversely, his awareness of contemporary style: as expressed, for

example, by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier, whose designs, instrumental in the development of the

Rococo, also included frames. Meissonnier’s engravings, published from 1723, show, in their

asymmetry and use of rocaille, the clear tie, via Agostino Mitelli and Stefano della Bella, between

the Auricular style (see §4 above) and this element of the Rococo. The classical linearity and order

of the Régence style dissolved in the swirling Auricular-like curlicues of the full Rococo style in the

late 1720s and 1730s, matured by the triumvirate of Meissonnier, Jacques de Lajoüe and Nicolas

Pineau. All three produced specific patterns for frames. Lajoüe’s Nouveaux tableaux d’ornements et

rocailles shows the oblong outline of the frame breaking down into continuous double S-scrolls,

enclosing bands of rocaille scattered with palm sprigs. He was influenced by François Boucher and

Antoine Watteau, both painters who designed Rococo ornament, helping to annihilate the

distinction between fine and applied art. Watteau’s red-chalk drawing of two scorpion shells (Paris,

Louvre) is symbolic of this annihilation, as is Boucher’s tapestry design of Venus in the Forge of

Vulcan (1757; Paris, Mus. A. Déc.). This has its original rocaille frame; the consonance of curving

limbs with the swept outer rails of the frame, and of the vortical painted composition with the

asymmetric corner shells, demonstrates the peculiarly intimate relationship of the Rococo picture to

its setting.

Chinoiserie, an important element of Rococo style in furniture, tapestries, porcelain and mirror

frames, does not seem greatly to have influenced the decoration of picture frames. Its only

manifestation may be the enthusiasm for diapered panels noted in Régence and early Louis XV

frames, such as those by Roumier. Diapered motifs are found in Greek, Persian, Byzantine and

medieval ornament, but their 18th-century popularity may be traced to East Asian porcelain and the

borders of lacquered furniture.

The Louis XV frames in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, include a vast military trophy frame

bearing the arms of Lorraine and carved with helmets, halberds and arrow sheaves, curled

incongruously amid shell cartouches, and the ubiquitous Rococo palm. There is also a collection of

small frames, disproportionately wide for their size, clotted with swirls of ornament similar to richly

iced cakes, some with oval sights, all of which deny any pretence of modest enhancement of the

painting. The period produced frames of greater variety and luxury than at any other time. Carvers

were challenged to translate the most elaborate designs into three dimensions. At its best, the Louis

XV frame was a piece of ‘wall furniture’ representing the ultimate in sculptural virtuosity, more

than a match for any painting. Rococo frames demonstrate that style is invariably a function of cost;

their patterns were dependent on status, hierarchy, the picture’s intended location and the owner’s

purse, harmonizing with the court portrait or the modest still-life. The apparently bewildering

variety of forms conceals a logical development and relationship of patterns.

47

Late Régence and Louis XV frames, c. 1725–60: (a) Régence…

The underlying common factor—often well-disguised—is the section or profile, consisting of a

broad ogee rising to a top rail and leading to a back scotia. From this a variety of designs evolved,

differing as to the degree of enrichment, the disposition of cartouches and the treatment of

intervening spaces. Late Régence and early Louis XV patterns naturally overlap (see fig.). Similar

in surface design to the Nattier and Tocqué Régence frames referred to earlier (see §5 above), (a)

nevertheless shares the section of the fully swept Rococo frame (c). Figure (b) too has the same

profile but presents another, radically different visual twist on the structure in its linear form, devoid

of cartouches and surface decoration.

This ogee-sectioned form had three principal variants. The first and most economical either was

completely plain or had gadrooning/fasces on the top rail and a leaf-tip sight. This was popular from

the 1720s to the 1740s as a standard frame for portraits, pastels and still-lifes. The second, more

luxurious version embellished the corners with richly carved cartouches, often to give more

prominence and balance to larger compositions: identical examples are found on Boucher’s Rape of

Europa (exh. Salon 1747), Noël Hallé’s Dispute between Minerva and Neptune (1747; both Paris,

Louvre) and Carle Vanloo’s Silenus (Nancy, Mus. B.-A.). These elaborate sculptural cartouches

contrasted dramatically with the straight rails, giving weight and importance to the subject. Such

dynamic corner accents could occasionally be transposed to great effect to emphasize the cardinal

points of horizontal ovals, as on a figure subject (San Marino, CA, Huntington Lib. & A.G.) by

Nicolas Lancret. In the third, frequently produced variant, the frame was surmounted by a single

central cartouche known as a fronton, generally based on a cabochon or shell, flanked by pierced

foliate scrolls and flowers (see fig., b). Such frames appeared on domestic or court portraits of all

sizes, pastels and oils. Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s small oval painting Portrait of a Lady (Paris, Mus.

Cognacq-Jay) may be contrasted with the immense and superb winged fronton frame carved c. 1736

by Jacques Verberckt for Veronese’s Meal in the House of Simon the Pharisee (Versailles,

Château). Equally noteworthy is the exuberant crowned cartouche with triple fleur-de-lis on Alexis-

Simon Belle’s full-length portrait of Queen Marie Leczinska and the Dauphin Louis (Versailles,

Château).

Swept frames, the silhouettes of which were composed of a series of curves (see fig., c and d), have

become the most popular and characteristic frames of the Rococo period. The sophistication and

complexity of their design and execution ensured that many such frames were seen as works of art

in their own right; they were among the greatest creations of the decorative arts, complementing the

finest furnishings. Of essentially the same section as the straight-railed patterns, the swept frame

takes on a very different appearance by relaxing the top, and frequently the back, rail into a series of

shallow curves. In the magnificent example in (c), the straight foliate rail of (b) is curved between

corners and centres to form ‘demi-centres’ with corresponding strapwork patterns in the panels. The

recutting and texturing of the gesso are outstanding, and the panels have very fine cross-hatching.

The outer fields of the cartouches, defined by a raised rail and incised, shaped line, carry

punchwork; the frieze is sanded, and the ground for the sight-edge leaves is textured with close

straight incisions. Further contrasts are produced by burnishing the raised components after gilding,

leaving the background matt gold. Thus the complex patterning of carved forms is given a dazzling

vitality of finish. The overall effect is of a continual movement along the symmetrical swept rails

48

and pierced cartouches, resonating with the irregular silhouette of the sitter within. Among the

many variations on the Rococo frame, (d) has pierced cartouches with pear-shaped cabochons

linked by continuous swept rails, with a sight edge of ribbed interlace.

Independent frames with shaped apertures were occasionally made as counterparts to their settings,

a particularly fine example being the magnificent indented oval frames made, probably by Pineau,

for Lancret’s Music Lesson and Innocence, for the apartment in Versailles of the Duchesse de

Chateauroux (see Mitchell, 1980, pl. 5). These are a sculptural tour de force in their own right: the

ultimate in Rococo framing. Robbed of straight lines, the frame has dissolved into a complex

counterpoint of arcs. The shaped sight is set off against the jaunty asymmetric silhouette; eight

magnificent shell cartouches dominate the structure. Grandiose decorative schemes sometimes

involved the commissioning of series of paintings that required similar specially designed frames: a

celebrated example is the series of nine hunting scenes (Amiens, Mus. Picardie) ordered by Louis

XV for the gallery of the Petits Appartements at Versailles and painted (1736–9) by Carle Vanloo,

Boucher, Jean-François de Troy, Lancret and Parrocel. The magnificent frames, the work of

Jacques Verberckt, have shaped openings and are sumptuously carved with figures, masks and

rocaille cartouches against enriched diapering. Like the grand luxe Louis XIV frames, such luxury

Rococo frames represent a high point in the wood-carver’s art, and their cost now often approached

that of the painting.

Large-scale glazing, which was relatively newly obtainable, affected the construction of frames, as

well as expanding the number and types of works that might be framed. Previously, drawings,

watercolours and prints had generally been stored mounted in albums or loose in portfolios;

however, works that could be varnished with some sort of mastic preparation might be framed in a

simple baguette or flat moulding. (The maps commonly seen in Dutch interiors may have been

treated like this, and in the 1660s Samuel Pepys had had his engravings varnished and set in cheap

black or gilt frames.) Pastels were particularly fragile, however, and it was only with the invention

in France in 1687 of a process for producing large sheets of flawless plate-glass that they could be

framed and hung like oil paintings. Frame patterns, repeated through every size and type of picture

(portrait, landscape, altarpiece and miniature), often included drawing frames in a range of sizes;

this indicates that works other than oils must have hung unglazed before the 1680s, or in glazing of

the blown type. Examples of rocaille and Louis XV baguette mouldings, adaptable to drawings,

overdoors (sometimes contained within more elaborate boiseries) and tapestries, may be seen in the

Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris. The baguette often takes the

form of ribbon-bound fasces, while rocaille motifs are used in the scotiae of simpler frames. Such

frames demonstrate the wish for harmony among all the elements of an interior, and among works

in all media. In the 1730s Boucher began to produce framed drawings; and from this period date the

framed and glazed watercolours, gouaches, engravings and drawings that were to be found even in

modest interiors.

The day-book of the 1750s of the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux notes the sale of two glazed

cedar frames for drawings and a flowered frame for a print to the Marquise de Pompadour; he also

sold her seven marquetry frames by one of the Oeben brothers, possibly also for drawings or prints.

Far more elaborate frames, however, were supplied for pastels; these may have been made by Louis

Maurisan (d 1773), who between 1744 and 1749 executed four frames for Maurice-Quentin de La

Tour’s pastels of the King, Queen, Dauphin and Dauphine, ‘following M. Gabriel’s designs and

profiles’. Maurison was recommended in the mid-18th century as one of ‘the best carvers of

frames’.

49

7. Transitional.

Transitional and Louis XVI frames, c. 1760–85: (a) transitional Louis…

The growth of Neo-classicism and rejection of Rococo were manifested in the picture frame by the

creation of a distinctive and individual style, which amalgamated symmetrical Rococo cartouches

with borders of classicizing ornament. A comparison of transitional and Louis XVI frames (see fig.)

illustrates their development from and relationship to the Neo-classical patterns with which they co-

existed. A prominent characteristic was that the outer edge—invariably a guilloche moulding—was

swept, echoing the top rail (a). The sight edge, here in a fully integrated oval, was consistently

carved with perpendicular rais-de-coeur (leaf-and-tip ornament) adjacent to beading. Fine examples

of the standard rectangular format are the frames of Boucher’s Marquise de Pompadour and

Claude’s View of the Campo Vaccino and Seaport with the Campidoglio (all Paris, Louvre). A

variant has an independent oval spandrel (e.g. as on Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s Mlle Montredon; New

York, Met.). This swept pattern, epitomized in the work of the master carver Jean Chérin (fl 1760–

86), represented a disciplined balance between the organic and architectural forms of the Rococo

and Neo-classical styles (see Mitchell, 1985). As in the previous generation of Louis XV frames

(see fig.), curvilinear and straight versions developed. Thus the cartouches of the Claude pair are

identical to those of (b), where they are linked by a ‘straightened’ moulding of the same section, the

scotia carved with fluting and an egg moulding. The same design was applied to Chardin’s The

Ray-fish (Paris, Louvre). A transitional Louis XVI entablature frame (see fig., c) shows the section

carved with acanthus leaves, the Neo-classical frame having shed its Rococo embellishments. The

transitional frames of the 1760s and 1770s thus echoed contemporary furnishings and interior

decoration in blending two schools of ornament. The cartouche models (see fig., a and b) exemplify

the moderate Neo-classicism advocated by Jacques-François Blondel and agree with furniture of the

period: chairs that retained a Rococo form along with classical ornament, as in Pierre Contant

d’Ivry’s scheme (late 1750s) for the Duchesse d’Orléans’s apartments in the Palais-Royal, Paris. In

pure goût grec is (c), as in a scheme of antique decoration designed by Victor Louis and executed in

the 1760s by Brunetti for the church of Ste Marguerite, Paris.

The existence of these two types of early Neo-classical frame is explained by the persistence of a

Rococo idiom for 20 years after the mid-century classical revival had begun. In 1757, the year in

which Jacques-Germain Soufflot built the Neo-classical church of Ste Geneviève (now the

Panthéon) in Paris, Beaumont carved for an important Carle van Loo portrait of Louis XV an

asymmetrical swept frame with rocailles and C-scrolls; and in 1761, when frames à la grecque by

Honoré Guibert (1720–91) appeared in the Salon on Louis-Michel van Loo’s Louis XV, Alexander

Roslin’s portrait of the Marquis de Marigny and Greuze’s portrait of The Dauphin, Gabriel de

Saint-Aubin sketched them in his exhibition catalogue as though they were a unique group among a

general Rococo manifestation. Many interiors were, of course, still in the Rococo style or contained

Rococo furnishings with which newer objects had to blend. Thus the interiors of the house in Paris

of Etienne-François, Duc de Choiseul, depicted by Louis-Nicolas van Blarenberghe in miniatures

on the Choiseul Box (1770; Paris, Baron Elie de Rothschild priv. col.), have Neo-classical walls and

floors, while most of the furniture is Rococo, and the picture frames range from Rococo through

moderate to extreme Neo-classicism.

50

8. Neo-classical.

During the 1760s Neo-classicism grew rapidly in importance. Frames were designed in a

multiplicity of styles, to play their part in harmonizing the presentation of pictures within the Neo-

classical interiors and furnishings of the great Parisian hótels particuliers. There was often little

difference between the profiles of picture frames, mirror frames and the fixed frames surrounding

doors, boiseries, fireplaces and chairs. A.-J. Roubo’s encyclopedia, L’Art de menuisier (1768),

which includes Louis XV patterns, also indicates, in several plates, the diversity of Neo-classical

moulding profiles and decoration.

Louis XVI frames, c. 1760–1800: (a) plain moulded architrave frame,…

In the absence of framemakers’ pattern books, analysis of an apparently bewildering spectrum of

Neo-classical frames makes it possible to determine their underlying structure in terms of form,

embellishment and use. Virtually all Neo-classical frames were generated by two basic sections (see

fig.). The first was a flat section, which, in its narrower form, may be termed the architrave profile

(a, b, c); when wider and more decorated, it may be called the entablature profile (d, e, f). The

second section was concave, with a frieze, referred to as a scotia profile; it was, in effect, the

addition of a depth-enhancing scotia to the frieze of the architrave profile. In its unadorned and

most economical form (a), the architrave section consisted of a frieze bordered by an astragal, with

adjacent fillet, and inner ogee. This type, linked by the term ‘architrave’ to the plain mouldings of

doors, windows and boiseries, was used in varying widths from a narrow print frame, or baguette

moulding, to frames for larger pictures. Carving this moulding with rais-de-coeur and pearls

produced a classic Louis XVI frame (b), widely employed for prints and pastels and, in its broadest

section, for oils in both rectangular and oval formats. Oval frames, costlier than the rectangular,

were seldom changed by later owners; the same was the case for those on pastels, owing to the

latter’s fragility; thus examples of both are often valuable documents of contemporary taste. The

profile shown in (b) provides a restrained setting for an oval portrait, such as Louis-Michel van

Loo’s Louis-Auguste of France (1769; Versailles, Château). More elaborately, with acanthus-leaf

ogee and a decorative ribbon-and-stave, it frames the oval tapestry portrait of Louis XVI (1744;

Baltimore, MD, Walters A.G.) woven at the Gobelins factory. This original frame, with its rich

festoon of flowers, its swagged apron, sceptre, crown and royal hand mounted above, is a

remarkable and opulent example of a Neo-classical setting.

The more frequent appearance of oval portraits in this period may be due partly to the fact that

matching Neo-classical borders were far less costly than their Rococo or Baroque counterparts;

many were adorned with a cresting of flowers and/or ribbons, predominantly for female sitters. Fine

examples surround François-Hubert Drouais’s Young Woman (Paris, Mus. Cognacq-Jay), and A

Lady by an unknown artist (c. 1780; Waddesdon Manor, Bucks, NT), which bears the stamp of its

carver, Thomas Dumont. This was one of many instances of signed frames. Other contemporary

framemakers who stamped their work include Françoise-Charles Buteux, Jean-Baptiste-Michel

Dupuis, Paul Georges, Honoré Guibert (c. 1720–91), Claude Infroit, Andrew Lambert, Henri

Lettone, Abraham or Antoine Levert, Pierre-François Milet, Claude Pepin, Nicolas Petit and J. S.

Vasseur.

The fronton or decorative cartouche on the top rail of the frame was quite common in the de luxe

Louis XVI architrave frame. Often these have outset or eared corners at the top or all round, as with

51

an English Kentian frame (see §IV), and are embellished with two to four runs of mouldings, which

could include guilloche and piastre ornament. Such examples as Anton Raphael Mengs’s portrait of

Charles IV of Spain (Versailles, Château) have the cordes à puits, ropelike laurel festoons and

pendants that characterize the early Neo-classical furniture of Le Lorrain in the 1750s. Other frames

with fluted scotia (see fig., k), and those on Johann Ernst Heinsius’s paired portraits of two of Louis

XV’s daughters (1785; Versailles, Château), carved by Buteux, have looser festoons and pendants

of husks (as used by Robert Adam (i) and Thomas Chippendale (i)). Sometimes the festoons are

floral, as on Jean-Siméon Chardin’s Bird-song Organ (c. 1751; Paris, Louvre). The fronton varies

from royal crests (Mengs and Heinsius), through a characteristic goffered bow (Chardin), to the

stylized ‘ram’s-head’ scroll with piastre decoration (k). The fronton frame, especially with the

goffered bow, was ideally suited to portraits; it softened the purity of the goût grec in accord with a

gradual decrease of formality in the sitter, while dignifying the subject with a symbolic crown or

canopy.

In a somewhat rarer variant of the architrave frame, the outer edge of the frieze gently curves up to

a ribbon moulding (c). Being centred, the ribbon gives a focus and a subtle rhythm to the subject.

Expansion of the architrave to include the egg-and-dart moulding created the purest goût grec style

(d). This profile, at once sober and antique, lends the subject classical dignity and is employed most

appropriately for scenes of Classical architecture, such as Hubert Robert’s Interior of the Temple of

Diana at Nîmes (exh. Salon 1787; Paris, Louvre; frame has been reduced). It is also effective on

portraits, as in the oval (probably original) frame of Louis-Michel van Loo’s portrait of Joseph

Vernet (signed and dated 1768; Avignon, Mus. Calvet). The popularity of this style in the 1760s is

borne out by two of Roslin’s portraits, A Man (1766) and Jean-François Marmontel (1767; both

Paris, Louvre). The most elaborate developments of the style covered the frieze with a pierced

running ornament (e and f). Entrelacs or interlace (e) appeared in interiors on ceiling and wall

mouldings, door entablatures, fireplace friezes, chair-frames and furniture mounts, all

complemented by the picture frame. Notable examples, enriched with roses, surround Vigée Le

Brun’s Bacchante (c. 1785) and a grisaille panel (both Paris, Mus. Nissim de Camondo). One of the

most distinctive ornaments of the Greek architectural vocabulary, the fret or key pattern, rarely seen

in frames, appears, significantly, on a portrait (f) of Etienne-François, Duc de Choiseul, one of the

early champions of the authentic purity of the Neo-classical movement; it also occurs in

architectural and furnishing contexts, without special reference to subject. Such frames, exquisitely

carved, with the light shimmering between matt and burnished gilding, were an emphatic

expression of the Neo-classical style.

The other section employed in the Neo-classical frame consisted of a frieze combined with an outer

scotia (g–m). This design approximates to the basic structure of the Classical entablature; the scotia

represents the cornice, and the sight-edge moulding represents the architrave, the frieze being

common to both. While the architrave profile, with its flatter section, is closer to the fixed

mouldings in interiors, the scotia profile is an independent frame clearly projecting from the wall,

its deep inward curve leading the eye into the subject. The effect is similar to its Louis XV

counterpart, the plain ogee profile. The purity of its line is best seen in the unadorned moulding,

often used, for the sake of economy and austerity, on large-scale canvases (g). Further

contemporary examples appropriately surround two major and severely classical works by Jacques-

Louis David, the Oath of the Horatii (1783) and Lictors Bringing Brutus the Bodies of his Sons

(exh. Salon 1789; both Paris, Louvre). The first degree of enrichment of the profile (h) matches the

architrave equivalent (b) with the carving of two ornamental mouldings and is suitable for both

intimate and large-scale works. The use of this pattern, and indeed of Neo-classical designs in

general, must have been encouraged by its use in a major royal commission, the celebrated Ports de

France series painted by Joseph Vernet. At least six of them were framed by Guibert, who was

Vernet’s brother-in-law. On this scale, the astragal was enlivened by a triple-bead and cabled

bobbin moulding (h), and emphasis was given by the integral title plaques carved at the top, with

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six pendant guttae. These relatively simple designs each cost about 815 livres, while Guibert’s goût

grec frame for van Loo’s Louis XV (see §7 above) cost 2098 livres before gilding. This was,

however, a large trophy frame with a laurel-leaf garland around it, military motifs centred on each

side and flags and a crowned crest at the top. Another early royal commission in the same

extravagant style was René-Michel Slodtz’s frame commissioned by the King for Carle Vanloo’s

portrait of Mlle Clairon as Medea (Potsdam, Schloss Sanssouci); it was decorated with festoons of

ribbon-tied bays and rais-de-coeur. The King’s mistresses, Mme de Pompadour and Mme du Barry,

also supported the goût grec, being customers of Poirier, the leading marchand-mercier dealing in

Neo-classical objects.

An elegant and popular variation introduced a finely moulded decoration, usually interlace (j) or

piastres, into a channel in the top fillet. Small-scale decorative mouldings were made to match both

the artist’s painted details and, for instance, classical ormolu furniture mounts. Carving complete

runs would have been prohibitively expensive, so these were cast in shorter lengths from boxwood

moulds, a practice that started around the middle of the century. In this pattern, the outer ornaments

were always moulded, and occasionally all of them were; however, the pearls were mostly hand-

carved, possibly for durability or as practice for apprentice carvers. Many of the frames from the

Infroit workshop were of this pattern, which was versatile and relatively economical and, although

largely used on portraits, appeared on all categories of paintings. Examples surround Antoine

Vestier’s portrait of Eugène-Joseph-Stanislas Foulon d’Ecotier (1785; New York, Met.) and the

Elements of a Rustic Meal by Henri Horace Ronald de la Porte (Paris, Louvre). A large-scale

version with carved guilloche and outer moulded ribbon was appropriately severe and monumental

for David’s Funeral of Patroclus (c. 1779; Dublin, N.G.). The section might be further enhanced by

enrichment of the scotia with flutes (k) or laurel or acanthus leaves (l and m); fluting was most

frequently used, doubtless because of relative cheapness, the mitres being invariably covered with

an acanthus leaf. This was the most conspicuously architectural of all the Neo-classical frames,

matching interiors, furniture and silverware. The contrast of the matt flutes and burnished fillets

gives a soft, vibrating light to the picture, while the geometric quality suits all genres of painting.

An exquisite set of four frames and one further pair appear on small-scale works by Louis Lagrenée

(all 1771; Stourhead, Wilts, NT). David’s Mme Pecoul (1784; Paris, Louvre) is a fine portrait

example, almost certainly original; while (j), with inset interlace, echoes David’s Patroclus.

One of the finest Neo-classical frames on public display (l) demonstrates a further progression of

the earlier goût grec style, now enriched across the whole face with the complete battery of antique

ornamentation. The frieze is confidently carved with scrolling acanthus and flowers, the scotia with

bay leaves. Although disguised, the section with its adjacent beading and rais-de-coeur is virtually

identical to that of previous models (see fig., b and c). The grandest of the architectural luxury

frames have a frieze or shallow scotia carved with floral enriched cabling, adjacent to an ogee

enriched with acanthus (m). Examples of decorated or grand luxe Neo-classical frames with oval or

round sights include those on Boucher’s Mme Baudoin (1755–60; Paris, Mus. Cognacq-Jay) and

Anne-Louis Girodet’s portrait of Mlle Lange as Danaë (1799; Minneapolis, MN, Inst. A.). The

Boucher has a frame not unlike van Loo’s Louis-Auguste (see above), with a run of laurels on the

top edge replacing a plain edge and pearls; however, between the oblong contour and the oval sight

there are spandrels ornamented with acanthus crosses pulled into long triangles. This is a variation

on the corner emphasis of a Louis XV frame. The Girodet, the inset sepia-painted roundels of which

puncture the spandrels of the main frame with their own small torus ‘frames’, achieves this

emphasis through an opposition of the four roundels to the oval shape of the painting itself; the

whole is given sculptural weight by an outer deep egg-and-dart moulding and by rais-de-coeur at

the oval sight, while richness comes from foliate scrolls in the spandrels. This organized opulence

suits the mannered classicism of Girodet’s painting.

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By the time of Louis XV’s death in 1774, Neo-classicism had become so ubiquitous as to be

attacked by Blondel for replacing the rounded ‘human’ contours of furniture with classical

angularities. Only some small use of Rococo ornament remained, and some chairs with serpentine

forms and curved legs were still being made in the 1780s. Hubert Robert’s paintings (1770) of Mme

Geoffrin’s house show that by then all the pictures of this leader of fashion had Louis XVI frames.

In the public field, the Comte d’Angiviller, who was appointed Directeur-Général des Bâtiments du

Roi in 1774, organized the creation of a museum in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre, filling gaps in

the royal collection and reframing much of it. He rejected the great carved Louis XIV and Louis XV

frames for much simpler settings, incorporating a cartouche for title and artist, which were used for

all types of pictures. In 1789, on the brink of the Revolution, overhead lighting was installed in the

Salle Carrée, banishing some of the dimness that the burnish, projection and movement of Baroque

and Rococo carved frames had been designed to pierce.

9. Directoire and Empire.

Directoire and Empire frames, c. 1795–c. 1820: (a) overdoor of…

The French Revolution caused major changes in the administrative and political areas of the art

world, such as the abolition of the guild system and the replacement, under the Directoire, of the

Académie Royale by the Institut National. Change in taste was, however, less noticeable, since the

Directoire style was descended from the Etruscan style, a severe form of Neo-classicism, which had

first been introduced in the 1780s and continued into the Empire period. There was a close

relationship at this time between frames (see fig.) and their surroundings (compare a with d). The

finely moulded classical decorations, which reflect archaeological discoveries at Herculaneum and

Pompeii, are reproduced on Directoire frames as single bands of anthemion ornament, alternating

open and closed palmettes, or palmettes with honeysuckle. This can be seen in (b) and on David’s

Self-portrait (1794; Paris, Louvre). The profile of both frames is simple, with a scotia and ogee or

double scotia, one plain and one enriched, usually trimmed with small runs of pearls and rais-de-

coeur. Although Etruscan motifs predominated, the ubiquitous acanthus leaf continued to appear in

Directoire and Empire frames. A typical example (c) has a triple-bead and cabled bobbin moulding

closely related to that of Joseph Vernet’s Gulf of Bandol (see fig., h) and to François-Joseph

Bélanger’s Salon in the Hótel de Bourrienne, Paris (a). The use of a frieze is reminiscent of Louis

XVI patterns.

These Directoire frames merged almost imperceptibly with those of the Empire (1804–15), when

the motifs tended to be less closely set and more elaborately modelled, and where, as in David’s

portrait of Pope Pius VII (1805; Paris, Louvre), the profile often became richer and more complex.

Many works from this period, particularly ovals, retain their original frames. The refined detail and

flowing contours of 33d are perfectly matched by the exquisitely moulded palmettes, lotus buds and

olive branches in the spandrels, which again echo the tympanum in the Hótel de Bourrienne. The

section of double scotia and ogee creates an appropriate depth and scale. However, at this period the

ornament, even on frames for important works such as those commissioned by Napoleon and his

family, was almost always made of applied composition. This great contrast with the carved luxury

frames produced for the monarchies of Louis XIV, XV and Louis XVI resulted from several

54

factors. One was the wish to remain politically aloof from the autocracies of the ancien régime, with

their limitless expenditure on items of prestige; another, the comparative poverty of Napoleon’s

Empire. A further factor was the annexation of huge numbers of important paintings from galleries

in the conquered Italian provinces and, subsequently, from Austria and Germany. Many of these

works needed to be reframed quickly and at little expense, in the style that became the hallmark of

Napoleon’s reign. Finally, although abolition of the guild system in 1791 had removed restrictions

on the movement of labour, artisans such as framemakers suffered severely during the years of wars

and crises. The luxury market was all but suspended, and although Napoleon instigated schemes of

redecoration in the Louvre and at Malmaison under Charles Percier and Pierre François Léonard

Fontaine, neither the style nor the materials used for these gave such emphasis, as had been usual in

the 18th century, to the art of carving. Paintings celebrating even the Emperor himself, such as

David’s Coronation of Napoleon in Notre-Dame (1805–7; Paris, Louvre), had austerely simple

frames.

The rise of Napoleon thus stimulated the market for mass-produced frames, while severely

curtailing the production of hand-carved work. The sculptor was now required to produce finely

carved reverse moulds for casting ornaments for frames. Style and production methods mirrored

each other and diffused throughout Europe. Repetitive hand carving of the small-scale complex

detail of anthemion ornament, for example, would have been exceptionally laborious and costly; the

enormous demand could be met only by mass-production techniques, which these craftsmen

perfected, and the skills of which have been underestimated. The moulds, exquisitely worked in

boxwood, which had the finest grain for accurate and smooth casting, gave detailed composition

ornaments of very high quality. Far fewer skilled carvers were now needed, but the number of

gilders was not reduced, especially as the same ornaments on a smaller scale were used in framing

the vast contemporary output of prints. Among the standard patterns, special emblematic ornaments

were created: the wide, slightly ogee outer moulding of the frame on Antoine-Jean Gros’s portrait

of Maréchal Duroc (Nancy, Mus. B.-A.) is decorated in composition with key-shaped, facing C-

scrolls containing the bee motif adopted by Napoleon, interspersed with a species of lotus bud. The

bee alludes to the emblem of early Frankish kings, while the lotus refers both to Napoleon’s

Egyptian campaign and, in its lily-like form, to the exiled French royal family. Napoleon, like the

Bourbon monarchs, made political use of the arts; his choice of ornament can be seen as an

assertion of his right to rule.

Percier and Fontaine were the main promulgators of this propagandist form of decoration; although

there are few picture frames in their Recueil de décorations intérieures (Paris, 1801), there are

numerous enrichments, such as Vitruvian scrolls, egg-and-dart, Greek frets, running anthemia etc,

and many Napoleonic motifs, including eagles, bays and thunderbolts, all in a low-relief moulding,

ideal for transferring to frames. A further influence on the Empire style was Vivant Denon,

Directeur (1802–15) du Musée Central des Arts (later the Musée Napoléon), who provided court

artists with designs based on his researches in Egypt and Pompeii and supervised their work. The

classic form of Empire frame survived into the third decade of the century on pictures of all scales,

from small drawings and prints to such large canvases as the Harbour of Cherbourg (1822; Paris,

Mus. Mar.) by Louis-Philippe Crépin (1772–1851) and the Entrance of Charles X into Paris after

his Coronation (1825; Versailles, Château) by Louis-François Lejeune (1775–1848).

55

10. Bourbon Restoration.

Bourbon Restoration frames, c. 1815–50: (a) plain moulding scotia frame,…

During this period, the compound profile frame of the Napoleonic era was generally superseded by

frames having either a scotia or ogee section, with a variety of embellishments (see fig.). In

addition, some specialist designs, with more elaborate subject-related ornament, were created. The

most economical forms of the regular profiles, often applied to prints of large pictures, were either

undecorated (a) or with a sight moulding of rais-de-coeur (b). The section could be luxuriously

transformed by applying an idiosyncratic corner motif (c), a device based on a honeysuckle or

palmette, from which curl tightly scrolled volutes holding rosettes, cornucopias or rams’ heads—a

motif occurring on contemporary furniture mounts. At the other end of the scale, the corner motif

appears on the massive 400 mm-wide scotia frame for Théodore Gericault’s masterpiece, Raft of the

Medusa (exh. Salon 1819; Paris, Louvre), which was probably made when the painting was

acquired by the State in 1824. In contrast to this relative sparseness of decoration, the frame in (d),

intended for a large canvas, achieves a more harmonious distribution of ornament in a variant of the

ogee profile. The extra width required on this scale is achieved by means of a frieze inlaid with a

continuous olive branch; the centres carry an elongated version of the corner palmette-and-rose

motif, and the long side rests are punctuated by rosettes. This formula and its variants became

clearly associated with the style of Louis-Philippe. One of the largest collections of such frames was

made for the royal collection and is closely related to the interiors of the newly restored Versailles

apartments.

Although straight-sided Neo-classical styles dominated the Empire and early Restoration periods, a

few Rococo-based patterns, the projecting corners and centres of which provided a distinguished

and contrasting silhouette (e), emerged in the 1820s and 1830s. The three-dimensional, undercut

and pierced cartouches, which combine late Régence and Rococo forms, have trailing, naturalistic

floral sprays and represent an advance in mould-making from the low-relief Napoleonic styles. This

design occurs on a number of works by Eugène Delacroix, including the Massacres at Chios

(1824), Liberty Leading the People (1830) and Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834; all

Paris, Louvre). It seems probable that the artist selected these frames; his letters show his interest in

framing, and his maternal grandfather was the framemaker Oeben. In the late 1820s Delacroix was

using the framemaker Crozet and in the 1840s and 1850s, P. Souty. In 1827 he wrote of Still-life

with Lobster (Paris, Louvre): ‘I have dug up a Rococo frame for it, which I have regilded and which

will do for it splendidly.’

56

Historical revival frames, c. 1830–60: (a) Troubadour-style frame, 984×750×170

mm,…

Louis-Philippe’s transformation of Versailles into a museum followed this revivalist trend; the

decoration, under the supervision of Frédéric Nepveu (1777–1862), included Rococo, Renaissance,

Neo-classical, Louis XIV, neo-Gothic and oriental ornament. Only authentic picture frames, such as

those by van der Meulen in the state apartments, were retained; otherwise, the paintings were set

into boiseries or into painted frames by Jean Alaux (1786–1864), among others. The horror vacui

of this type of decoration was then common in Europe; it appears in France in Duval’s church

decoration, and in England in the wall-to-wall Gothic of A. W. N. Pugin. The revivalist movement

was fully exploited by the framemaking industry, the pattern books of which were expanded to

include countless ‘new’ and skilfully reproduced designs (see fig.). Although collectively they

appear to be an undisciplined mixing of decorative motifs, many were tailor-made to suit the

pictures’ subject and setting. Examples include the Troubadour style, a stylistic cocktail of quasi-

Renaissance/Mannerist forms with corner busts, the frieze inlaid with masks and strapwork, all

wrapped in a swept rocaille border (a). Delacroix himself must surely have selected the frame, with

its frieze of Moresque star patterns (b), for his Interior of a Dominican Convent in Madrid (1831;

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Mus. of F.A.). Likewise, Jean-Léon Géróme, many of whose works

carry specialist frames, would have chosen—if not designed—the elegant architectural frame (c)

with its refined mouldings and delicately engraved fret pattern. Another frame notable for its

innovative surface decoration is that of the portrait of Achille Devéria (exh. Salon 1837; Paris,

Louvre) by Louis Verceil Boulanger (1806–67). Here the convex moulding, with Louis XIV-style

corners, is covered with engraved vermiculation, a Renaissance architectural feature revived for

18th-century stonework.

The frames of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s paintings are exceptional for their individuality

and quality. It is generally accepted that he participated in their design, and many have close

stylistic links to their pictures. Those for Cherubini with the Muse of Lyric Poetry (1842; Paris,

Louvre) and of Antiochus and Stratonice (Chantilly, Mus. Condé) are appropriately Neo-classical in

their use of Greek frets, Vitruvian scrolls and palmettes. The portrait of Louis-François Bertin has

an elaborate band of undulating vines, decorated with birds, lizards and dragonflies, deeply

moulded in composition and gilded with two shades of gold leaf. Joan of Arc (1854) and The

Source (1856; both Paris, Louvre) have raised enrichments of vines; and the frames of Princesse de

Broglie (New York, Met.) and of Mme Moitessier Seated (d) are covered in deep relief garlands of

many different flowers, the latter superbly matched to the sitter’s dress.

57

11. Second Empire.

Second Empire frames, 1850s–1880s: (a) fluted scotia frame, 730×590×140

mm,…

During this period (1852–71) and until almost the end of the century, the Salon endorsed the revival

frame, especially for academic works. It was preferred by many artists and by curators, dealers and

collectors, for reasons of economy and suitability (a Neo-classical style, for instance, being almost

universally acceptable) and as a variously simple or opulent house style for large collections (see

fig.). Straight-sided frames predominated: these were invariably made in a wider section than their

prototypes by the addition of a plain stepped frieze at the sight edge. The most popular Neo-

classical style was the fluted scotia frame (a; compare with original, see fig., k), which was applied

to figure and landscape subjects and was often used as a uniform collector’s/gallery pattern (e.g.

Lavallard Col., Amiens, Mus. Picardie).

Later in the century appeared the Barbizon frame, associated with painters of that school, where the

scotia became a complex profile of stepped flats and hollows, decorated in antique fashion with a

steep acanthus ogee, rais-de-coeur, ribbon-and-stave, pearls etc, with a high outer laurel-leaf or

oak-leaf torus (c), all in composition. This novel style is rich, weighty and dignified, and at the

same time economical enough for the new patrons of the 19th century. The pattern was produced in

all sizes; for example, that for an upright landscape by Henri-Joseph Harpignies (c. 1875; Orléans,

Mus. B.-A.) and a gigantic version (w. c. 300 mm) for Karl Daubigny’s largest Salon landscape

(1876; Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.). The deep, stepped profile, with its effect

of perspectival recession, is admirably suited to landscapes.

Less generally appropriate, but popular as an indication of middle-class aspirations, are the skilfully

moulded, plaster Louis XIV revival frames (b), which proliferated from the mid-century. These

were the main and more expensive alternative to the Barbizon frame. Their more random,

undulating and deeply recessed foliage on a cross-hatched ground likewise suited landscapes, such

as those by Henri Rousseau, Daubigny and Jean-François Millet in the Walters Art Gallery,

Baltimore. Superb large-scale versions frame Edouard Manet’s Olympia (1863; Paris, Mus.

d’Orsay) and Gustave Courbet’s Deer in the Forest (1868; Minneapolis, MN, Inst. A.). Established

during the Second Empire, such patterns endured until the beginning of the 20th century: for

example on the magnificent full-length frame of William Bouguereau’s Mother and Child (1903;

Richmond, VA Mus. F.A.). Equally opulent were the Régence and Louis XV revival patterns. The

celebrated collection of Old Masters and 19th-century works in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, has a

number of distinguished examples (d).

The 19th-century artistic establishment had traditionalist inclinations (see P. A. Richebourg’s 1860s

photographs of the Salon hangings, held in the Musée d’Orsay Archives). The dealers’ and

moneyed collectors’ preference was for nostalgic pastiche, in wood or composition, and the

academic artists and curators of the various institutes favoured a small repertory of 17th- and 18th-

century frame styles, with some anonymous plain mouldings, and mongrel frames built out of the

framemakers’ stock patterns. Moreover, the Salon made rules about the settings of pictures hung

58

there: they must have a rectangular or square silhouette, even where the sight was round or oval; the

width and depth of the moulding must be of a certain size; and, until the 1880s, the finish could

only be gilt. Thus the frames were, at their worst, hackneyed, tawdry and cheaply made; at their

best, the quality of the workmanship was betrayed by the bankruptcy of the invention.

12. Mid-19th and 20th centuries.

An inevitable reaction followed, in which the widespread influence in Europe of the Nazarene

painters played a part. Several Nazarene painters designed the frames for their work (see §VI,);

although these were close in style to Gothic and Renaissance altarpieces, they had a contemporary

quality, quite unlike the pastiches of Louis XIV frames. Nazarene frames probably catalyzed,

through the work of William Dyce, the design of the Pre-Raphaelites’ frames, and consequently

those of the Symbolists and, indirectly, of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. In France, the

Nazarene influence was already at work in the 1830s, on such artists as Victor Orsel, whose Good

and Evil (1828–33; Lyon, Mus. B.-A.) is housed in a round-arched, polished wooden frame with a

rainsill, halfway between medieval and Art Nouveau. It has an inner gilded and painted border with

vignettes glossing the main scene and the lunette, and is linked to stained-glass design as much as to

the altarpiece. The frame of Auguste Couder’s Scenes from ‘Notre-Dame de Paris’ (1833; Paris,

Mus. Victor Hugo) is even more retable-like, tripartite, with predella and medallions above; it

celebrates Hugo’s novel in eccentric swirls of gilded plaster, Renaissance ornament and strange

voluted crockets (see 1990 exh. cat.). These are isolated creations, making no headway against the

barrier of academic taste until reinforced in the 1860s and 1870s by the influence of English artist-

designed frames (see §IV, 1). The interval was filled by a group of attributive Oriental picture

frames, related to similar English types, which used the profile of a conventional Neo-classical

frame, replacing the antique ornament with Egyptian motifs or Arabic script. An example is

Géróme’s Plain of Thebes, Upper Egypt (1857; Nantes, Mus. B.-A.), with a scotia filled with

papyrus and lotus buds and a band of hieroglyphics. These look back to the Egyptian Revival taste

of the previous century and reflect the growing interest of many artists in the Middle and Near East.

This interest also produced books on or including ornament of the region—the pattern books for

furniture- and framemakers.

By the 1860s, however, a new source of ornament had appeared: Japan began to trade with the

West. The simple shapes and plain grounds, craftsmanship, asymmetry and stylized organic

decoration of its products appealed to those reacting against debased styles, poor workmanship and

lack of invention. Exhibitions and imports fuelled the new enthusiasm, and the cult of Japonisme

began. In a series of four frames designed in 1864 by James McNeill Whistler (e.g on La Princesse

du pays de la porcelaine; Washington, DC, Freer), there are flat borders, borrowed from early Pre-

Raphaelite frames, incised with Japanese medallions in the corners and lateral centres, against an

overall spiral patterning. The simple structure, type of ornament and obviously handmade

decoration would have been startling in the Salon of 1865, where Whistler exhibited La Princesse,

and where his fellow exhibitors, Manet, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Auguste

Renoir and Berthe Morisot, would have seen it. There was already a predisposition among the

Impressionists to be interested in the framing of their works. In Degas’s 1858–60 notebooks he

sketched his Bellelli Family (1858–67; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay) in its frame, showing Neo-classical

diapering and a laurel trim; and in 1864 Monet wrote to Frédéric Bazille that ‘a picture gains 100%

in a fine frame’. The cross-references in English and French painting around this time make it

probable that there was some Pre-Raphaelite influence on French frame design; and many

characteristics of Pre-Raphaelite frames can be discerned, in similar or related forms, in

Impressionist designs.

Unfortunately, Impressionist frames are rare. Degas’s works retain a number, and there are a

putative Pissarro frame and gilt borders approved by the artists; otherwise little survives until the

59

Neo-Impressionist/Symbolist frames of the 1880s and 1890s. Reviews of the group exhibitions and

the artists’ own letters reveal how startlingly different their frames were. The new designs probably

first appeared c. 1873, when Whistler felt it necessary to claim painted frames as his invention, and

when Degas reportedly framed his pastel Ballet Rehearsal in a moulding coloured ‘soft dull grey

and green’. Whistler may have been first but he continued to use gold leaf throughout his life,

playing with different shades and restricting colour to the patterns painted on the flats. The

Impressionists’ innovation was the use of a solid colour or white to achieve a transition between

their depictions of light and spontaneity and the walls on which these hung. Pissarro expressed in

1892 this striving for consistency with the setting, agreeing with Degas that a painted ‘decoration’

was ‘an ornament…made with a view to its place in an ensemble…the collaboration of architect

and painter’. In the mid-1870s there is a gap in the documentation of Impressionist frames, during

which Whistler’s first one-man show took place in a London gallery painted grey and decorated

with blue pottery, palms and flowers: a departure from conventional Pompeiian red. The records

recommence with the third group exhibition of 1877, when both Degas and Pissarro apparently used

white frames—neutral, as gold had been considered to be, but lacking the opulence and light-

trapping qualities of gold.

French artists’ and dealers’ frames, c. 1860–1900: (a) architrave frame…

From the same year, and continuing until 1883, Degas’s notebooks contain sketches of frame

profiles. They blend elements similar to Pre-Raphaelite designs into strong, imaginative forms

completely different in type. Closest to an English model is the square section with four flutes

outside a wide flat; this was eventually produced with three flutes and survives on at least five

works, including the Collector of Prints (1866; New York, Met.) and The Laundress (1873; see

fig.). The latter frame is now gilded over, but that on Dancer at Rest (1879; priv. col.) is white with

gold flutes, possibly the original finish. It is reminiscent of the plain wood chamfer with three gilt

flutes used by Ford Madox Brown in the 1860s. Degas’s other designs, which were completely

original, greatly influenced Whistler’s frames of the 1890s. The first is a cushion profile, worked

into as many as 21 tiny reeds along each rail (b). Another Degas moulding had a zigzag section with

stepped ogees, giving an effect of complex pleats and folds; a green one frames Bather Lying on the

Ground (1886–8; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay). A more coarsely reeded torus moulding survives in at least

four examples, in brown, green or white; in After the Bath: Woman Drying the Nape of her Neck (c.

1895; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay) it is brown. (It is worth noting that paintings joining the Louvre/Musée

d’Orsay collections from the late 19th century tend to have retained their original frames.) All these

designs are found, complete or in embryo, in Degas’s sketches, together with the ‘cockscomb’

moulding, a smooth cushion worked into zigzags on one side. It has been suggested that Cluzel, a

framemaker who worked for several Impressionists including Pissarro, helped Degas to realize this

design. Both the profile and the colour of these frames are striking.

In 1879 Mary Cassatt used red as well as green, and in 1880 Pissarro’s pictures were framed in

colours complementary to the main shade of the painting. The colours of that year’s exhibition

rooms were equally striking; those of Pissarro’s room, lilac, with a border of canary yellow, were

echoed by the purple frames and yellow mounts of his prints. Such schemes, based on

complementary or harmonizing colours, were extensions of the artist’s frame to the whole setting,

as a way of intensifying the focus on the paintings themselves. Decorative integrity was supremely

60

important to Whistler, to Rossetti and, in different ways, to the Impressionists. Complete rooms,

such as Pissarro’s, were never replicated by his clients but had some effect on the design of

commercial galleries. The Impressionists’ immediate purchasers were mostly either bourgeois

French or wealthy Americans, whose taste in art was discriminating but whose domestic

surroundings were inevitably inclined towards the 19th-century Baroque and Rococo revivals; in

such a setting, linear mouldings in pink or purple would have been inappropriate and tawdry. (The

owner of a Degas recklessly changed its grey-green frame for gilt—only to have the canvas

reclaimed by the artist.) The use of white frames was possibly an admission that the pictures’

original setting could not be copied; they offered a less outré compromise. Artists used them for

both aesthetic and economic reasons. Few remain, but knowledge of them is still associated with the

pictures they framed, and they influenced the ways in which later schools would frame their art. In

1882 Berthe Morisot ordered a white frame for the seventh group exhibition as a matter of course,

while in 1883 Pissarro complained that, after years of urging them on the dealer Durand-Ruel, he

had been forced to give up. Yet two months later, Durand-Ruel showed Pissarro’s pictures in white

frames in London, and in May, Pissarro had ‘two rooms full of white frames’ in the Paris gallery. In

1887 he was attempting to circumvent the rules of the Exposition Internationale, forbidding white

frames, with a design of white border, plain oak flat and gilt laurel trim. In 1887–8 Georges Seurat

painted The Models (Merion Station, PA, Barnes Found.), which showed his Sunday Afternoon on

the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–6; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.) in its original broad white frame.

The Impressionists were, however, not solely devoted to white or coloured frames, nor totally

dismissive of gilt. References in artists’ letters reveal a use of gilt frames concurrently with the

more innovative designs. Pissarro wrote (1889): ‘The Women with Pails, placed in a fine new

gilded frame, did admirably, with a heightening of the tone, a comforting warmth; very powerful

and rich’, and to Jean-Marie Fortuné Durand-Ruel (1892): ‘You are right, the cost of frames in matt

gold would be considerable; however, we could have three matt frames made for the three principal

pictures.’ In 1884 Monet asked Durand-Ruel for the address of Dubourg, the gilder, who was also

used by Pissarro and Renoir. He ordered 12 frames for the 1891 exhibition of his Haystack series;

two were white, and the rest presumably gold. Many Impressionist paintings depict gilded frames

(e.g. Manet’s Eva Gonzales, Henri Fantin-Latour’s group portraits, Degas’s interiors), while

photographs of Monet’s studio show the Waterlilies series in slender gilt mouldings.

French artists’ and dealers’ frames, c. 1860–1900: (a) architrave frame…

It could be claimed that the archetypal Impressionist frames are neither the few surviving white or

coloured artists’ designs, nor the familiar stripped and colour-washed 18th-century frames beloved

of dealers, but two contrasting types developed by their most tireless promoter and campaigner,

Durand-Ruel. The first, a plain and elegant Louis XVI revival pattern (see fig., d), was applied

universally. In photographs of Impressionist exhibitions from 1905 to 1925 in the Durand-Ruel

archives, the paintings are generally in these gilded frames; their burnished ribbon-and-stave

mouldings can also be found on a related design (38c) framing Impressionist paintings in the

Camondo collection (Paris, Mus. d’Orsay). The first style was found suitable for seascapes, figures,

portraits, still-lifes and landscapes; it was presumably approved, even if grudgingly, by the artists. It

appears on Degas’s work, sometimes with an added white cuff (e.g. on Ballet Rehearsal on Stage;

1874); it framed a Pontoise landscape by Pissarro; Paul Signac’s Green Sail (1904); and James

61

Tissot’s portrait of Mme L. L. (all Paris, Mus. d’Orsay). Its use may have been stimulated by Manet,

many of whose oils and pastels have similar frames, in which they were exhibited at the Salon. The

Camondo version, with its wide stepped flat and high traylike outer fillet surmounted by a ribbon-

and-stave moulding, is even more spare and clean. It may have been specially designed as a ‘livery’

frame for Count Isaac de Camondo or have been developed from the Durand-Ruel type; the

removal of the ribbon moulding to the outer edge creates a defining ripple of light around the

whole.

An alternative pattern was a Régence-style frame (e), some 25 of which have been recorded on

works by Monet, Pissarro and Renoir, and most of which can be traced back to Durand-Ruel. It has

moulded corner and centre cartouches on a cross-hatched ground, and front leaf-tip and shell

ornament, in a dull bronze finish. Far more frames of this type survive than of the Neo-classical

model, indicating collectors’ preference for wider portrait-style frames with a more opulent finish;

the curving lines of the decoration blended more happily than the severe geometry of the Louis XVI

revival pattern with the typical middle-class interior. These two dealer-selected patterns suggest that

it was easier to sell Impressionist works with a traditional presentation than in their own ultra-

modern frames, and that the artists themselves generally accepted this. Familiar frames enabled

their radical work to be accommodated alongside older masters. Many pictures were given standard

Second Empire Salon patterns, either through exhibition demands or to be acceptable to collectors.

The versatile fluted scotia frame (see fig., a) appears on two snow scenes at Lausanne (1878; Paris,

Mus. d’Orsay) and on Pissarro’s Versailles Road at Louveciennes (1879; Baltimore, MD, Walters

A.G.). The heavy Louis XIV style (see fig., c) is retained on several Monets (e.g. Haystack (Sunset)

and Haystack (Snow Effect); both 1890–91; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). It can be seen clearly in the

studio photographs noted above, on paintings in the Seine and Waterlily series, while one of the

latter, prominently displayed in two photographs, has a wide swept 18th-century-style setting—

possibly the one Monet had in mind when he asked Octave Maus to take care of his ‘old frames for

which I have an especial regard’. As the studio photographs also show, Monet often preferred

narrower frames, employing Louis XIII acanthus-leaf or torus patterns on such works as the Rouen

Cathedral series (1892–3) in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Another means of obtaining traditional framing was to use discarded ancien régime frames, which

generally fitted without alteration, since canvases and the corresponding frames had remained

standardized for over 200 years. Such hand-carved originals added authority and prestige; their deep

patina, from the warm-coloured bole showing through distressed gilding, often harmonized with the

subtle Impressionist palette better than new gold. The 810×650 mm portrait had been by far the

most frequently produced size since the 17th century, and this may be the reason why so many

Impressionist landscapes and seascapes were painted on figure-size canvases rather than the

standard formats of landscapes (810×600 mm) or seascapes (810×540 mm). Renoir was firmly in

favour of period Rococo frames, the curvilinear profile, C-scrolls and flowers of which enhanced

his Boucheresque tendencies. Fine examples are the frames of his Bouquet of Roses (1879) and

Sketches of Heads (the Berard Children) (1881; both Williamstown, MA, Clark A. Inst.), as well as

Gabrielle with a Rose (1911; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay). (For an illustration of his sketch of a Rococo

frame, see 1989 exh. cat., figs 6 and 7.) Thus the reframing of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist

works is, perhaps, not so far as once was thought from the original artists’ ideas. Their surviving

frames are rare, and most galleries display their works in antique or reproduction Louis XIV,

Régence and Louis XV styles, mainly applied by successive dealers and collectors. Many are

impressive, others overwhelm. Excellent marriages occur with the use of 16th- and 17th-century

Italian and Spanish frames; their broader, often coloured, sculptural forms harmonize well with the

artists’ composition and palette, as in the Bolognese 17th-century cassetta frame on Cézanne’s Still-

life (c. 1877; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay) and the boldly carved 17th-century Spanish leaf frame on Paul

Gauguin’s Ia orana Maria (1891–3; New York, Met.).

62

Vincent van Gogh (see §V, 6) and Gauguin introduced rather different artists’ frames. Gauguin

carved plaques, half flat decoration, half rounded forms, which reproduce the strange space of his

paintings. His sequoia frame (1901–3; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay), picked out in red, which encloses the

photograph of a Marquesan warrior, bridges the two media and echoes their decorative symbolism.

It is conventional in structure, a broad sloping flat between two fillets; its treatment, with obvious

chisel marks, relates it to the English Arts and Crafts Movement, its plainness to types of Neo-

Impressionist frame and its motifs to the Symbolists. These links indicate the divergence and

variety of French artists’ frames, following the innovations of Impressionism. From the mid-1880s

there was an upsurge in frames not only designed but constructed or decorated by artists, beginning

with Seurat’s experiments in Divisionism. He was highly sensitive to the frame’s effect and used a

more scientific approach than the Impressionists, working from ideas catalysed by, for example,

Ogden Rood’s treatise on light and colour. He applied the Divisionist technique of his paintings to

his frames, using the point in shades of pure colour laid side by side to obtain an ‘optical mix’ at a

distance, the constituent shades and—theoretically—the ‘mix’ itself being complementary to the

adjacent canvas. He may have experimented with painted borders from 1886, although most date

from 1889; by 1887 he was making painted frames, such as the painted flat of the fluted ‘Degas’

frame on The Circus (1890–91; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay), sometimes adding them to earlier pictures,

such as Honfleur (1886; New York, MOMA).

Pissarro was impressed by Seurat’s theories and in 1885–6 adopted the Divisionist technique. In

1888 he told Durand-Ruel that he wanted some of his Pointillist pictures included in the next

Impressionist exhibition and ‘will not be kept out because of my frames’. These were presumably

decorated with some sort of coloured points, but none seems to have survived. The only apparently

surviving painted frame on a Pissarro (Garden at Pontoise, 1881; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam), which

may date from this period, is white with an ogee moulding between astragals and fillets, thickly

textured on the ogee and splashed with green and blue. It is different enough from Seurat’s frames

to predate them, belonging, if original, to the Impressionist years. Seurat’s frames also influenced

those of his peers. Signac’s Women at the Well (1892; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay) has a flat frame painted

matt black with glossy blue squiggles, complementing the orange-gold points of the painting, while

Théo van Rysselberghe used a blue-painted frame for his Divisionist Man at the Helm (1892; see

§V below). These tone well with the pictures; it is questionable whether they would have been more

effective than a white frame in creating the transition from painting to fin-de-siècle wall.

Other Post-Impressionists found different solutions. Henri Edmond Cross used a polished wooden

frame on his Divisionist Air of Evening (1893–4; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay). Paul Sérusier’s

expressionistic Breton Eve (c. 1890; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay) also has a wooden frame, with a deep

chamfer to the sight that acts as a focusing agent. Wooden frames like these have had many 20th-

century successors; when harmonizing with the painting, they probably offer the best modern

alternative to the traditional gold setting. Symbolists and decorative artists adopted painted,

patterned borders and frames that re-created in flat colours the carved ornaments of 17th-century

Italian frames. In the 1870s Gustave Moreau produced watercolours of mythological scenes, edged

with scrolling foliage and integral painted bands inside their conventional frames (see 1989 exh.

cat., pl. 11). Maurice Denis translated this use of painted ornament to wooden plate frames,

decorated by himself or his wife with patterns of flowers and leaves, as in his triptych of the

Mithouard Family (1899; priv. col.; see 1990 exh. cat., pl. 41). In 1892 Pierre Bonnard executed the

portrait of Berthe Schaedlin (New York, priv. col.) with a very similar frame, ornamented with

coloured daisies. In both pictures the flat decorative quality of the painting is as important as the

nominal subject and is enhanced by the ornamentation of the frames.

Bonnard’s work was both decorative and Symbolist. In 1893 he sketched an overtly Symbolist

frame for Mother and Child, a preparatory drawing for one of his illustrations to Le Petit Solfège

illustré by his brother-in-law Claude Terrasse. This sketch also indicates the greater emphasis given

63

to the decorative arts in Europe in the 1890s. The artists of the Nabis group all experimented with

the applied arts, including framing, while from the 1880s, Les XX of Belgium included decorative

artists in their invitations to exhibit; they were in touch with the William Morris circle in England,

and this connection, together with the decorative inclinations of Gauguin and the Nabis, aided the

development of the Art Nouveau movement. Early Art Nouveau, combined with the literary

Symbolism of Moreau and Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ, produced such settings as Marcel-Lenoir’s

aedicula for the Coronation of Christ (1890s; Montricoux, Mus. Marcel-Lenoir), a carved wooden

structure with segmental pediment, fluted half-pilasters and a deep base; it has blunt rounded forms

and is decorated with relief figures twined with looping organic lines. While the conception echoes

the Renaissance Revival frames of Moreau’s Life (1879–86; Paris, Mus. Moreau) or Lecomte du

Nouÿ’s Homer as a Beggar (1881; Grenoble, Mus. B.-A.), the treatment is drastically different and

contemporary. Its religious symbolism derives from Gauguin’s Pont-Aven school, and its

decoration from the ‘whiplash’ line of Victor Horta and Henry Van de Velde; and it has some of the

meltingly amorphous quality of the Auricular style. Art Nouveau picture frames are, however, rare;

decorative paintings of the 1890s and 1900s in museums and private collections are most often

hung unframed or in minimalist 20th-century strip mouldings. There remain, however, some mirror

frames, which may be of carved, polished wood, repoussé copper or moulded metal; for example,

the carved, wooden eared frame with vine and butterfly motifs by a student of William Morris

(Paris, priv. col.). There are also interesting examples in the Musée de l’Ecole de Nancy, notably in

polished oak, on portraits and landscapes with figures by Victor Prouvé. Otherwise there are

decorative borders in the style, such as the bold painted leaf-and-flower motifs around a work by

Paul Ranson: Girl with Flowers (c. 1890; Rome, Gal. Levante). These take up the picture’s shapes

and tones, using them as Bonnard did, to flatten the whole into an almost abstract decoration.

Borders on Alphonse Mucha’s posters attempt a similar abstraction but degenerate into mere

prettiness of line.

These ideas appealed to Matisse; the Red Studio (1911; New York, MOMA) shows a decorative

portrait in a frame painted like those of the Nabis, and a group of his pictures has integral painted

borders. Georges Rouault, Matisse’s fellow Fauve, produced similar works (see §V). The various

versions of Matisse’s Tahiti (1936) have margins of flowers, very like the designs painted on to

frames by Denis and Bonnard, but in this case painted on the canvas itself. The scene is composed

as a window looking out on a seascape; it is bounded by a stylized lace curtain and by the flowery

frame, but at the same time the illusion is undercut, partly by the flatness and abstraction of the

artist’s manner and partly by the frame itself, with its equally flat and decorative pattern. A pencil

sketch of the scene and its border show that both were conceived together; and a photograph of

1940 shows Matisse working on the similar arrangement of Verdure, a landscape contained in a

painted, scrolling margin, the whole framed in a simple moulding. Such a moulding is found on

Matisse’s portrait of Sarah Stein (1916; San Francisco, CA, MOMA), where a reverse-rebate

triangular-sectioned frame emphasizes the severe geometry of the painting, and on his Corner of

Studio (1912; Moscow, Pushkin Mus. F.A.), one of two of his works to have a grey-painted hollow

frame. Even simpler are the narrow strips tacked around the stretchers of the Matisses in the Cone

Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art (although these absolute reductions of the frame may have

been imposed by a patron or curator). Both this minimalist form and the painted border undermine

or subvert traditional notions of framing. The border defines the work as a decorative pattern with

no depth, creating a tension with the realism, however stylized, of Matisse’s interiors and

landscapes. The minimal strip frame sets the painting directly against the wall, with only an outline

to delimit its boundaries; there is no transitional area to rest the eye, no illusion of a window on

other worlds. The canvas stands on its own merits, neither bound to its setting nor self-consciously

separated from it.

Some of the Cubists, such as Picasso and Braque, returned to more traditional ideas by reproducing

frames or elements of frames in their work, and by adding plain painted borders (see §VIII below).

64

Others preferred wooden mouldings in the form of a completely unadorned white-painted torus,

examples being Georges Valmier’s Five Senses (1931; Paris, Mus. A. Mod. Ville Paris), Fernand

Léger’s The Typographer and Jean Gorin’s Composition No. 2 (1926; Nantes, Mus. B.-A.). This is

an extremely satisfying solution to the problem of displaying a work that no longer obeys the

conventions of representational art; the austerity of these monumental creations is repeated in the

abstracted form of the frame. Similarly, the work of Hans Arp of the 1920s and 1930s was framed

in basic, geometrically sectioned frames that indicate the large, abstract projecting forms in his

paintings.

Surrealism, however, with its use of disturbing juxtapositions, continued the breakdown of the

conventional frame, drawing it wholly or partially into the composition of the painting, or crossing

it with elements of the central image. Early Renaissance artists had done this in order to heighten

the illusionism of the whole; here (e.g. in works by René Magritte and Max Ernst) it was done to

point out the ambiguity of the world portrayed. This has perhaps hastened the tendency of 20th-

century artists to turn away from the frame or to demote it, using cheap stock mouldings as a

gesture to delimitation and as a vestigial form of protection. Examples are Léger’s Tail of Comet on

a Black Background (c. 1931; Maeght priv. col.), a triptych with each panel in a simple gold border,

and Amédée Ozenfant’s Large Still-life (1926; Paris, Mus. A. Mod. Ville Paris). Only in a rare

instance is the frame produced in tandem with the work or accorded any place in the artist’s design,

as in Serge Poliakoff’s Mural Composition (1967; Paris, Pompidou). This is a composition of 13

panels inspired by icons, each framed in a painted border mimicking wood. In contrast, the diptych

Passage du bleu (1977; Rennes, Mus. B.-A. & Archéol.) by Geneviève Asse (b 1923) is framed in a

grey moulding designed and painted by the artist, which looks back to the simple northern European

altar frames of the 14th and 15th centuries. These two examples show the diversity of the artists’

frames that are still produced; there is no longer much sense of a coherent style, nor of a frame’s

purpose, but the individual designs that do appear are always eclectic.

Bibliography

J.-F. Watin: L’Art de faire et d’employer le vernis (Paris, 1772); rev. as L’Art du peintre, doreur,

vernisseur (Paris, 1776)

L. Deshairs: Les Cadres de tableaux en France, de la fin du XVIe siècle au Premier Empire (Paris,

1910–12)

H. Vial, A. Marcel and A. Girodie: Les Artistes décorateurs du bois (Paris, 1912)

F. de Salverte: Les Ebénistes du XVIIIe siècle: Leurs oeuvres et leurs marques (Paris and Brussels,

1927)

S. Roche: Cadres français et étrangers du XVe siècle au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1931)

L. Venturi: Les Archives de l’Impressionnisme (Paris, 1939)

J. Calmette: Les Grands Ducs de Bourgogne (Paris, 1949); Eng. trans. as The Golden Age of

Burgundy (New York, 1962)

A. Blunt: Art and Architecture in France, 1500 to 1700, Pelican Hist. A. (Harmondsworth, 1957)

W. Graf Kalnein and M. Levey: Art and Architecture of the 18th Century in France, Pelican Hist.

A. (Harmondsworth, 1972)

65

G. Bazin: The Louvre (London, 1979)

P. Mitchell: ‘The Framing Tradition’, Picture Framing, ed. R. Wright-Smith (London, 1980)

P. Cannon-Brookes: ‘Robert Tournières, Lord Bateman and Two Picture Frames’, Int. J. Mus.

Mgmt & Cur., iv (1985), pp. 141–5 [4 figs]

P. Mitchell: ‘A Signed Frame by Jean Chérin’, Int. J. Mus. Mgmt & Cur., iv (1985), pp. 145–54 [8

figs]

B. Pons: De Paris à Versailles, 1699–1736: Les Sculpteurs ornemanistes et l’art décoratif des

Bâtiments du Roi (Strasbourg, 1986)

The Art of the Edge: European Frames, 1300–1950 (exh. cat., Chicago, IL, A. Inst., 1986)

I. Cahn: ‘Les Cadres impressionnistes’, Rev. A., 76 (1987), pp. 57–62

B. Pons: ‘Les Cadres français du XVIIIe siècle et leurs ornements’, Rev. A., 76 (1987), pp. 41–50

I. Cahn: ‘Degas’s Frames’, Burl. Mag., cxxxi (1989), pp. 289–92

Cadres de peintres (exh. cat. by I. Cahn, Paris, Mus. d’Orsay, 1989) [37 figs]

Polyptyques: Le Tableau multiple du moyen âge au vingtième siècle (exh. cat., ed. C. Clément;

Paris, Louvre, 1990)

D. Shipounoff: ‘Picture Framing I: La Reparure’, Int. J. Mus. Mgmt & Cur., xiii (1994), pp. 431–4

For further bibliography see §I above.

Paul Mitchell, Lynn Roberts

Copyright © Oxford University Press 2007 — 2015.

66

Frame, §IV: Britain

article url: http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T029196pg4

Frame, §IV: Britain

IV. Britain.

1. Medieval.

Britain is comparatively less well-endowed with medieval altarpieces even than France, and the

earliest stages of framemaking must be deduced from records and wall paintings. Antependia of

gold, silver, ivory, silver gilt and precious stones are recorded from the 11th century; these would

have been related to Germanic and other northern European examples. By the 12th century

reredoses and altarpieces proper had appeared, and contemporary wall paintings indicate that

geometric and mosaic patterns would have been used for frames. By the early 13th century the

abbey at St Albans, Herts, boasted an altarpiece ‘partly of metal, partly of wood’ and another of two

tiers. Arcading with gilt and painted mouldings and subject paintings in the niches appeared on

church walls and was imitated in many wooden screens or free-standing reredoses, such as the 13th

century example in the church of the Holy Innocents, Adisham, Kent, which was originally in

Canterbury Cathedral. This has a Gothic architectural framework, like contemporary Italian

altarpieces, with carved, gessoed, gilt and painted colonettes, trefoil arches and quatrefoils. Works

such as these would probably have had the elaborately patterned decoration used for such

architectural features as doors and window-frames: in the Painted Chamber at the Palace of

Westminster, London, there were window mouldings gilded with black lines or painted red, green

or blue. Similarly, in the 13th-century façades of such great Gothic cathedrals as Salisbury, Wells

and Exeter there are mouldings, arcadings and colonettes that frame tiers of sculpted figures and are

painted like the statues themselves, reproducing on a monumental scale an altar reredos with its

pinnacled framework.

Medieval English gilt-wood and painted frames inset with glass panels:…

Techniques used for framing altarpieces were certainly transferred to buildings: fake enamelling,

where panels of glass were gilded and painted on the reverse and then applied to wooden surfaces,

was used on both the outside and inside of churches. The Westminster Retable (c. 1270–80; see fig.,

a) employs this method; it is in the bejewelled style of a reliquary and was much influenced by the

interiors of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Altarpieces in this reliquary style were extremely

expensive in terms of the labour involved: in 1258 Peter of Spain received the huge sum of £80 for

the Lady Chapel frontal and altarpiece in Westminster Abbey (including the frames); the

Westminster Retable would probably have been even more expensive as it was the focal point of the

whole abbey. The simple, oblong plate frame containing it is enriched with panels of faux enamel,

beautifully worked with interlocking geometrical patterns and with 24 gessoed cameos of classical

heads. Within are three panels with a micro-architectural framework (as in Spanish and northern

European altarpieces), and two containing Saracenic eight-pointed medallions. These two types of

inner frame are set against backgrounds, respectively, of further geometric and heraldic glass

mosaics and of ultramarine glass panels painted with gilded vines and foliate scrolls. The inner

frames are also decorated, the architectural colonettes with painted pastiglia emblems and the star

mouldings with faux enamel. The Westminster Retable links Anglo-French metalwork shrines and

67

reliquaries with the great gilded and enamelled tombs of this period, the remains of which survive

in the abbey. It also provided an archetype for such later and provincial altarpieces as the example

(c. 1355) in St Mary’s Church, Thornham Parva, Suffolk, and its antependium (c. 1355; Paris, Mus.

Cluny); here, the architectural framework is simplified and brightly painted, the infill decoration is

copied in gilt and painted, stamped pastiglia, and the outer frame with its enamel panels becomes a

simple painted border.

In the Despenser Retable (c. 1380–90; Norwich Cathedral; see fig., b) the inner framework has

disappeared, and the outer mouldings are now as subtle and varied as an early Italian cassetta

frame. Two flats, an ogee and bevel are separated by gilded astragals and painted red or blue, apart

from the large central flat. This combines 28 faux-enamel panels of glass silvered on the reverse and

painted with armorial bearings in red and black, with gilded pastiglia panels of floral/foliate

scrolling. The top rail and all four corners of the frame were replaced in 1958, and only three of the

original glass panels remain, but skilful conservation has restored the decorative opulence contained

by a severe linear form that characterizes the greatest frame designs. The gilt pastiglia work repeats

the backgrounds of the paintings and echoes the curving forms of the figures within; it also sets

organic, natural forms against the geometry of the heraldic motifs and the frame. The frame was

apparently fixed to the panels before any gilding or painting was carried out, emphasizing the unity

of picture and setting. Interest in a similar interplay of round, flat and ogee mouldings is illustrated

by drawings in the Pepysian Sketchbook (Cambridge, Magdalene Coll.), the earliest parts of which

are contemporary with the Despenser Retable. Two leaves show moulding sections, the comparative

intricacy of which anticipates the more abstract architectural forms that would replace the Gothic

style. They were possibly used by carvers of altarpieces and were probably current by the late 15th

century. This was the date of the arrival in Britain of William Caxton. The subsequent upsurge in

production of printed pattern books influenced carving techniques, as did the simultaneous influx of

Flemish carvers, who brought their own pattern books.

Very few Late Gothic British frames exist. The Swansea Triptych (second half of the 15th century;

London, V&A) is the only remaining example in Britiain of a type exported in quantities to the

Continent. It is a large, single tier polyptych with seven carved alabaster panels in an oak frame.

The latter is a simple linear structure with an inscribed predella, quoined mullions of stained oak

and gilded pastiglia blocks, and canopies depending from the upper moulding. Otherwise, the

decorative filigree frames of the International Gothic style have vanished, and must be extrapolated

from such works as the great wood screen (c. 1480) in the church of St Edmund, Southwold,

Suffolk, with its carved arcading and painted, gilded and pierced panels; this is itself a frame,

designed to isolate and emphasize the drama of the liturgy.

2. Tudor and early Stuart.

Tudor and Stuart frames, 1540s–1680s: (a) ebonized parcel-gilt entablature

frame,…

Renaissance altarpieces are almost non-existent in Britain, largely because Renaissance forms and

principles were not properly assimilated in northern Europe until the 17th century. Secular

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paintings, however, required appropriate settings, and these derive paradoxically from the linear

inner mouldings of a Renaissance quadro. A transitional example is the Marriage Portrait of

Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville (c. 1464; Northampton, Cent. Mus. & A.G.), a triptych similar

to northern examples, with simple painted flat and hollow mouldings decorated with gilded

guilloche. As the fashion for portraiture grew from the mid-15th century, so the numbers of these

cassetta frames proliferated and became increasingly sophisticated. Their immediate predecessors,

however, are northern rather than Italian, and they are related to the austere Flemish, Dutch or

German ebonized or stained-wood frames. An example of this style of dark-wood portrait and genre

frame surrounds George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury (1580; Hardwick Hall, Derbys, NT; see

fig., a). This is of half-lapped construction in a series of stepped ogees and flats that echo

contemporary wainscoting. It shows the influence of the Flemish journeymen carvers who came to

Britain from the 1470s. More elaborate versions, such as that in (b) with its bold run of dentils (the

gilt fret may be a later addition), are similarly linked to 16th- and 17th-century architectural and

furniture styles. Strong profiles with dentil mouldings can be found on ceiling cornices, chimney-

pieces and door-frames in many of the great contemporary English houses (see Jourdain, 1950).

Both frames and panelling of this period are generally of oak and were either painted or parcel gilt,

illustrating their common genesis at the hands of the joiner-carver. Carved architectural ornament of

this period is often northern in type, slightly grotesque, and based on strapwork, which was popular

well into the 17th century. Engraved or painted frames often imitate this style, but picture frames

tend not to, either because it was too heavy or oppressive when reproduced in wood or because it

could less easily be used for large, continuous runs.

The patterns used by Inigo Jones in the 1620s and 1630s for ceilings, chimney-pieces and friezes

were possibly adopted for picture frames at a relatively early stage, in tandem with carved furniture

etc. These frames employ Italianate motifs and Baroque versions of Classical forms. One type

midway between this and the northern dark frame has an ebonized body with gilded corner

decorations (examples, London, N.P.G.; Oxford, Ashmolean). Often of applied metalwork, these

decorations might be abstract/naturalistic foliate motifs or cherubim; they date from the middle

third of the 17th century. A more common example of the full-blown style combines a flat

‘ebonized’ background with a continuous run of applied, pierced and gilded scrolling foliage. This

pattern is a voluptuous Renaissance revival of a Classical motif, veering towards the Baroque and

apparently developing from a more sparse pattern of the 1620s and 1630s. It came into its own in

the hands of Restoration carvers during the third quarter of the 17th century and appears on the

sides and aprons of chairs and overmantels. Examples can be seen on contemporary and also earlier

works, for example, (f) by Anthony van Dyck. The style is especially associated with van Dyck and

also appears with another modified version as a gallery frame at Althorp, Northants. It can be seen

as the pure classical analogue of the Baroque ‘Lutma’ floral/foliate frame.

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3. Early Baroque.

Tudor and Stuart frames, 1540s–1680s: (a) ebonized parcel-gilt entablature

frame,…

Scrolled and lapping-leaf patterns were also common to a third contemporary frame type, the

ubiquitous torus or cushion moulding; this simple, cheap but decorative design was employed for

portraits, landscapes and subject pictures. It is a narrower, drawn-out version of a Classical

pulvinated frieze, revived by such architects as Inigo Jones from decorative elements by Vittoria

and Palladio. The use of overlapping bay leaves (see fig., c), oaks or lobed half-flowers (d), and

spiralling leaves and peapods (e) gives a varied rhythm and motion to a very basic structure— from

a straight progression of oak leaves to the elongated elegance of undulating palms. The leaf centres

and corners break these rhythms according to the usual Baroque pattern of crossed and diagonal

focal lines. The frame (c) for a double portrait sets each bust in its own painted oval bay-leaf torus.

British Baroque frames, 1660s–1710s: (a) Louis XIII-style fruit-and-leaf

torus frame,…

Decorated cushion mouldings were ubiquitous in the 17th century. The Great Stairs at Chatsworth,

Derbys, are carved on the stone undersides with a pattern-book variey of torus mouldings, while at

Ham House, Richmond, there are ceiling and overdoor examples dating from the 1630s. French and

Dutch variants are plentiful, the Dutch frames with their elaborate deep-cut bands of fruit, flowers

and ruched ribbons coming very close to contemporary English examples. In both, the main torus is

now supported by auxiliary mouldings—water-leaf, leaf-and-dart, husks, ribbons and hollows—and

both derive first from Louis XIII prototypes, which themselves came from a Roman original. They

are classical in their rich, linear form, reflecting the trends of French classicism under Poussin,

although there could be dramatic breaks at centres and corners. A typical example surrounds a

portrait of Samuel Pepys (1666; London, N.P.G.; see fig., a) with deep-cut curled-back leaves and

flowers, and ribbon-and-leaf trims. This was silvered, as was the fashion (although silver frames

were often later gilded). It cost 25 shillings, and the painting £14. It is very close to Dutch frames of

the 1670s to 1690s and reflects the strong commercial link with Holland between 1651 and 1672.

The effect of such frames is one of strong, flickering movement, achieved by bold undercutting; this

supports the bravura technique of Restoration portraiture and echoes the broken glint of wigs and

silk gowns. This type of frame was made to support the image against the new flock wallpaper

(which Pepys mentioned), to echo costume and accessory details within the painting and to give

decorative interest against a plainer setting. It is also used as an inset wall-frame and to outline

elements of panelling (e.g. at Burghley House, Cambs). A rearrangement of the mouldings makes

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this a reverse rebate or bolection frame, pushing the picture plane forward, almost level with the

torus, which is itself more dramatically cut (c). Both the group portrait, with its swags of velvet and

satins and rhythms of outstretched hands, and the frame with its spiral leaf torus broken by flower

sprigs and its outer leaf-and-flower hollow, move the type from the Classical restraint of its Roman

source to the dynamic unity of the Baroque.

In two styles of bolection frame developing from this, the profile of the moulding is smoothed from

torus and hollow into a wide ogee moulding, with shallow relief decoration of undulating leaves and

flower sprigs (d) or cross-cut acanthus (‘raffle leaves’) (e). These are typically Baroque: form and

ornament support each other and gain drama from the play of light and texture on the frame. They

are also typical of the Louis XIV style in structure, with the ogee moulding that was the basis for

different types of ornament through the second half of the 17th century. The first type is also

French-derived in its surface decoration, while (e) is a Baroque reworking of the more upright

acanthus leaves seen, for example, on the cymatium of the Maison Carrée, Nîmes, and picked up by

architects via Le Brun and Giovanni Francesco Romanelli to outline cornices, door-frames and

panelling in the great houses of the later 17th century.

The other main type of profile at this time is based on a bird’s-beak or quarter-round moulding and,

like the Louis XIII garland torus of (a), comes directly from France (b). It is decorated with an

alternating S-shaped scrolling leaf pattern, complex and intricately carved, and is one of the most

sophisticated 17th-century English frames. Its source ultimately derives from Classical Roman

friezes, although the leaf forms have been relaxed and the scroll rosettes removed. It would have

been expensive to produce, given the density and detail of the ornament, and would have been

reserved for the most precious work in a collection. Its linear form and regular, subtle patterning is

again classical rather than Baroque, and it was designed to provide a subdued twinkle of light rather

than a bold chiaroscuro.

4. Auricular.

Along with these French-derived models, the later 17th century is notable for a completely different

type of frame, which is Mannerist rather than Baroque or classical and is closely related to Dutch

Auricular and ‘Lutma’ frames (see §V below). There were close links, both courtly and

commercial, between Britain and the Netherlands at this time, and Dutch and Flemish carvers were

well established in Britain. Those on the Grand Tour would also have seen the Auricular Medici

frames in Florence (see §II, 4(ii) above). It was perhaps inevitable that a native form of the

Auricular frame should be created, especially for portraits in the lush northern idiom of Lely and

Godfrey Kneller (see Auricular style). The English Auricular frame is called the ‘Sunderland’ after

Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland, who employed it as a gallery frame at Althorp. It is naively

carved on a shallow, flat carcass with an Italianate grotesque mascaron below and a cartouche

above . It is almost invariably gilded in a blond gold, which picks up the pale skin tones of the

contemporary school of portraiture, while the curving forms echo draperies, coiffures and male

wigs. It is a simple but highly theatrical shape, effectively isolating a painting from the dark walls

of the period, which would be wainscoted or covered in tapestry or leather. John Norris, ‘frame-

maker to the Court’, made this type and also supplied the frame to Samuel Pepys shown above (see

fig., a). Examples incorporating, like the Medici frames, such marine elements as cockleshells,

conches, seahorses and fish heads are in the Manchester City Art Gallery and the National Portrait

Gallery, London.

At this time Grinling Gibbons was developing the ‘Lutma’, with its flowers, fruits and cherubs, into

an apotheosis of the carver’s art. His first known frame was a wide torus carved with high-relief

blossoms taken from contempary Dutch flower paintings; John Evelyn valued it at the large sum of

£100. The super-realistic style was that of François Du Quesnoy via Artus Quellinus of the

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Netherlands; it spread through Europe but most particularly informed the Gibbons school in Britain,

which included such carvers as Thomas Young, Jonathan Maine, Charles Oakey, Samuel Watson of

Chatsworth, Edward Pearce, William Emmett, John Selden of Petworth, Joel Lobb and William

Davis. Examples of frames and outer pendant wall-frames, carved in this ultra-realistic manner in

lime- and pear-wood, can be seen at Windsor Castle; Badminton House, Glos; the Ashmolean

Museum, Oxford; Ham House, Richmond; and Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge. These pale

woods were to be seen against darker walnut, oak and olive-wood panelling. This was the period in

which the carver took a central role in English decorative art (see Oughton). From 1691 until 1710

Gibbons was the major London employer of carvers at his Ludgate Hill workshops; in 1693 he

succeeded Henry Philips as Master Sculptor and Carver in Wood to the Crown, and he worked on

almost equal terms with Wren. At the same time the tradition was enriched by the tremendous

influx of talented carvers from France, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685),

while the economic stability of Britain meanwhile had been increasing since the Restoration (1660),

giving scope for a vast output of ornamental carving—including pendent festoons and suites of

frames—in large houses throughout the country.

5. Late Baroque.

British Baroque frames, 1660s–1730s: (a) Louis XIII-style ‘Lely’ frame with…

In tandem with the work of Gibbons were the ‘Lely’ and ‘Kneller’ frames. These were of French

derivation, developed from the torus and bird’s-beak Louis XIII models, but with the sculptural

decoration of the latter replaced by shallow calligraphic and flower-sprigged ornament. They

represent the continental, Tory, Catholic taste in Britain as Palladianism did the classical,

Protestant, anti-Baroque Whiggish tendency. As with so many families of frame, the same profile

appears in different guises, with a range of surface ornamentation. There is a plain version, the main

torus/convex moulding surrounded by small astragals and hollows, edged by water-leaf, acanthus

tip, ribbon-and-floret trims; and a panelled version (usually referred to as a ‘Lely’ (see fig., b and c).

Here, convex reposes (often brilliantly burnished to act like mirrors) contrast with centres and

corners of shallow-relief, scrolling, flowered rinceaux, gilded with a matt finish. Reverse rebate

variations of both types exist (b), as well as arched and oval frames, and there are more luxurious

examples where the reposes are gadrooned (c) or the whole central moulding is carved with an

undulating lacy foliage pattern (d). These latter styles, augmented with several rows of husk, leaf or

ribbon moulding, and with a burnished gilt hollow providing definition, were obviously expensive

in terms of labour and hence were often reserved for royal portraits (c). The gadrooned panel design

is peculiarly English, although parallel bands of gadrooning and floriation were used elsewhere in

silverwork. The effect is rich and varied but at the same time—because of the shallow carving and

refined detail—delicate and shimmering with light. More light was obviously thrown on to the

picture surface by those frames with mirrored reposes, so these would be the choice for a more

economical design or for a darker interior. Lely habitually used them, and the records of his

posthumous sale of estate and studio contents detail the large number of such frames he kept on

hand for completed paintings. Luxury versions of the same type, but continuously patterned with

ornament in the style of Daniel Marot I, were made by Perry Malton for the great van Dyck

paintings at Petworth House, W. Sussex.

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Overlapping with the ‘Lely’ design and continuing through the Queen Anne period was a bolection

frame (e) carved with continuous centre to corner gadrooning. This form, peculiar to Britain, is a

refined version of Italian Baroque models and is often referred to as the ‘Kneller’ frame; with its

fast rhythm of centrally radiating lines, the gadrooning—reinforced by an outer leaf spiral—acts

dramatically to focus on the sitter. The same profile, well disguised in ebonized pear-wood with

only a carved and gilded sight edge, was an elegant and more economical alternative, its colour

contrast combining the best of English and Dutch frames; an excellent example is on Kneller’s

portrait of William Congreve (Dublin, N.G.).

British early Georgian French-style frames, 1720s–1760s: (a) straight Louis XIV-

style…

Developing from the Lely designs a range of 18th-century frames emerged, related to Louis XIV

patterns, with the ogee profile of the latter. These generally have fairly wide, sculptural borders, in

which the form is reflected by scrolling foliate ornament intertwined with strapwork (see fig.). They

are essentially Baroque and exploit contrasts of light and shade and texture in true Baroque style.

The background ‘hazzling’, which gives basic variation of surface to the ‘Lely’ frame, becomes a

more sophisticated sanded border (i.e. gold leaf applied to a drizzling of sand over size). This is set

against matt and burnished water gilding, emphasizing the complex play of light over the different

mouldings. The shallow decorative scrolling (c) is closely related to designs by Jean Berain I,

echoing his ceilings for the château of Chantilly, and the corner cartouches are similarly French (in

this example they are espagnolette ruffs derived from e.g. Du Cerceau’s engravings).

Numerous variations on this style were possible: it lent itself to the trophy frame; for example,

Charles Philips’s portrait of Frederick, Prince of Wales (1731; New Haven, CT, Yale Cent. Brit.

A.) has a central cartouche with the feathers of the prince’s crest. There are also grand luxe models

in the Louis XIV/early Régence style; these were made for the state apartments of great houses,

sometimes in a design peculiar to the particular house (its ‘livery frame’ or house style), which was

used indiscriminately for the paintings of whatever period or nationality that were acquired by the

owner, often while on the Grand Tour. These frames, authentically French in both their design and

technique, were probably carved by Huguenot and Flemish immigrants. Peter Cousins and René

Cousins, a framemaker and gilder respectively, came from the Low Countries in the 1670s with

their apprentice Carée; René worked at Windsor Castle and Hampton Court Palace with Gibbons,

and Peter for Charles, 6th Duke of Somerset, at Petworth. In the early 18th century Michael Hué

(Huet) also made frames for Petworth, and Jean Pelletier did the same for Boughton House,

Northants. Paul Petit and Henry Joris (Jouret) were employed by Frederick, Prince of Wales, in the

1730s, and William Thornton used the Huguenot craftsmen Jean Godier and Daniel Hervé at

Wentworth Castle, S. Yorks, c. 1718–19. Luxury house frames in a pure Louis XIV style can be

found at Chatsworth, Derbys, Stourhead and Corsham Court, Wilts; those at the last are identical

designs, framing works by Reni, Rubens, Carlo Dolci, Bonifazio de’ Pitati and William Dobson.

The suitability of such a pattern to the Baroque classicism of Reni is questionable, but these frames

were highly suitable for the backgrounds of cut velvet and the new flock wallpapers in use

throughout the 18th century, and for the grained or painted wainscoting with its gradual accretions

of boiseries.

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Subject pictures and portraits tended to be given frames with centre and corner cartouches, as the

focal lines between these points—diagonals and vertical crosses—emphasize the visual highlights

of the single figure (face and hands), while the composition of a Baroque history painting or family

portrait often utilizes the same focal lines. Marine scenes and landscapes, however, where the same

qualities of movement, drama and emotional tension are not relevant, were usually given straight-

sided frames with modest corners. Other variations include the mirrored reposes of a Lely frame

between corner (sometimes also centre) panels of decoration in the style of Bérain; these were again

more economical and gave stronger contrast of light and shade. In the portrait of John Conyers (c.

1747; New Haven, CT, Yale Cent. Brit. A.) by Francis Hayman, such a frame is visible in the

background.

Throughout the 18th century these French-derived styles followed their continental precedents into

the Régence type of frame: an ogee profile with straight sides defined by ovolo trim, fillets, ribbon-

and-stick or gadrooning; larger centre and corner cartouches (with sunflowers, shells, espagnolette

ruffs and knops); and linking trails of floral sprigs and rinceaux. The background of the ogee

moulding was often given textural interest by engraved cross-hatching, and sanding could still be

applied. The cabinetmaker Benjamin Goodison supplied Frederick, Prince of Wales, with a full-

length portrait frame in the 1730s, which was ‘carv’d & Guilt in Oyl Gold with a sanded ground

ornamented with Shells £10.00’ (see 1989 exh. cat.). This was a quick and economical version; by

the 1750s Goodison was charging £74 and £72 15s. for Palladian frames (see §6 below) for

Holkham Hall, Norfolk. The gadrooned sight edge then moved out to define the contour, giving

richness and interest to a much more linear style. The trailing foliate decoration fell away from the

rails, leaving stronger three-dimensional pierced corners contained by swooping, scrolled rinceaux,

as the Régence style moved towards the Rococo. Examples of this can be seen on mid-18th-century

portraits by Allan Ramsay (a favourite pattern for him, see fig., e), and Reynolds, and on Joseph

Highmore’s 12 paintings from Pamela (1744; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam; Melbourne, N.G. Victoria;

London, Tate). The more economical, cornerless version of this gadrooned frame (see fig., d) was

often used for landscapes and large subjects where the corners would be too isolated to create focal

emphasis.

6. Palladian.

The roots of the Palladian style (see Palladianism) were fixed in the work of John Webb (i) and

Inigo Jones, whose copy of Palladio’s Quattro libri dell’architettura (1570) was bought in the 18th

century by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork, the patron of English

Palladianism. In 1727 William Kent edited The Designs of Inigo Jones for Burlington, which

inspired Kent to take up architectural design, including frames and overmantels. These were based

on Jones’s ideas, modified by what Kent had seen in Italy. The Palladian ideal was also moulded by

Colen Campbell and his Vitruvius Britannicus (1715–25); his work and Kent’s swiftly became the

dominant style in Britain in the 1720s. Such simple, classical interiors as the Saloon elevations by

Kent for Houghton Hall, Norfolk, epitomize this style: the eared overmantel with scrolled medallion

drops is echoed by a cluster of sculptural egg-and-dart frames, the top rail of each rising in a

graceful swan’s neck. Kent indicated the contents of each frame, but it is clear that the pictures are

subordinate to their places in the unified design.

The Palladian frame was unique to Britain, and it was a long-lasting style feeding into the later Neo-

classicism of Adam and his followers. Its place in the articulation of an interior meant that it was

ideally suited to the framing of a series of paintings, for example Kneller’s forty Kit-Cat Club

portraits (c. 1697–c. 1721; London, N.P.G., and Beningbrough Hall, N. Yorks, NT). These were

painted for Jacob Tonson, the club’s secretary, and were framed in a similar style to Kent’s

Houghton frames, with a heavy egg-and-dart, sanded flat and inner ribbon and flowers. The top and

bottom rails are eared, with a foliate swan’s-neck crest inset and a cartouche for the sitter’s name at

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the bottom. They were made by Gerrard Howard, Carver and Gilder to the Royal Family, who

framed the set in 1733 for two guineas each.

The frame for Allan Ramsay’s Thomas, 2nd Baron Mansel of Margam, with his Half-brothers and

Sister (1742, London, Tate) is the opposite end of the range from this type of block framing; the

eared structure defined by egg-and-dart moulding is similar, but the accumulated richly carved

ornaments set this family portrait frame firmly in the luxury class. The sanded frieze is replaced by

an enriched guilloche (or flowered interlacing), which appears in ceilings by Kent, frame designs by

Isaac Ware and mirrors by the partnership of William Vile and John Cobb. It may also take the

form of an enriched fret or a Vitruvian scroll. The corner paterae and shells, bay-leaf (sometimes

oak-leaf) swags, acanthus clasps and lower cartouche with mascaron are characteristic of grand luxe

luxurious Palladian frames, while the espagnolette head above, with its plaited hair, double shell

and rioting palms and acanthus, lends a touch of Baroque drama. Similarly rich, movable frames are

at Hampton Court Palace; Stourhead, Wilts; Audley End House, Essex; and Woburn Abbey, Beds;

plainer eared frames set into complementary carved and panelled wall-frames at Temple Newsam,

W. Yorks; and a suite of painted and gilt overmantel, full-length portrait frames, doorcases and

frieze (1736–9), all by the architect Henry Flitcroft, at Ditchley Park, Oxon. Most full-scale

Palladian interiors boasted work by immigrant Italian stuccoists, and there is a blurring of definition

here between the plaster frame as extension of the wall and the separate carved wooden frame as

supplied by the carver and gilder (see Stucco and plasterwork, §III, 10(i)(c)).

7. Rococo.

The Rococo was introduced in Britain c. 1721 with the arrival of George Michael Moser (i), a Swiss

silversmith and pioneer of the style. Gibbons was succeeded in the same year by Kent’s Palladian

carver, James Richards. There was thus a considerable stylistic overlap, although the Rococo idiom

took several years to become established after its full-blown emergence in France in the 1720s

and—with Palladianism and, later, Neo-classicism to compete against—was never as strongly

rooted in Britain as on the Continent. The Dining-room at Easton Neston, Northants, was decorated

c. 1730 with integral plasterwork frames in which a Palladian swan’s-neck and eared silhouette still

underlie the exaggerated, scrolled contours and the infill of delicate Rococo rinceaux. These trophy

frames, possibly by the stuccoist Charles Stanley, include such motifs as hunting horns and arrows

around the inset paintings of hunting dogs. Further plaster trophies of bows, quivers and nets etc

link pictures and frames to the walls and thus to the room as a whole, a unified approach to interior

decoration that was shared by the Baroque, Palladianism and the Rococo.

Otherwise, Rococo picture frames only slowly infiltrated Britain: the first pattern book of ornament

in the style, Sixty Different Sorts of Ornaments, by Gaetano Brunetti (d 1758), was not published

until 1736, while at the same time classicism received another boost from the 1738 excavations at

Herculaneum. The strong allegiance to French taste, however, continued through the influence of

Huguenot carvers and gilders. Paul Petit, who was employed in 1731–2 on the Royal Barge

designed by Kent and carved by James Richards, was working in a full Rococo style for the Prince

of Wales by 1742 (see Buttery). His frame for John Wootton’s group portrait of the Prince and

Friends out Hunting (British Royal Col.) is again a trophy frame, with hounds’ heads, dead snipe,

powder flask, bow and arrows etc, surmounted by the Prince of Wales’s feathers. Broken S-scrolls

enriched with lambrequins or stylized fringes articulate the structure of the frame and echo the

outstretched birds’ wings, while rocailles and shells brimming with water enclose the swimming

dogs’ heads and sprout naturalistic bullrushes. Petit was paid £21 for this frame, but in 1739 he and

Joris were paid £160 for a full-length Rococo trophy frame with military emblems for a portrait of

the Prince. These are opulent, richly gilded, sculptural frames, the apogee of a rather short-lived

style. Most Rococo frames date from 1745 to 1755, fewer from the early 1740s and 1760s. They are

closely tied to furniture styles of the first half of the 18th century, while Palladian frames are related

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more to architectural interiors. An example of the relationship between Rococo furniture and

frames, and of Huguenot influence on both, is evident in the work of James Pascal, a Huguenot

carver and gilder of Long Acre, London. He made picture frames for Sir Richard Colt Hoare for

almost 20 years and in 1746 made a suite of gilded Rococo furniture for Temple Newsam House.

These are in the sculptural manner of Petit’s frames, including fanned lambrequins, rushes and

rocailles.

British Rococo frames, 1740s–1760s: (a) swept rocaille frame with

sanded…

The standard Rococo frame was far simpler, lighter and more economical—although the curving

lines and embellishments gave a sense of luxury. A variety of basic types (see fig.), in use

concurrently, ranges from the early C-scrolled corner and sanded flat (a), developed from straight-

sided Régence frames, to the sculptural rail with inner curved fillet (f). Since the various

elements—even in plainer versions (b)—took time to produce, there would have been pressure on

the framemakers to produce a continuous stream of stock patterns in standard sizes to supply the

‘ready-made’ end of the market. Variations include corners (with or without related symmetrical,

asymmetrical or smaller centres) of rocailles, shells, espagnolette ruffs, fanned lambrequins, florets

and sunflowers; pierced lambrequin moulding (d); Gothick quatrefoils (e); inner ‘swept’ fillets;

gadrooned sights; textured grounds of sand; fluting or engraved diapering; and the very English use

of trails of small five-petalled flowers. Many of these details appear in contemporary silverwork, for

example in the work of the Huguenots Paul de Lamerie and Nicholas Sprimont; they derive from

decorative metalwork of the previous generation and frequently have close connections with the

designs of Daniel Marot I. They can also be found in furniture: for example in the designs Six

Sconces (1744) and Six Tables (1746; both London, V&A) by Matthias Lock, the designs of

Abraham Swan and the work of Thomas Johnson during the 1750s and 1760s. The second St

Martin’s Lane Academy (est. 1735), founded in London principally by Hogarth, helped stimulate

much of this work and encouraged the exchange of decorative ideas between the different media.

Plasterwork was also closely connected with Rococo wood-carving; and although there are far

fewer entire Rococo than Palladian interiors in Britain, the French fashion for an extension of the

idiom through frames, boiseries, stuccowork and tapestries can be seen, for example, at Hagley

Hall, Worcs, and in the work of the stuccoist Thomas Roberts at Rousham, Oxon. The latter

demonstrates how the delicate later style of the 1760s could be a visual distraction from the pictures

framed, and that while Rococo frames complement portraits by Arthur Devis and Gainsborough,

and landscapes by Richard Wilson, they consort less comfortably with the bluff men and sober

women portrayed by Benjamin West and Reynolds. This is especially true of later Rococo frames,

where the carcass is attenuated and the silhouette broken into fantastic flourishes under the

influence of the chinoiserie and Gothick tastes of the 1760s summed up in Chippendale’s pattern

book The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker’s Director (1754), and in which the blurring of elements

between picture and looking-glass frames (often quite distinct in style) can be seen. These fragile,

lacy structures would have been extremely expensive in terms of labour, and this catalyzed the use

of a new medium for frames. In 1749 Mrs Delany wrote of the framemaker Joseph Duffour as ‘the

famous man for paper ornaments like stucco’, and his trade-card proclaimed him as the ‘Original

Maker of Papier Machie’. Others rapidly copied this innovation and so during the late 18th century

and the early 19th the mass-produced decoration of plain mouldings developed, spelling the end of

the carved wooden frame. A fine suite of six papier-mâché Rococo frames was commissioned in the

1760s by Francis Mundy of Markeaton Hall (destr. 1964) for his set of portraits by Joseph Wright

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of Derby, an artist noted for the general supervision of his frames and their mainly Huguenot

craftsmen (see 1990 exh. cat.).

8. Neo-classical.

British ‘Carlo Maratta’ frames, c. 1750–1800: (a) acanthus-and-tongue sight

frame…

During the phases of the Rococo, classical frames continued to be made: in the 1750s John Vardy

designed Spencer House, London, and its furniture in a refined Kentian style, the frames probably

being made by his carver–brother Thomas Vardy (b 1724); the latter also worked in the same idiom

for Henry Flitcroft, as did Benjamin Goodison. But this was the tail end of the Palladian style; this

decade heralded the new classicists, as William Chambers returned from Rome in 1755 and Robert

Adam from his Italian Grand Tour in 1758. Hagley Hall, Hereford & Worcs, was one of the last

places to be decorated in the Rococo style (1759), and by 1761 the Italian stuccoists who had helped

to promulgate the style had left the country. Neo-classicism was the new fashion, diffused through

such archaeological studies as the Comte de Caylus’s Recueil d’antiquités, Julien-David Le Roy’s

Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce (1758) and Stuart and Revett’s Antiquities of

Athens (1762–1816). As early as 1759, Sefferin Alken (1717–82), one of the major carvers of the

next half century, was making five gilded frames to Adam’s designs for the Breakfast Room at

Kedleston Hall, Derbys, while Chambers was designing early Neo-classical furniture for the Society

of Arts and also for Reynolds. The archetypal Neo-classical frame was introduced at around this

time directly from Italy, where it had been current from the 17th century; this was the ‘Carlo

Maratta’ or ‘Salvator Rosa’ frame (see fig.), which was used by the English for paintings acquired

on the Grand Tour (see §II, 5 above). Authentic Roman versions were often brought back, such as

the simple, undecorated type that was rarely produced in Britain. The characteristic ‘Maratta’

profile features an important scotia, surrounded by mouldings of a three-quarter round or deep ogee

section (a). The form is severely linear and classical, suitable for nearly every form of painting, and

the straight lines were welcomed by those who were sated with the flamboyant curvaceousness of

the Rococo. This severity, however, is mitigated by the enriched mouldings usually found on either

side of the scotia (a, b, c): egg mouldings, ribbon-and-stave, cross-cut acanthus or leaf-and-tongue,

and gadrooning. It was the most widely used frame from the 1750s to the end of the century,

surviving in its carved version to the 1820s, and beyond that in a plaster version. Reynolds used a

‘Carlo Marat Frame’ in preference to his other choice of Rococo (‘French frames’) during the

1760s; they were more economical and could be bought ready-made or quickly made to measure, as

there were no complications of corner ornaments (see Penny and Gregory).

As with all other styles of frame, there were hierarchical gradations reflecting the subject-matter of

the painting or its purpose, from a ‘filler’ for an important wall to a royal gift or collector’s frame

for an important Old Master. Thus minor landscapes or suites of pictures were often framed in

‘Marattas’ ornamented with only a small ribbon and beading or bead-and-bobbin (known as a ‘semi

Carlo’), while large portraits (b and c) had all the convex mouldings enriched, giving a density of

ornamentation and a consequent shimmer of light and movement. This undercuts the linear austerity

of the contour and forms the perfect setting for depictions of men and women in the ‘classical’

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poses and costumes of the later 18th century. An even more opulent or ‘full Carlo’ version (for a

sitter shown full-length in robes of state) has the scotia filled with a deep ogee leaf-and-dart

moulding (d), and the celebratory marriage portrait of Mr and Mrs John Custance (1778; Kansas

City, MO, Nelson–Atkins Mus. A.) has a leaf-and-shell ogee and enriched gadrooning on the outer

rail (e). This grand luxe frame confirms the status of the artist Benjamin West, who in 1772 had

been appointed Historical Painter to the King. All his subjects in the Picture Gallery at Buckingham

Palace have retained this pattern. By contrast, a classical subject is emphasized by a fluted hollow

(g)—the trademark of the Neo-classical framemaker—which gives movement but also a

geometrical purity (h is an enriched example). Frames for pastels were made in identical mouldings

but were glazed, as they had been in Rococo versions.

The ‘Maratta’ was ideally suited to the interiors of Adam. These already play geometrical shapes

against each other, for example in the Music Room, Harewood House (1765–71), W. Yorks, with

its ceiling and carpet of circles and fluted paterae, and walls articulated by a series of oblong stucco

panels and picture frames. The Reynolds overmantel portrait and the large paintings of ruins by

Antonio Zucchi were set in enriched gilded ‘Maratta’ frames as part of this overall design, which

manages to achieve simultaneously clarity of line and richness of detail. The Saloon at Nostell

Priory (1765–85), W. Yorks, is very similar, while in the Dining-room at Saltram House (1768–9

and 1780–81), Devon, Zucchi’s paintings were set in white-painted carved wooden frames of

unadorned ‘Maratta’ type. The interplay of straight and round was picked up in later oval-sight

versions of the fluted ‘Maratta’, with rosette paterae or scrolled anthemia in the spandrels: a group

of paintings of the 1780s by George Stubbs is framed in this way. Such frames are linked to

Wedgwood’s use of round and oval plaques and of cross-fluting, and also to Adam’s use of painted

medallions, for instance in the Glass Drawing-room (now London, V&A) of Northumberland

House.

An extreme example of this play of form was expressed in the vogue at this time for print-rooms,

where round, oval, square and oblong engravings with integral printed frames were glued in formal

arrangements to the walls, interspersed with Neo-classical motifs of vines, festoons and drops of

husks. Unframed prints would often be given printed borders imitating various architectural

mouldings. In 1767 Chippendale decorated a room at Mersham-le-Hatch, Kent, in this way, and

there are print-rooms at Castletown, Co. Kildare; The Vyne, Hants; Stratfield Saye, Hants; and

Blickling Hall, Norfolk. A similar effect is seen in a designer’s proposal for a wall elevation

(workshop of John Linnell (i), 1778; London, V&A), where the oval and eared frames and their

linking festoons are carefully drawn in to demonstrate how the arrangement of stucco or papier-

mâché mouldings was to be made. An arrangement of mirrors and pictures in papier-mâché frames,

with gilt trophies and pastoral groups, formed a scheme like this at Doddington Hall, Lincs, in the

1760s: fragments of the linking trophies survive, with the frames (as does a wallpaper printed with

imitation framed engravings); these were probably all supplied by Peter Babel, who is recorded as

sending two sanded and gilded frames and 70 ft of ‘Paper machee Rich Border Gilt in Oil Gold’ for

£8 15s. Such schemes demonstrate the importance in the late 18th century of formal wall

arrangements based on the size, shape and ornament of the picture frames, which overrode to a

large extent the contents of the paintings within. This was a function of Augustanism, which had set

the tone of the earlier 18th century with its restraint, formality and politesse.

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British Neo-classical frames, 1770s–1810s: (a) entablature frame with fluted

frieze…

Augustanism was diluted from the 1760s, however, by the romanticism and delicacy of touch

introduced by Adam. The heavy classicism of the Palladians had disappeared, and although its

forms (such as eared frames) were retained, they were much lighter and were softened by

surrounding decorative motifs: by the ‘grotesque, stucco & painted ornaments together with the

flowing rainceau, with its fanciful figures & winding foliage’, which the Adam brothers claimed to

have introduced. Thus Neo-classical frames were often made to be fitted into a scheme such as the

one at Doddington Hall, where they would be linked by the ornamentation of the walls; and so a

plain ‘entablature’ or cassetta form with a frieze of fluting, anthemia or enriched guilloche (see fig.)

became the centre for a carefully choreographed dance of stucco motifs. In the inset ceiling

paintings by Angelica Kauffman in the Long Gallery, Harewood House, the superficial shape of a

‘Maratta’ has been retained, but the scotia has been flattened into a level frieze to conform to the

architectural decoration of cornices, tables and chairs, pelmets and pier glasses. This development

has been initiated (a) in the use of shallow scotia, fluting and stiff-leaf decoration. In an archetypal

Adam frame (b), the ‘Maratta’ profile is subsumed by the entablature form, and a wide flat or frieze,

replacing the scotia, is decorated with applied plaster or composition anthemia.

The use of composition burgeoned under Adam. By the 1770s it had begun to replace carved

wooden ornament for frames, and for small ornate objects such as girandoles. Marble chimney-

pieces and overmantels were often augmented with painted composition or replaced by painted

wood and composition in minor rooms. James Wyatt employed scagliola for the first time in the

Pantheon (1769–72; destr. 1937), Oxford Street, London, and ormolu was also used instead of

gilded wood. A second generation of stuccoists flourished, mainly English and led by the important

plasterer Joseph Rose jr (c. 1745–99); they had great influence on the use of moulded ornament for

frames and furniture. This meant that unified schemes of great richness and complexity could be

produced at a considerable saving and that large set-pieces could still be afforded through

economies on serial frames and boiseries: for instance, the ‘2 very rich whole length Tabernacle

Frames, carved, gilt, part burnished’, made for £113 15s. by John Bradburn and William France in

1767. At first this did not have too much effect on English framemakers; the lack of guild

restrictions compared with France meant that craftsmen were not bound to specialize in a single

branch of work but could combine several, along with designing, dealing and entrepreneurial skills.

They also achieved higher standing than on the Continent; John Gumley, who was cabinetmaker to

the King, produced many Neo-classical frames; had a glassworks and acquired the Earl of Bath as a

son-in-law; while Adam had a bank balance of £40,000 and became an MP. There was thus steady

employment for such carvers as Sefferin Alken, who worked for Adam, Vile & Cobb and Sir

William Chambers, producing frames for Croome Court, Worcs; Blenheim Palace, Oxon; and

Kedleston Hall. Chippendale made and gilded frames for Nostell Priory, published designs for other

craftsmen, including frames, and produced whole carved interiors at Harewood House and other

Adam houses. John Linnell also worked for Adam but had inherited his father’s important

workshop together with an unusual amount of equipment; he produced frames for both pictures and

mirrors. On the other hand, employment for such carvers as William Collett, a poor Huguenot, grew

increasingly scarce because of the use of papier mâché. He must also have been affected by the

tendency (see fig., c, e, f) for ornament to drop away, leaving the simple entablature profile largely

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unadorned. These light, restrained designs are in the truest spirit of Neo-classicism and are

admirably suited to landscape (Joseph Wright of Derby used (e) for his work in the early 1780s) or

portraiture (Henry Raeburn used 48f as a standard frame). The type generally known as a ‘Morland’

frame (see fig., g), after the painter George Morland, was also used for portraits, usually not with

spiral acanthus corners as in the example shown, but in the plain version with a scotia and bound

fasces moulding.

9. Regency and early Victorian.

British Regency and early Victorian frames: (a) Empire style scotia…

At the end of the 18th century the wars with Revolutionary France interrupted a cosmopolitan life

of patronage for the English aristocracy, cutting links with the artistic centres of Paris and Rome. At

the same time the wars stimulated a fascination with French styles and taste: Henry Holland

employed French craftsmen to work on Carlton House, London, and revived French gilding

techniques. Holland’s style was slightly heavier than the refined Neo-classicism of Adam, with

ornament in Louis XVI style. The designs of Thomas Hope, an early English adherent of the

Empire style, show very simple friezelike picture frames (see fig.), decorated with stars, leaf-tip and

bound fasces, and fitting in as one part of a more opulent whole, with draped walls, diapered

ceilings, painted cornices and furniture in a rich but austere Grecian form. Similar frames,

ornamented with bosses and ovolo mouldings, can be seen in Carlton House (c resembles frames in

the Crimson Drawing-room). In hollow frames, such as (b) and (d), the wide Neo-classical flutes

associated with Adam have narrowed in typical 19th-century style. These spring from the goût grec

of late 18th-century France and have multiple rows of ornaments, including enriched fluting and

peseta patterns, and huge corner cartouches. They are fussier than their originals and tend to accrete

detail simply through the ease of applying composition mouldings. Because many of them are of

composition, they appear to possess an iron-like hardness of edge and general brassiness (e and g).

They complement the great interiors of the late 18th century and the early 19th and were used as

gallery frames (e.g. Apsley House, London), as they were in France in Napoleon’s reframing of the

Louvre, Paris.

Such frames, with their almost total use of moulded ornament, affected the wood-carving trade very

badly. In addition sterling had been devalued by the Napoleonic Wars, materials and labour were

more expensive, and the number of carvers in London was rapidly decreasing. By the early 19th

century there were only 11 masters and about 60 journeymen in the capital (see Oughton).

Woodworking machines were used to turn out lengths of plain mouldings with profiles, and these

could then be ornamented in any fashion with corners and lengths of applied composition, shaped in

box-wood reverse moulds, which were almost the only staple now required of the carver. This

process was hastened by the interruption of the wood trade with France: the wars meant that easy-

to-carve continental lime and fruitwoods were in short supply, and oak was requisitioned to make

warships. Exotic woods from the colonies were easily obtainable for furniture but were unsuitable

for carved and gilded frames as they were mainly hardwoods, notable for their beautiful colour and

graining. This left only beech and deal, both of which were considered inferior and suitable only for

the carcass of a frame, the ornament being supplied in composition. Framemakers who had had 400

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to 500 craftsmen working for them in the 18th century might now employ only one carver to

produce moulds, which would then be in use for perhaps the next century. The firm of George

Jackson, founded over 200 years ago, still holds its collection of moulds for architectural ornament,

and the equipment and archive material of the firm of Joseph Green (est. 1801) survived well into

the 20th century.

Composition frames in the Empire style and the goût grec of the French carver Chérin were

followed by the adoption in Britain of other French revival styles (see fig., f and g), including the

calligraphic ornament and ogee profile of Louis XIV and Régence frames and the centre/corner

cartouches of the latter. These were highly adaptable to the use of applied decoration and enabled

large, ornate frames to be produced quite cheaply—the frames of Thomas Lawrence’s and of Franz

Xavier Winterhalter’s portraits were in this form and were brilliantly gilded to take full advantage

of the new gas lighting, which enabled extreme opulence at relatively small cost. This was also

important for 19th-century methods of hanging, which from the early years of the century involved

covering all available wall space with tiers of gilt-framed paintings—usually on a dark or patterned

ground—between the equally ornate punctuation of door- and window-cases, overmantels etc. This

method was used both in the domestic interior and for exhibitions. Reaction against such

ubiquitous, brassy confectionery, however, set in quite early. By the 1830s A. W. N. Pugin was

designing his own frames for St Mary’s College, Oscott, Warwicks, and Alton Towers, Staffs, and

such artists as Turner and Robert Huskisson produced one-off designs; the former framed an

exhibition of marine paintings in lengths of ship’s cable ‘gilded’ with yellow ochre.

10. Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movement.

Pre-Raphaelite, Olympian and Aesthetic Movement frames: (a) Dante Gabriel

Rossetti’s…

In 1845 Ford Madox Brown went to Italy, catalyzing not only the whole Pre-Raphaelite school of

painting but also half a century of innovative frame design, which spread from Britain to most of

Europe. He saw the settings of early Italian works and incorporated the idea of an arched triptych

with colonnettes into the integral painted structure of The Seeds and Fruit of English Poetry (1845–

51; Oxford, Ashmolean). By 1848 he was recorded working on the frame of Wycliffe (1848;

Bradford, Cartwright Hall; since altered) and in the same year took as a pupil Dante Gabriel

Rossetti, the other half of the Pre-Raphaelite partnership in frame design. Rossetti also travelled in

Europe (1849), where he was struck by Flemish Old Master paintings and their frames. The Pre-

Raphaelites were influenced not only in painting style by the predecessors of Raphael but also by

the materials, construction and effect of medieval and early Renaissance frames. At first they took

the Gothic–religious approach of the Nazarenes, who had encouraged Brown and were themselves

interested in appropriate frames: arches, tondo inserts and inscriptions appear on Brown’s and

Rossetti’s early works. As they became more fluent, abstract designs predominated, and motifs that

attempted to shake off the classicizing tendencies of most 19th-century frames (see fig.). One of

their first innovations was the use of butt (or straight) joints to join the four rails of a frame, a

technique copied from medieval plank frames; this had been the common type of joint until

replaced in the 15th and 16th centuries by the Renaissance technique of mitring. Brown and

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Rossetti used this joint from at least 1851, at first with gessoed mouldings, but from c. 1861 on

cassetta frames in which the central wide flat was gilded directly on the wood. This meant that an

interesting, randomly textured effect was obtained from the oak grain showing through the gold

leaf, an effect far removed from the uniform symmetry of stock composition mouldings. The butt

joint was also clearly visible (a), adding to the play of geometrical shapes on which these frames

were built. Gilding on the wood was praised by such arbiters of taste as Charles Locke Eastlake and

became part of the vocabulary of the Arts and Crafts Movement, appearing on frames in middle-

class households everywhere. A similar naive or hand-crafted effect was given by the ‘Oxford’

frame, introduced at the same time. This ‘light oaken frame, commonly called cruciform’ (Eastlake:

Hints on Household Taste, London, 3/1872), i.e. with mouldings crossed at the corners, was at first

associated with religious pictures and then with prints and photographs. It was a cheap frame that

escaped the tastelessness of mass-produced composition.

The frame for Ford Madox Brown’s Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet (see fig., a) is a compendium of

the motifs used by Brown and Rossetti. Together they invented the band of reeding that borders the

oak flat and that was also carved in oak and gilded on the wood; and they designed the paterae that

interrupt the reeding, playing square and circular shapes against each other. The flat is also inset

with small roundels, which are set against the straight lines of the frame and its joints. These two

central elements comprise the archetypal ‘reed-and-roundel’ Pre-Raphaelite frame, which was

copied by all their circle and continues to be the first choice of setting for late Victorian/Symbolist

paintings, small portraits and drawings. This example also includes Brown’s deep-fluted chamfer at

the sight—often gilded and then scraped clean, leaving the flutes defined in gold against bare wood;

and an answering outer bevel over which is laid Rossetti’s parcel-gilt ebonized reeding. The whole

effect is rich and decorative within the constraints of its linear and geometric forms, and it follows

Ruskin’s teaching of honesty in materials. It is superlatively well-suited to Brown’s painting, with

its warm mellow tones and composition of curves and straight lines, and is one of the high points of

the 19th-century artist-designed frame.

Along with the reed-and-roundel frames of the early 1860s, Rossetti began to use a gilt-oak cuff

with a triangular sectioned moulding indented on each side alternately with semicircular

depressions. This was referred to by Brown as ‘Rossetti’s thumb-mark pattern’, and he used it

himself as an outer moulding. Rossetti employed it as an abstract border on a series of small

decorative paintings of women. In the 1870s and 1880s these paintings grew larger and more

voluptuous; full of a brooding eroticism, although still decorative, they required a bold, heavy frame

to contain them. The design Rossetti chose had been used as a symbolic frame on his Beata Beatrix

(1864–70; London, Tate), where a wide, canted flat, surrounded by small round and flat mouldings,

was set with four circular medallions, their surface parallel to the picture plane. For the Beatrix,

these medallions were decorated with shallow-relief representations of Platonic symbols. For the

later decorative paintings (see fig., b) they were carved with concentric circles in each quarter like

fruit, the curving lines and seedlike shapes reflecting the compositions of the paintings and their

symbolism underlying the sensuality of the subjects. The sloping flat of this frame is decorated with

an early Renaissance punched foliate pattern, giving a brocade-like effect.

These frames were probably mainly produced by the firm of Foord & Dickinson, the principal

framemakers for the Pre-Raphaelites in the last 30 years of the 19th century. Until c. 1867 Rossetti,

Brown, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt had used the firm of Joseph Green, which

in 1872 was taken over by W. A. Smith (and which continues to exist under the name of Bourlet).

Green carved the reed-and-roundel (see fig., a) and thumb-mark frames and Watts’s frames (50e),

and he framed Hunt’s Scapegoat (1854–5; Port Sunlight, Lady Lever A.G.) with its symbolic motifs

shallowly carved into a wide, flat torus. Foord & Dickinson was founded by George Foord, who

was employed by the Society of Painters in Water-Colours (c. 1830–50), by Ruskin to frame his

paintings by Turner, and by Turner himself. This firm later worked for Frederick Sandys, Frederic

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Leighton (fig. below), Albert Joseph Moore and James McNeill Whistler (see fig., g). Like Green,

they were versatile, producing both stock patterns and hand-carved artist’s designs; they were also

called on to use such archaic techniques as butt-jointing, gilding on the wood and hand-painting

some elements. They were, of course, expensive: in 1880 Rossetti was trying to get his patron

William Graham to pay £100 for a frame, while in 1876 Hunt wrote that he may have found ‘a

carver who can work the pattern at less than £1000 per frame’ (probably for the several large

versions of the Triumph of the Innocents, which are carved with pomegranates; e.g. of 1876–87;

Liverpool, Walker A.G.); at this time a stock frame from the firm of Agnew’s, London, for one of

Millais’s Royal Academy paintings (1105×865×185mm) cost £13 15s.

Hunt’s designs were, however, some of the most elaborate and labour intensive (see fig. above).

Except for his series of Near Eastern watercolours (and even these frames are not identical), he

produced a unique setting for each subject. The frame (see fig., c) for the Finding of the Saviour in

the Temple (1854–60; Birmingham, Mus. & A.G.) has a suitably aedicular shape, outer mouldings

crossing at the lower corners like the ‘Oxford’ frame and a wide flat carved in shallow sunk-work

with symbolic motifs including Moses’ rod and serpent on the left (Old Testament law) and Christ’s

cross with thorns and love-lies-bleeding on the right (New Testament law); above are the sun, moon

and stars, and below heart’s-ease for peace and daisies for ‘humility and devotion’. Hunt described

it as being ‘designed by myself with ivory flat, in what I meant to be semi-barbaric splendour’. The

very plain form, the wide expanse of gilding and the symmetrical patterning give a necessary area

of transition from the exotic, detailed interior of the temple to the Victorian interior where it was to

hang. The critic of the Manchester Guardian, in one of the first reviews to notice a picture frame,

remarked on the way in which ‘the symbols have overflowed the picture and expanded themselves

all over the frame’.

Hunt’s frame designs ranged from the symbolic bells for warning and marigolds for sorrow carved

on the frame of the Awakening Conscience (1853–4; London, Tate) to the massive repoussé copper

frames of 1889 made by C. R. Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft for May Morning on Magdalen Tower

(1888–91; Port Sunlight, Lady Lever A.G.), and the aedicular frame of 1905 for The Lady of Shalott

(Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum). Few of them were directly influential (except for the May

Morning frames, which may have inspired Gustav Klimt’s copper frames (see §VI, 7 below), but

they were all highly original, and this fifty-year period of lovingly designed, highly publicized

frames was probably important in stimulating the great outflow of artists’ frames in the late 19th

century. The appropriateness and eclecticism of Hunt’s frames were also important. The jury of

selectors for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London had attacked the degraded contemporary

penchant for pointless decoration, for ‘surrounding the frame of a pier glass with dead birds, game,

shellfish, nets, and so on’, and the various Victorian revival movements (Gothic, Rococo and

Baroque) meant that there were a great many inappropriate horrors, easily produced in composition,

waiting to cover a picture frame. Hunt and the other Pre-Raphaelites subverted this compulsion,

using ornament imaginatively for decorative or symbolic ends. Millais’s famous frame for Charles

Allston Collins’s Convent Thoughts (exh. RA 1851; Oxford, Ashmolean) sets three-dimensional

plaster lilies on a plain gilded plate frame with arched sight, a strikingly sophisticated design; and

Millais and Arthur Hughes used wreaths of naturalistic ivy instead of classical bays and oaks. Noël

Paton’s fairy paintings are framed with Gothic tracery and diapering, and Sandys used a stylized

‘window’ effect, with Gothic rainsill and colonnettes, for his icon-like portraits of femmes fatales.

Many artists gave this inventive twist to traditional forms, without surrendering to the tawdriness of

the different revivals. There was a time when late medieval and Renaissance Italian paintings,

removed from their original settings by corrupt dealers and collectors, were being framed in 19th-

century versions, with all the ungainly proportions, machined perfection and brassy finish of a deal

and composition copy (examples, London, N.G.). Edward Burne-Jones used this type of cheap

reproduction frame to some extent but he also appreciated craftsmanship and authentic design; he

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asked William De Morgan c. 1890 whether his framemaker could copy a Florentine frame, and in

1871 he wrote of his ‘Giorgione’, ‘It is to have a glorious curly-wurly frame, a piece of wholesale

upholstery round it to make it shine like a jewel as it is.’ Burne-Jones adapted a carved late

Renaissance Venetian frame, which he used for several of his more important works (see fig., d).

Formed of parallel bands of shallow, schematic classical mouldings, the design is given life and

movement by the central pierced and undercut torus, which is set over a gilded hollow. The carving

is based on intertwined foliate scrolls, among which swans’ heads peer; the combination of this

mythological emblem, the heavy opulence of the wide rail and the paradoxical grace given by

gleams of light from the concealed hollow are suited to the subjects and style of Burne-Jones’s

paintings.

G. F. Watts was another creator of massive mythological works and, like Burne-Jones, used original

and contemporary carved Florentine frames. The single design he is credited with, called a ‘Watts’

frame because it appears on 95% of his paintings, is a modest and workman-like cassetta, with a

butt-jointed, gilt oak-veneered flat (see fig., e). The only variations it was given are the replacement

of the husk sight moulding by a chain of small leaves and the decoration of the flat with gilded

gesso and a punched brocade pattern, just as Rossetti used for the enriched ‘Watts’ frame with

black-and-gold reeding of Monna Vanna (1866, framed 1873; London, Tate). These frames are

undatable, as Watts used them on paintings over 50 years, keeping a stock of standard sizes in his

studio as Lely had done. The butt-jointed oak flat, however, indicates contact with Rossetti, and that

they probably cannot pre-date 1861. Ideas, details and whole designs passed from artist to artist in

the late 19th century; a variant of the thumb-mark moulding with triangular indentations was used

by Sandys, reed-and-roundel frames by many of Rossetti’s and Brown’s circle (e.g. Sandys, Simeon

Solomon, Maria Spartali Stillman) and derivative patterns by J. R. Spencer Stanhope, Val Prinsep,

Robert Braithwaite Martineau etc. It is not surprising, therefore, to find Watts using a frame with

one of Rossetti’s and Brown’s most striking innovations. It is given a completely different cast by

the husk, bead-and-bobbin and acanthus mouldings that surround it—just as Watts aspired to be the

great classical painter of the 19th century, so this is a compromise between a classical and a

contemporary artist’s frame. It is a successful compromise: it suits portraits, history, religious and

subject paintings and is as ubiquitous as the reed-and-roundel frame.

Another artist influenced by the Rossetti–Brown circle was Whistler. He was in close contact with

them from 1862, when he also met Burne-Jones and Sandys. The 1860s were fertile years for frame

design: Brown and Rossetti were interchanging letters on frame patterns, and Sandys, Hunt, Hughes

and Leighton were all designing their own frames. In 1864 Whistler produced a series of four

simple carved wooden cassettas for the Little White Girl (London, Tate), Purple Rose: The Lange

Leizen of the Six Marks (1863–4; Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.), La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine

(1863–4) and the Golden Screen (both Washington, DC, Freer). These Japonising works were given

eastern motifs on their frames: an Oriental fret and all-over spiral pattern, and incised sunlike

medallions decorated with cherry blossom, potter’s marks or leaves. The medallions are allied to

Rossetti’s use of them (see fig., b) and to frames by Hunt, Leighton and Hughes. From 1865

Whistler was in close contact with Moore, and their aims at this time were very similar. Their

attraction to the Aesthetic style led them in the late 1860s to similar arrangements of female figures

in harmonies of colour, influenced by both Japanese and Classical ideals. They worked together and

exchanged ideas, almost certainly including some reference to frames as inspired by Rossetti’s

circle. Also in 1865 Sandys exhibited Gentle Spring (1863–5; Oxford, Ashmolean), a single

‘classical’ figure close to Moore’s later works. This was framed in a simple cassetta, with a plain

central flat and outer and inner bands of reeding emphasizing the decorative cast of the painting; it

was gilded directly on the oak. Deriving from the reed-and-roundel type, it seems to have been a

seminal design for Moore and Whistler. The next year Moore exhibited The Shulamite (Liverpool,

Walker A. G.), classicizing figures in harmonies of cream, tomato-red and apricot, in a frame

composed of bands of reeds and fillets and small flats. Horowitz (1979–80) suggests that Whistler’s

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first reeded frame dates from 1870–71, but it is possible that the example on Symphony in White,

No. 3 (1865–7; U. Birmingham, Barber Inst.) is the original, designed in tandem with that on The

Shulamite.

Moore developed the reeded frame into a classical but modern design, keeping the flat oak carcass

but having the reeds enriched with beading, bead-and-bobbin or stylized leaf forms, which

complemented his decorative classical figures. Whistler took up the arrangement of mouldings of

The Shulamite but with painted or incised patterned flats; the frame for his Symphony in White, No.

1: The White Girl (1862; Washington, DC, N.G.A.; see fig., g) employs a wave or scale design

coloured white to harmonize with the picture. He could have taken this motif from the East Asian

porcelain he collected, but carved scale patterns were also used by Stanhope and Hunt. Whistler

repeated it until at least 1879 and possibly into the 1890s, declaring c. 1873 that he had been the

originator of a colour harmonization that included the painted frame (although Degas also used a

coloured frame c. 1873; see §III, 12 above). It seems true that he did evolve the idea of a unifying

scheme for his exhibitions, whereby curtains, carpets, walls, vases, attendants’ livery etc were based

on one or two colours, making a frame or setting of the whole gallery; but the form of his frames is

inseparably linked to his work with Moore and the influence of Rossetti and his followers. By 1891

the varied profile of the painted frames was exaggerated: the outer reeding was set on a large torus,

and the flats diminished in size. This is the ‘Whistler’ frame, its projecting and stepped form and the

linear effect of many tiny reeds no longer decoratively flattening, but creating a perspectival

recession into the painting, emphasizing the space in which his figures now stood.

A similar effect was used by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who developed his own distinctive profile

for small pictures that did not warrant a grand, classical, pedimented setting. On his reverse rebate

or bolection frames (see fig., h), the parallel lines of the different mouldings and the painted

decoration act like the reeding on a ‘Whistler’ frame to give a sense of depth and recession to the

painting, and to intensify the focus on the subject in an almost theatrical way. This is an inventive

design that breaks free from the banal reproductions of 17th- and 18th-century French styles, which

formed the staple in the 19th-century framemakers’ pattern books. It appears first on a work of 1869

but probably dates from 1874 when the picture was retouched. It has similarities to the triangular

section of Rossetti’s thumb-mark moulding—Alma-Tadema was close to Rossetti at least by

1871—but he had already shown an interest in frames, painting antique ‘Roman’ designs around the

pictures in the background of the Collector of Pictures (1867; London, H. E. Finsness priv. col.).

The geometrical moulding of figure 50h, with its echoing dogtooth design in black and gold, is one

of Alma-Tadema’s signature frames. It was used until his death in 1912 and after by his daughter

Laura Alma-Tadema; without the painted decoration it was also used by such Newlyn school artists

as Stanhope Forbes.

Alma-Tadema’s larger works needed grandiose frames to complement their depictions of marble

interiors and isolate them from the increasingly claustrophobic rooms of Victorian Britain.

Photographs of these rooms, including Leighton’s studio and the reception rooms of Rossetti’s

patron F. R. Leyland, show the busy backgrounds against which paintings were displayed (see

Cooper, 1976). The answer to this problem was the revival of the Renaissance aedicular or

tabernacle frame. This provided a wide boundary of gold leaf as an area of quarantine and a

distinctive shape, which drew the eye, acting like a proscenium arch for the painting. But the copies

of 15th-century aediculae with their mean plaster ornament, which lined the National Gallery,

London, were the equivalent of Louis XIV reproductions to the classical revival or Olympian

painters, and like the conventional moulding frame they had to be remade. Hunt had probably been

the first to use an aedicular form with the pedimented silhouette of figure 50c and a modified beam,

lintel and pilaster frame for London Bridge (1866; Oxford, Ashmolean). In the late 1860s Alma-

Tadema used a more ‘classical’ version of the latter form for a Roman Art Lover (1868; New

Haven, CT, Yale Cent. Brit. A.) and Roman Interior (Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.), refining them of

85

imposed Renaissance ornament on the frieze, plinth and pilasters. The final step was to move

completely away from the Italianate type of aedicule, with Corinthian or Composite order, and from

the often horizontal format of the Renaissance.

From the late 1870s Alma-Tadema and Leighton both used aedicular frames, which were ‘classical’

in an archaeological sense rather than Renaissance revivals, and which were also peculiar to their

own century and to the artists who designed them. Leighton’s frames take two forms, the most

idiosyncratic of which was in use from at least 1883 to 1885; the Last Watch of Hero (exh. RA,

1887; Manchester, C.A.G.) is particularly interesting for the propriety of its use. It is in true 15th-

century tabernacle form i.e. with an image or inscription relating to the dead person in a predella

panel. Here, this takes the form of Leander’s body painted in grisaille, highlighted by the stylized

sideswept ‘consoles’ that also balance the elongated shape of the work. In the main panel an

illusionistic window effect is reinforced by the way in which the architecture of frame and picture

reflect each other and by the replacement of a gilt plinth by the marble sill in the painting. The

effect of a refined, severe Greek classicism is supported by the clean, fluted pilasters and an

important entablature; but the most striking feature is the domed Ionic capitals. Leighton took these

from the ‘unique Ionic order’ of the Temple of Apollo at Bassai; one capital had been brought to

Britain in 1811 by C. R. Cockerell, who copied it in his Neo-classical buildings, such as the

Ashmolean Museum and the Taylorian Institute, both in Oxford, and the Sun Fire Office, London.

The last was an inspiration for Leighton, who visited it ‘to revivify himself with…the beauty of

Greek work’. The curving form is complementary to the curving lines of Leighton’s statuesque

women and their draperies. Leighton also used the Neo-classical frame (see fig., f); the equivalent

of Alma-Tadema’s (see fig., h), it appears along with ‘Watts’ frames, anthemion and lotus plaster

patterns and painted or geometrical mouldings on small pictures and portraits of the 1860s and

1870s. Millais’s paintings have the same frame, as on the Order of Release (1853; London, Tate)

and Black Brunswicker (1860; Port Sunlight, Lady Lever A.G.). It is a good example of a stock

composition moulding, which would suit most types of painting, be at home in many kinds of

interior and be acceptable to all classes of patron as well as to the academic establishment. This is

the type of frame found in Victorian and Edwardian pattern books, one of the staple frames of the

last half of the century and a purer, more attractive form than the Louis XIV and Louis XV

reproductions.

11. Late 19th and 20th centuries.

20th-century British frames: (a) gilt architrave frame, wide flat with…

At the end of the 19th century there was a huge array of styles, from the Neo-classical stock frame

through one-off trophy or attributive frames (now also often made of composition for economy) and

types that had become conventionalized (aedicular frames in ‘classical’ or Renaissance style), to the

rarer craftsman-made frame. The last included the rather naively carved and gilded frames brought

from Florence by Watts, Evelyn De Morgan and John Melhuish Strudwick (1849–1937), and

artists’ frames such as those of Joseph Southall (1861–1944), who carved his own patterns and had

them gilded by his wife (see fig.). These frames were archaic survivals into the 20th century of an

Arts and Crafts ideal; in the 20th century there was a rapid decrease in the numbers of tailor-made,

86

historicizing or outré frames. In general they became much simpler (b–g); even D. Y. Cameron’s

design (b), an Art Nouveau interpretation of the ‘Whistler’ frame, shows a movement away from

the general elaboration of 19th-century frames.

There was a minor fashion for chunky Spanish styles, which suited the bravura brushwork of John

Singer Sargent, Glyn Philpott (1884–1937) etc, and which were adopted by the collectors of Picasso

and Gauguin among others. These were probably either original frames, regilded and colour-

washed, or carved on the Continent like the contemporary Florentine examples used by William and

Evelyn De Morgan. During and after World War I carvers almost vanished, victims of the war, of

economic constraints and of the new puritanism of design that succeeded fin de siècle opulence. The

furniture of the 1920s and 1930s grew out of the plain, undecorated style of Charles Rennie

Mackintosh, E. W. Godwin and the designers for Liberty’s store, London; there was no place for

carved enrichment, and frames were made to fit in with this minimalist tendency. Examples of this

trend (c and d) show the influence of Godwin’s liking for machine-cut square-sections of wood,

painted to tone with the pictures. They anticipate Le Corbusier’s interiors and the minimalist frames

he used in the 1925 Paris Exhibition. The only decorative feature, apart from the painted finish, lies

in the sculptural form, which generates its own chiaroscuro, so that the picture in each case is

defined by the bold lines of shadow and highlight, creating a recessive effect similar to that of

Whistler’s and Alma-Tadema’s more conventional gilt frames.

Machine-turned lengths of moulding were the only alternative to these extremely primitive shapes,

as in the torus frame (see fig., e) of Edward Wolfe’s Self-portrait (1920s; London, N.P.G.). This

exemplifies the commercial type used in the late 20th century, built of concave and convex sections

and tied to the painting by discreet lines of colour or by a coloured wash. Classical in form and

descent, it is again suitable for nearly every sort of work and background. Machined finishes also

created a trend in the first third of the century for Dutch ripple mouldings, used by Augustus John,

etc. (a, above is a hand-carved version of this). The geometrical patterns provide interest, texture

and movement of light, which complement the work of the British Impressionists, and they were

easily and relatively cheaply produced. They could also be painted by the artists themselves to give

something of the hand-made, original finish that was no longer affordable or obtainable

commercially in carved wood. Many frames of this type are coloured (see fig., d) in white or grey to

suit the new light interiors of the period. The frame for Charles Ginner’s Punt in the Mill Stream

(see fig., f) is a plain ogee frame where has the same type of effect, like a Dutch ‘combed’

moulding, has been achieved by literally combing a layer of gesso in random S-scrolls and then

sponging on coloured paint. In this case, the colours chosen approximate to the antique gold finish

of an original 17th- or 18th-century frame, but the textured surface is more suitable to the impasted

technique of a modern painting.

There was a further reduction of form following World War II. Once more, light and shade are used

for definition, and texture and colour to marry the frame to the painting (see fig., g). The latter, held

in gilded strips attached to the canvas edge, is sunk in an outer frame, the gap between the two

providing a sharp boundary of shadow approximating to the emphatic black contours of the

painting. The outer frame is traylike, recalling the earliest integral frames of panel paintings, the flat

or cuff covered in hessian to tone with the picture. The two defining gilt mouldings are simple fillet

shapes derived from earlier examples (see fig., c and d), but the finish is more sophisticated,

influenced by the inter-war luxury of the Art Deco movement. This type of frame is designed to

bind the painting to its surroundings rather than to isolate it from them, as with some Pre-Raphaelite

frames: the coloured hessian is important to this effect but had an unfortunate result in the hundreds

of grey and oatmeal canvas inserts used in the 1960s, even for paintings by Turner in the Tate

Gallery, where neither their colour nor their texture was appropriate.

87

Since World War II frames have generally been minimal or excised altogether. With no margin to

focus the attention, to give the illusion of passage to a different world or to provide an area of rest

for the eye, the work—particularly an abstract painting—risks reduction to a mere interruption or

pattern on the wall surface. Some artists (e.g. Anthony Green) have clung to a vestigial frame of

edging strips, like the inner frame for Patrick Heron’s Thomas Stearns Eliot (see fig., g); others

have settled for commercial mass-produced mouldings, old or antique frames, or have tried to re-

create their own setting peculiar to the work by painting some form of movable frame in harmony

with the contents. Exceptionally, Howard Hodgkin painted a broad frame directly on the canvas,

which in some works continues on to and envelops a surrounding frame moulding. Where the

artist’s imagination falls short of anything but a stock moulding, the long history of the frame

remains as a rich quarry of allusion and visual play: for instance in the work of Michael Noakes, in

the 1995 exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, London, where two pendent portraits

of the artist and his wife were shown, painted in integral trompe l’oeil frames from which the

subjects break, like the Virgins and secular sitters of 15th-century Germany and Belgium. The

modern carved frame, however, seems extinct as a costume for contemporary work, and certainty

about the role of the frame has vanished, perhaps anticipating the broader introduction of

holographic art, which will surround the spectator and will require no boundary.

Bibliography

M. Jourdain: English Interior Decoration, 1500–1830 (London, 1950)

R. Edwards: ‘Picture Frames’, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture (London, 1964) [29

figs]

J. Fowler and J. Cornforth: English Decoration in the 18th Century (London, 1974)

G. Beard: Decorative Plasterwork in Great Britain (London, 1975)

N. Cooper: The Opulent Eye: Late Victorian and Edwardian Taste in Interior Design (London,

1976)

J. Cornforth: English Interiors, 1790–1848: The Quest for Comfort (London, 1978)

F. Oughton: Grinling Gibbons and the English Woodcarving Tradition (London, 1979)

I. Horowitz: ‘Whistler’s Frames’, A. J. [New York], xxxix (1979–80), pp. 124–131

Joseph Southall (exh. cat., Birmingham, Mus. & A.G., 1980)

G. Beard: Craftsmen and Interior Decoration in England, 1660–1820 (Edinburgh, 1981)

H. Sandwith: ‘National Trust Picture Frame Survey’, Int. J. Mus. Mgmt & Cur., iv (1985), pp. 173–

8 [8 figs]

M. Tomlin: ‘Picture Frames at Ham House’, Int. J. Mus. Mgmt & Cur., iv (1985), pp. 129–140 [21

figs]

The Quiet Conquest: The Huguenots in Britain (exh. cat., London, 1985)

L. Roberts: ‘Nineteenth Century English Picture Frames’, Int. J. Mus. Mgmt & Cur., iv (1985), pp.

154–72 [24 figs]; v (1986), pp. 273–93 [25 figs]

88

N. Penny and M. Gregory: ‘Reynolds and Picture Frames’, Burl. Mag., xi (1986), pp. 810–25 [61

figs]

D. Buttery: ‘The Picture Frames of Paul Petit and Freerick, Prince of Wales’, Apollo (1987), pp.

12–15

Designs for English Picture Frames (exh. cat., ed. P. Mason; London, Arnold Wiggins & Sons;

London, Morton Morris & Co.; 1989) [68 figs]

P. Mitchell: ‘Wright’s Picture Frames‘, Joseph Wright of Derby (exh. cat., London, Tate, 1990)

M. Gregory: ‘A Review of English Gilding Techniques: Original Source Material about Picture

Frames’, Gilded Wood: Conservation and History (Madison, 1991), pp. 109–18 [5 figs]

P. Mason: ‘The Picture Frames’, Boughton House: The English Versailles, ed. T. Murdoch

(London, 1992), pp. 91–5

For further bibliography see §I above.

Paul Mitchell, Lynn Roberts

Copyright © Oxford University Press 2007 — 2015.

89

Frame, §V: The Netherlands and Belgium

article url: http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T029196pg5

Frame, §V: The Netherlands and Belgium

V. The Netherlands and Belgium.

1. Gothic.

From as early as the 10th and 11th centuries the Low Countries were able to support financially all

aspects of the arts through the wealth built from their wool trade. In the 12th century Liège was a

centre of cast-metal sculpture and ornament, and the archbishops of Cologne patronized

goldsmithing in the Meuse Valley, where elaborate reliquaries with architectural frames and

decorative borders were produced (e.g. the Stavelot Triptych, c. 1145; New York, Pierpont Morgan

Lib.). Although the Low Countries were artistically dependent on France, there were strong local

traditions and skills that were integral to the wood-carver’s art; in the 13th century this Franco-

Flemish exchange resulted in the production of carved wooden altarpieces. By the 14th century the

dukes of Burgundy had absorbed the Low Countries into an enormous kingdom that extended as far

as southern France; this meant that there was a constant interchange of ideas among artists

patronized by the Burgundian court. Philip the Bold (reg 1363–1404) employed French and

Netherlandish sculptors such as Jean de Marville and Claus Sluter, both of whom worked on the

charterhouse of Champmol (see Dijon, §IV, 1(ii)). Philip also chose Jacques de Baerze, a south

Netherlandish wood-carver, to produce intricate, sophisticated altarpieces for the charterhouse;

these were then painted by Melchior Broederlam, also from the southern Netherlands, just as in

Italy painter followed carver with no distinction between fine and decorative art. Philip’s son, John

the Fearless (reg 1404–19), employed the master cabinetmaker Jean de Liège (ii) to carve a crib

(untraced), which was then painted and gilded by the court artist Bason. These two men probably

collaborated on altarpieces as well. Many early Netherlandish works vanished when the Burgundian

empire was broken up and when iconoclasm struck the northern Netherlands in the 16th century.

Sculpture, however, flourished in the southern Netherlands, particularly in the 15th century; carved

wooden altarpieces were exported throughout Europe up to the 16th century.

As in Italy, the earliest frames were integral with the picture panel, with raised ledges, as, for

example, the oak ogee-shaped border surrounding the Master of St Veronica’s Christ, as the Man of

Sorrows (late 14th century; Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.). Frames such as these gradually developed

mouldings and decorations. However, as northern Europe absorbed the Gothic style in a manner

unlike Italy, 15th-century Netherlandish frames took on a correspondingly different appearance.

Instead of the Italian form of a simulated cross-section of a Gothic church (see §II, 2),

Netherlandish altarpieces tended to have a linear simplicity with unbroken rectangular outlines and

straight, arched or ogee tops (e.g. the Master of Flémalle’s Mérode Triptych (c. 1425; New York,

Cloisters). This simple moulding, with taenia, ogees and scotiae, is the precursor of later moulding

frames and looks remarkably modern, except for the typically northern device of a sloping rainsill

(akin to the Wasserschlag of a church window) that replaces the bottom moulding and gives an

immediate sense of a window miraculously opening on to a celestial vision. This basic structure was

sometimes elaborated by applied ornament, by the enthusiasm in northern Europe for coloured

frames that echo the clear tones of the paintings, and by the development of intricate Gothic

architectural tracery. These additions were either carved inside the frame or painted in the picture

itself, creating the feeling of a gabled and pinnacled Italian altarpiece entirely within the oblong

outer frame. The Norfolk Triptych (c. 1415; Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen),

commissioned by the Bishop of Liège, brother-in-law of John the Fearless, combines all these

90

features. The scene has a background of painted Romanesque and Gothic niches, while on the frame

carved daisies, symbolic of Christ’s humility, were applied to the rainsill and corresponding upper

mouldings, with a run of stylized vines painted along the outer edge. The blurring of roles here,

where the artist painted his own inner ‘frame’, is mirrored in some altarpieces where the scene itself

is carved, as in the triptych of the Crucifixion (1390–99; Dijon, Mus. B.-A.) by Jacques de Baerze

and Broederlam or Descent into Limbo (c. 1440; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.). Sculpted altarpieces from

such centres as Liège, Antwerp and Brussels were sent mainly to Scandinavia, Germany and

southern Europe. Jan Borman the elder was a later master of this art. His St George altarpiece

(1493; Brussels, Musées Royaux A. & Hist.) is, like the Crucifixion by Jacques de Baerze, a

confection of filigree tracery—niched, arched and galleried—framing dramatic three-dimensional

scenes. Such altarpieces would have been stamped with their makers’ marks.

Political ties with Spain may have had an effect on the style and intricacy of Netherlandish frames.

(In the 1420s Jan van Eyck travelled with Burgundian delegations to Spain and Portugal.) The

patronage of Italian merchants provided a further stylistic influence. An exceptional triptych frame

(c. 1470; Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.) with a pinnacled churchlike silhouette reminiscent of a simplified

Venetian altarpiece was made for Claudio de Villa; its rejection of the boxlike northern European

outline signifies a potential openness of Netherlandish art to outside tastes. The frame carries a

carved inscription on what corresponds to the predella panel at the base, exemplifying the use of

inscription as another feature typical of early Netherlandish frames. The Crucifixion (c. 1428; New

York, Met.), a panel attributed to Jan van Eyck, is inscribed all round the simple border. Frames for

his Virgin and Child with SS Donatian and George and a Donor (1436; Bruges, Groeningemus.)

and Man in a Red Chaperon (traditionally known as the Man in a Red Turban; London, N.G.) also

bear inscriptions. The latter has the artist’s signature and the date of 21 October 1433 painted on the

bottom rail and a proverb (als ich kan) on the top rail. Such inbuilt ‘captions’ were used to gloss or

identify the contents (as in van Eyck’s paintings) or else had a didactic purpose, as with biblical

quotations that amplify a religious subject, generally to be found on early 16th-century altarpieces.

The surround for the van Eycks’ retable with the Adoration of the Lamb (or Ghent Altarpiece;

begun after 1420; Ghent, Cathedral of St Bavo), pared down to an extremely simple flat plate frame

with a tiny cavetto moulding at the sight, has didactic inscriptions, extending and echoing the

quotations within the painting itself. These inscriptions are the sole ornament on the frame. It is

generally true that, from the 15th century, frames around painted altarpieces—as distinct from those

around sculpted altarpieces—are austerely plain in structure and are decorated only with quotations,

trompe l’oeil stonework or bands of colour.

However, elements of the Flamboyant style and of Gothic sculptural decoration are seen in the inner

parts of some frames painted to give the illusion of stone voussoirs and Gothic niches, as, for

example, in Petrus Christus’s Annunciation and Nativity (both 1452; Bruges, Groeningemus.) and

Rogier van der Weyden’s Virgin and Child Enthroned (Madrid, Mus. Thyssen–Bornemisza). The

backs of the folding wings of many altarpieces also have painted architectural settings surrounding

grisaille figures, as in the Adoration of the Lamb. The two panels by Christus might once have

possessed vestigially architectural framings based on the window and rainsill, which—like Giotto’s

Bologna Altarpiece (c. 1330; Bologna, Pin. N.; see §II, 2 above)—would have emphasized the

interdependence of picture and frame. The Netherlandish fascination with frames entirely in mock

stonework or faux-marbre was not characteristic of France or Italy, where only such details as flats

or columns would be rendered in this manner. In the northern and southern Netherlands clear light

flooded through huge windows into the interiors of churches and secular buildings; thus, there was

less need for the large gilded retable frames that reflected candlelight on to painted panels within

dim, small-windowed interiors, as in Italy, or that provided definition within the colourful and

elaborate settings of French churches. In southern Europe, gilt or parcel-gilt frames are common

even for small devotional works, whereas the puritanical modesty of Jan van Eyck’s small grisaille

panel of the Virgin and Child (1437; Dresden, Gemäldegal. Alte Meister) within a painted stone

91

frame is specifically northern European. South Netherlandish memorial portraits imitating either a

church wall plaque or a tombstone also feature trompe l’oeil stonework. Van Eyck used painted

marbling on the simple moulding of taenia, groove and ogee that frames Margaret van Eyck (see

fig. below) and for the frame of St Barbara (1437; Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.), the latter

simulating red marble with dark veins. Similarly, the Portrait of a Lady with a Pink (see fig., c) by

the Master of the Legend of St Ursula (i) has two clearly jointed marbled mouldings on each side

alternating red and olive-grey. The Master of the Versten Portrait’s Louis de Gruuthuse and several

works by Hans Memling (all Bruges, Groeningemus.) are related; these are inscribed with the name

and age of the sitter. They are also connected to Netherlandish round-arched and eared portrait

frames (e.g. the triptych of Charles of Ghent and his Sisters; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.), which

(although not marbled) are tombstone-like in their form and probably originated in Germany.

Portrait frames of this type are also linked to the convention of depicting the sitter within a stone

window-niche or behind a marble sill (e.g. Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of ?Gilles Binchois, 1432;

London, N.G.). This is a means of enhancing the illusionism of the painting rather than being a

symbolic device.

Imitation stone frames surrounding religious paintings, such as that on Jan van Eyck’s grisaille

Virgin in Dresden, have reference to the fabric of church architecture rather than, as in Italy, the

church silhouette. This characteristic is also to be seen in Memling’s triptych of the Adoration of the

Magi (1479; Bruges, Memlingmus.), which has a simplified classical tabernacle frame, indicating

the Italian influence introduced by such artists as van der Weyden. Its outer wings of faux-marbre

enclose painted simulations of Gothic rainsill windows through which St John the Baptist and St

Veronica are seen, as though through the windows of the Church, which metaphorically introduces

the laity to such visions. The combination is eclectic yet decoratively and symbolically satisfying,

and is effective in leading the spectator’s eye into the miraculous scene. Memling reinforced the

sculptural depth of his subjects by depicting them in arched stone niches, notably the figure of St

Anthony of Padua painted in grisaille on the reverse of one panel of the diptych of the Virgin and

Child with a Donor (1485–90; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.). On the front, trompe l’oeil was used, the

donor’s arm and prayerbook painted as though ‘projecting’ across the frame’s sill.

Trompe l’oeil was a powerful device for engaging the spectator and was essential to both the

illusory and didactic aspects of a painting, as seen in Simon Marmion’s triptych with the Virgin and

Child (1470; Madrid, Mus. Thyssen–Bornemisza), where the rainsill is overpainted with a carpet

and with a cushion supporting the Child, as though he were actually within the spectator’s space.

Other examples are the portrait of Engelbrecht II, Count of Nassau (1482; ’s Hertogenbosch,

Noordbrabants Mus.) by Arnold van der Laar, which has the sitter’s arm overlapping the frame;

Memling’s Christ Blessing , where Christ’s fingers rest on the upper edge of the sill; and a portrait

of the Netherlandish school (c. 1520; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.), in which the male sitter’s

gloves are painted over the marbled frieze as though hanging towards the spectator. The use of

trompe l’oeil has connections with Germany (see §VI, 1 below), but philosophically it is the

equivalent of Brunelleschi’s perspective system, in which the illusory pictorial space was made to

seem continuous with the ‘real’ world. The Florentine origins of such trompe l’oeil devices are most

evident in the frames on, for example, the Deposition after Petrus Christus and Christ Blessing by

Gerard David, where the wide rainsill in both has been incised with criss-crossed lines imitating a

pavement rapidly receding into the picture.

More south Netherlandish works of the period exist than do northern ones, and they tend to lack the

monumentality of Italian altarpieces or Spanish retables. However, the Master of Alkmaar’s Seven

Acts of Mercy (1504; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) is a north Netherlandish work, and its scale surpasses

even a relatively large painting such as Jan van Eyck’s Virgin and Child with SS Donatian and

George and a Donor. Its seven oblong panels, each 1 m high unframed, are mounted in a

continuous unhinged casing—a huge, divided flat border with individual sight mouldings—made of

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polished wood and with an inscription beneath each panel. Similar to the rectangular five-panelled

portable altarpiece of the Virgin and Four Saints (c. 1333–44; e.g. Malibu, CA, Getty Mus.; New

York, Met.; priv. col.) attributed to Simone Martini (see §II, 2 above), the Master of Alkmaar’s

large work is interesting for its Netherlandish pedigree; its format, designed to be read from left to

right with the viewer’s eyes returning to Christ; the date of 1504 inscribed on it; its fabric and

simple form; and the visible signs of its construction—butt joints secured with nails. Similar nails

can be seen on south Netherlandish works by van Eyck and Memling, where, however, complex

mouldings or a rainsill have dictated the use of mitred joints.

2. Renaissance.

More original Dutch frames and paintings seem to have survived from the later part of the 16th

century than from the earlier, and by the mid-17th century they almost entirely supplanted Flemish

works. Yet in the early 16th century there were still several important south Netherlandish artists,

one of whom was Jan Gossart, who, stimulated by the increasing influence of Italian art on the Low

Countries, visited Rome in 1508–9. The influence of such visits on the development of the frame

can be seen not in any overt use of classical shape or ornament (which tended anyhow to be

restricted to the settings of the paintings) but rather in forms and inscriptions, hitherto used for

altarpieces or portraits, now being used for secular or mythological scenes. Gossart was known for

his painting of moulded frames around many of his subjects (e.g. Henry III, Count of Nassau-

Breda, c. 1516–17; Fort Worth, TX, Kimbell A. Mus.). By this device he underlined the importance

of the frame’s appearance and function in late 15th- and 16th-century Netherlandish painting. He

employed inscriptions relating to the Virgin and donor on the frame of the Carondelet Diptych

(1517; Paris, Louvre) but also used them on Venus and Cupid (1520; Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.; g pl.

66). The latter has a deep, round-arched frame with a complex arrangement of flat, concave and

convex mouldings and a flat bottom shelf replacing the outer mouldings, which may be considered

a ‘Classical’ analogue of the ‘religious’ rainsill. The central flat has an inscription with Venus’

curse against men. Another secular yet didactic inscription, in imitation of the sacred quotations that

would have embellished and glossed an altarpiece, appeared on the frame (untraced) of Quinten

Metsys’s Moneychanger and his Wife (‘Banker and his Wife’, 1514; Paris, Louvre).

Altarpieces of the 16th century are less likely to be inscribed, and, except for rectangular formats,

they are shaped in a manner peculiar to the Low Countries. Unlike classically inspired Italian

aediculae, which have single panels and horizontal architraves, Netherlandish altarpieces are

usually triptychs, the central panel being either round or ogee-arched, or formed of a complex series

of curves. The frame, with its combination of taenia, frieze, scotia, ogee and cavetto mouldings,

faithfully follows these undulating outlines, which echo the curving gables of north Netherlandish

architecture. A pair of triptychs by Ambrosius Benson and Quinten Metsys (both Antwerp, Mus.

Mayer van den Bergh) exemplify the two main types of cross-section employed in oak mouldings.

The frame on the Benson painting has a continuous flattish architrave profile with gilt frieze

(possibly original) and black raised outer edges; the one on the Metsys painting has a similar finish

with a shallow scotia profile running down to a rainsill.

A few altarpieces with crockets and finials survive. Examples are Jan Wellens de Cock’s triptych of

the Crucifixion with Donors (c. 1525; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), the frame of which is integral with

the painted panels; Jan Mostaert’s Portrait of a Man (Worcester, MA, A. Mus.), possibly adapted;

and Memling’s portraits of Tommaso Portinari and his wife Maria Maddalena Baroncelli (both c.

1470; New York, Met.). Many frames, including the last two by Memling, have, however, lost their

original finish, so that the present polished wood, full gilding or parcel gilding with black has little

to do with the original conception of the framemaker, artist or patron. J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer

(see bibliography) has found that some frames were originally far more colourful: those of three

north Netherlandish triptychs in the Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, were repainted,

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probably in the 18th century or the early 19th. The frame surrounding the Crucifixion (c. 1517–22)

by Cornelis Engebrechtsz., for example, was once russet-coloured on the outside and violet, green

and gold inside, with a marbled predella frame. It has also lost its gilded crockets and finials. That

of Lucas van Leyden’s Last Judgement (1517) was originally lavender outside, and the mouldings

inside—now black—were violet. It retains an inner run of blue between gold colonnettes, decorated

with gilt flowers; this was originally painted with azurite, and since 1704 the decoration has been

reproduced in modern Prussian blue. These altarpieces with coloured frames, and the earlier

marbled frames, were the predecessors of more elaborately painted settings in the later 16th century

and the early 17th. Examples include a frame painted with demons for the Last Judgement (1554;

Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.) by Pieter Huys; an allegory (1600–20; Le Puy, Mus. Crozatier) by Frans

Pourbus (ii) that is framed with painted scenes and inscriptions in cartouches; Christ Carrying the

Cross (c. 1578; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.) by Gillis Mostaert; and the Crucifixion (Ghent,

Mus. S. Kst.) by Frans Francken (ii).

Flemish frame profiles, 15th and 16th centuries: (a) continuous ogee,…

The evolution of 15th- and 16th-century Flemish frames and supports in the main artistic centres—

Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Ghent, Leuven, Tournai and others—has been exhaustively explored,

classified and illustrated by Hélène Verougstraete-Marcq and Roger van Schoute in Cadres et

supports dans la peinture flamande aux 15e et 16e siècles. The book is essential for the study of the

period and deals with craftsmen and the tools they used, various corporations, joinery and

construction joints of frames, and cross-sections and finishes. It also discusses the five principal

styles of moulding sections used, each having many regional variations (see fig.). These styles are

based on combinations of Classical architectural mouldings such as cavetto, scotia, ogee, taenia (or

band) and frieze. Ogee and scotia profiles, with or without sill (a and b), were equally dominant in

the second half of the 16th century, the scotia being the main section used in the first half of the

16th century. The architrave profile with ogee and sill (c) is seen mainly in works of the second half

of the 15th century. Entablature mouldings with outer cavetto (d) or ogee (e) both appeared in the

first half of the 16th century and were used almost exclusively then, although in the second half of

the 16th century the entablature with ogee was used twice as frequently, and it was the only one to

survive into the early 17th century. As most of the sections indicate, the sides of the frames were

grooved to fit around and stabilize the panel painting, being jointed with various forms of mortice-

and-tenon and straight and mitred half-lap, and secured with dowels.

The display of 16th- and early 17th-century Flemish frames is documented—more comprehensively

than at any time in the history of frames—in paintings of interiors of artists’ studios and of the

salons and galleries of noblemen and rich bourgeois collectors (see Cabinet picture). The vogue for

this type of picture, showing the kunstkamer, was popularized chiefly by Frans Francken II and his

circle. In Cabinet of an Antwerp Amateur , for example, Francken pays homage to Rubens and other

artists whose works can be identified. The walls of the room are shown covered with paintings in

narrow ebonized or plain oak frames, all hung closely together in symmetrical groups. All types of

subject-matter are displayed: landscapes, religious and mythological scenes, marine paintings and

still-lifes.

The prosperity of the arts and their flowering in the Spanish Netherlands under Archduke Albert

(reg 1620–21) and Archduchess Isabella are emphasized in a similar interior (Baltimore, MD,

Walters A.G.) by Francken, painted in collaboration with Jan Breughel the elder, depicting the

couple in a collector’s cabinet. Such paintings are invaluable aids in authentic reframing; for

example, the National Gallery in London, on acquiring Rubens’s Samson and Delilah (c. 1609–10)

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in 1980, reproduced the original frame as it is seen in Francken’s view of a room in the house of

Nicolaas Rockox (c. 1630–35; Munich, Alte Pin.), the first owner of the Rubens painting.

Belgian and Dutch frames, 16th and 17th centuries: (a) entablature…

Unlike the earlier shaped formats of religious paintings, few original frames surrounding secular or

rectangular paintings have survived. Uniquely, oak frames with gilt sight edges have been retained

on landscape scenes of the Twelve Months (’s Hertogenbosch, Noordbrabants Mus.), works of the

Netherlandish school. The collection of the Rijksmuseum Het Catharijneconvent in Utrecht is

relatively unaltered and is notable for the preservation of entablature frames with gilt arabesque

decoration or inscriptions on the frieze. A few other frames of this type and period survive (see fig.)

and are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The use of gilt ornament in the manner of Italian

prototypes, although rare, is seen on two of the approximately 45 frames surrounding paintings in

Francken’s Cabinet of Jan Snellinck (Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.); and in the Cabinet of an Antwerp

Amateur a pair of oak portrait frames carved with dentil decoration can be seen. Carved ornament is

rare on Netherlandish frames, but dentils, first appearing on frames for 14th-century Italian Gothic

altarpieces (examples, Florence, Accad.), are seen on the impressive pair of frames surrounding

portraits of William the Silent, Prince of Orange and Maurice, Prince of Orange (both 1588;

Arnemuiden, Raadhuis-Mus.; pl 1) by Daniel van den Queecborn (c. 1558–1641).

3. 17th century.

(i) Introduction.

Some types of frame and framing device were continued into the 17th century. The ‘framing’ of

devotional paintings by a garland of flowers or a strapwork border painted on the canvas within the

actual frame, as in Rubens’s Virgin and Garland (Paris, Louvre) or Daniel Seghers’s Loyola

(Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.), is similar to the effect created by the elaborately painted and highly

coloured altarpieces of the late 16th century. Frames with entablature profiles (similar to those

shown above, see fig., e; see fig., a) continued to be made in Flanders into the 1620s, overlapping

with and becoming the basis of a new type of Dutch frame in the first quarter of the 17th century.

There were no more innovations in framing in Flanders until the 19th century; characteristically

Dutch styles were mostly used in the Low Countries in the 17th century, and regional variants of

French types were fashionable in the 18th.

The archetypal 17th-century Dutch frame, leavened by the exotic addition of Auricular and Lutma

designs and by trophy frames (see §(iii)), has a black, occasionally parcel-gilt, moulding based on

more sophisticated combinations of the flat- and round-sectioned mouldings in use from the early

15th century. Its particular character depends on greater relative width and depth than before; on the

use of broad, flat, cambered or shallow ogee and hollow areas; and on its finish, a veneer of ebony

or other dark wood and an absence, or sparse use, of gilding. It is essentially a bourgeois style,

designed not to assert its character within a court setting of gold, stucco and marble but rather to

complement a domestic or municipal interior, with its light-coloured walls or tapestries, occasional

linings of gilt leather, flooring of bare wooden boards or black-and-white tiles, and furniture of dark

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turned wood. Many factors contributed to the creation of this style of frame. A tax was levied on

house frontages, resulting in small façades fronting long sequences of rooms, of which only the

front and extreme back would receive direct natural light. Consequently, windows had to be large,

and an ingenious arrangement of mirrors, open doorways, pale walls and light-coloured floors

reflected cool, diffused light through the house, making such decoration as gold leaf unnecessary. In

1581 the Act of Abjuration had rejected Spanish sovereignty over the northern Netherlands, and in

1609 the Truce of Antwerp established the Dutch Republic. As a result, court culture and

Catholicism were able to flourish only in the southern Netherlands. The north became progressively

Protestant, its nobility dwindled and it cultivated a patrician, rather than a royal, style. The

Protestant inclination was to design in a style inherently less ostentatious, less Baroque and smaller

in scale than the Catholic; the black frames harmonize with this reduced scale, with locally made

wooden furniture rather than French or Italian gilded pieces, and with the Protestant predilection for

comfort rather than luxury. Dutch national pride also influenced the choice of frames. The northern

Netherlands had a strong mercantile base, and in the late 16th century Amsterdam had superseded

Antwerp to become the trade centre of Europe, importing valuable spices and rare woods from its

colonies.

Although similar styles of framing would spread to Flanders, Austria and Germany, indigenous fruit

woods or stained pine and oak would be used there, while Dutch frames are rich, for all their

apparent austerity, in such woods as ebony and amboyna, and inlays of ivory, tortoiseshell and

whalebone. In the late 16th century Antwerp was the centre of the craft of veneering and inlaying.

Yet at this time, due to persecution by Spanish rulers, a great number of Flemish cabinetmakers

emigrated to the northern Netherlands, re-establishing the craft in an area more able to support it.

The wealthy Dutch middle and lower-middle classes bought pictures voraciously for pleasure and

as an investment, having them framed in offcuts from the exotic woods that filled Amsterdam’s

saw-mills. An interest in the Dutch frame was also encouraged by the publication, probably in

Wolfenbüttel around 1588, by Hans Vredeman de Vries of Differents pourtraicts de menuiserie.

Considered to be the first pattern book for furniture, it was significant as a channel through which

Renaissance classicism reached the Netherlands in the 1580s. In 1630, Hans’s son Paul Vredeman

de Vries (1567–after 1630) published Verscheyden schrynwerck (Amsterdam), another pattern book

that included types of frames. Examples of 17th-century Dutch frames containing the original

paintings can be found in the Prijst de lijst exhibition catalogue (1984; see bibliography) and are

seen on the walls of many interiors in contemporary paintings by such artists as Vermeer, Nicolaes

Maes, Gabriel Metsu, Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch and Gerard ter Borch (ii). These ‘paintings within

paintings’ provide information about styles of framing, methods of hanging and arrangements of

pictures, and can confirm the date and provenance of a frame and its originality to the painting that

it surrounds.

(ii) Wood-finish frames.

From the early 17th century the parcel gilding of Dutch ebonized frames almost ceased. Their

beauty now depended on an increasingly subtle interplay of stepped flat and curved surfaces, the

edges of which catch light and create the effect of a receding perspectival vista; this is an especially

effective focusing device for portraits but is also used for landscapes, still-lifes and allegories.

Occasionally, the sight edge is ornamented with wave mouldings or ripple mouldings, but the use of

such patterns over the whole frame is characteristic of Germany, Austria and Flanders. Dutch

frames tend to rely on the silken sheen of ebony veneer acting as a foil for the paintings themselves.

They also have a wide range of profiles, from a deep case frame, through a simple flat margin, to a

reverse rebate. Contour is employed interestingly, with straight and curved lines played off one

against the other. For example, van den Queecborn’s five portraits of the van Wassenaer family

(1627; Brussels, Château Duyvenvoorde; pl 12) have oblong black and gold frames with marbled

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circular spandrels painted on the canvas, while seven portraits of an unknown family (1632;

Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; pl 15) have wide octagonal ebony frames with oval black slips.

Belgian and Dutch frames, 16th and 17th centuries: (a) entablature…

The development of the principal profiles of 17th-century Dutch moulding frames is meticulously

described and illustrated in Prijst de lijst. The following provides a précis of this work, augmented

by unpublished examples of Netherlandish and Middle European frames. The Flemish entablature

section in oak (see fig., a), popular from the 1550s to c. 1640, is deepened by the addition of a steep,

narrow ogee back edge (b), recorded as early as 1565. This treatment—like a perspective box—

emphasizes the illusion of depth in a painting. The majority of small-scale pictures, as depicted in

interior scenes, are framed with a narrow and shallower version of the entablature to create an

architrave frame (c). Here, the frieze is veneered in ebony, and inner and outer borders are moulded

into sharply defined steps, reeds and hollows, the scale of which matches the artist’s miniaturizing

technique. More economical alternatives were pear- and other fruitwoods, which, because of their

close grain, resemble ebony when stained black.

The decorative character of the plain wooden frame is greatly enhanced by the application of wave

mouldings or ripple mouldings, made in ebony or stained hardwoods. The machine for producing

these regular, closely spaced patterns is thought to have been developed first in the late 16th century

in cabinetmaking workshops in Augsburg and Nuremberg (see §VI, 3); it then rapidly spread to

Flanders, Spain and Italy. Relatively fewer wave-trimmed frames were produced in the Netherlands

(d, e, g), 17th-century Dutch pictures having been reframed in wave patterns in recent years. The

ornaments were produced on a special milling machine by running straight-profiled strips of wood

through shaped metal cutters mounted over a long, wave-shaped master template. Repeated

movements of this jig cut successively deeper into the wood until a continuous undulating surface

was achieved. The production of these increasingly sophisticated and varied mouldings enabled

cabinet- and framemakers to decorate their work without recourse to hand-carving. These fine,

uniform wave mouldings create an even flicker of light, most effective as a subtle margin between

the edge of a painting and its surround. In some cases the inner edge is gilded, and generally the

effect is an opulent counterpart to the rarer and more expensive gilt frames produced by sculptors in

wood. Ripple mouldings were used for furniture and on mirror frames, applied to the surrounds of

cabinets and their doors, drawers and panels, and often inlaid with such materials as tortoiseshell,

ivory or pearl. Frames for small Flemish, German and Italian pictures, relief sculptures and

reliquaries closely resemble the fixed frames in cabinets and desks, the drawer-fronts and doors of

which carry a series of paintings. An example is in the Rubenshuis, Antwerp, together with a

tortoiseshell and wave moulding frame on Rubens’s Self-portrait. The frame for Michiel Sweerts’s

Young Man and the Procuress (Paris, Louvre) is a superb and rare furniture-related pattern made in

Flemish, German and Italian workshops and has pairs of pewter (or silver) stringing in the

brown/black Macassar ebony frieze. The borders are Indian ebony inlaid with the same metal

stringing and simultaneously machined into wave mouldings. Such luxury frames demonstrate that

the enamel-like surface of oil paintings on copper or wooden panels is ideally matched by the

density and opulent sheen of the hardest natural materials—ebony and tortoiseshell—combined

with metal inlays. The frieze between the ebony wave edges is occasionally inlaid with rosewood

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and paler veneers to create a distinct colour contrast, as seen in the frame for Adriaen Brouwer’s

Sense of Touch (Munich, Alte Pin.).

The architrave profile was used in the Netherlands from the second quarter of the 17th century,

either plain (see fig., c) or with a rippled sight edge (see fig., d). In the 1630s and 1640s a more

elaborate, deeper section was developed, having two main veneered surfaces (the steep outside

usually an ogee) separated by a flat and reeded moulding to the frieze, which is either an ogee or

flat (pl inv. nos 24–5). This was a development from the earlier Netherlandish frame with deep

entablature profile in oak (see fig., a) and is invariably veneered in ebony and, exceptionally, in

whalebone (pl 14). In the luxury version, three narrow reeded components were substituted for

wave mouldings (see fig., e). An intermediate pattern combines both, having wave moulding only

on the inner edge (e.g. on Jan de Bray’s Portrait of a Man; Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van

Beuningen).

The reverse, or bolection, profile (see fig., f) was in use in the Netherlands from the mid-1630s to

the early 1670s and was a contrast to the inward-stepping frame. As with the other sections, it is

veneered in ebony, palisander or an ebonized fruitwood (usually pear). Narrower than the

entablature section, it frames all types of paintings (particularly rectangular or octagonal portraits)

and reflects contemporary Italian and French Baroque frames in its projection of the picture plane

forward from the wall surface.

From the mid-1640s until the end of the century the scotia profile and its variants became the

dominant style of frame. Generally having straight mouldings in ebony or, more commonly, stained

fruitwoods, they were used as surrounds for landscapes and portraits (pl 31, 51) and were

occasionally enhanced with rippled components (see fig., g). The warm, varied tones of Macassar

ebony or palisander blend naturally with the warm pigments underlying landscape paintings (e.g.

Aert van der Neer’s Landscape with Windmill; Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen). The

optical enhancement of the colours of a painting is complemented by a focal emphasis, the width

being increased by a forward-projecting ogee section, as in Willem Kalf’s Still-life with Orange

(Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.). A final development in the shape of the 17th-

century Dutch wooden frame (see fig., h) occurred from the mid-1640s to the mid-1670s, when a

frieze was added to the scotia (e.g. on Jan de Bray’s Portrait of a Family, 1667; Haarlem, Frans

Halsmus.).

From the mid-1670s to the late 1690s the single or double ogee extension evolved to give additional

weight and importance to portrait subjects. The pair of frames on Portrait of a Man and Portrait of

a Woman (1691; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; pl 90) by Jan Verkolje I have some of the widest sections.

The paintings’ dimensions are each 570×490 mm, and the width of each rail of the frame is c. 210

mm. The surface area of each frame is therefore over 2¼ times that of the picture, reinforcing the

frame’s dominant role in focusing attention on the subject. The multiple reflections over the frame’s

many facets reinforce Verkolje’s illusion of depth and space.

(iii) Carved and gilded frames.

In the mid-17th century elaborate carved and gilded frames appeared, joining the infinite variations

of the ebony moulding frame. They consist of three types: the Auricular frame, with carved marine,

cartilaginous and skeletal forms; the Lutma frame (see Lutma, (1)), with an Auricular base

submerged beneath festoons of fruit and flowers; and the trophy frame, laden with attributes

referring to the subject of the painting within. These luxurious frames are sumptuous expressions of

Dutch Mannerism and of the skills of native wood-sculptors. Many show a skilful merging of fine

art and decorative art, and serve as a renewed endorsement of the supremacy of sculpture over

painting in the Renaissance hierarchy of the arts. In the Netherlands no such type of frame can

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apparently be dated before 1652, the year of the trophy frame on Michiel van Mierevelt’s portrait of

Jacob Cats (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; pl 32). The first Auricular example appeared the following

year on the group portrait of Capt. Dirck Veen and his Company (Hoorn, Westfries Mus.; pl 33) by

Abraham Liedt (fl 1653–9). This frame, however, is already sophisticated in its use of carving to

create the melting marine forms that emblematize Dutch naval power.

The first Auricular frames have severely linear borders, but later versions allow the curving,

sensuous shapes of shells, lobes and volutes to break across the outer edge and, more rarely, over

the sight edge. Designs are softer and more flowing than the slightly later Italian counterparts

commissioned by Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici (see §II, 4(ii) above); the wood appears to have

liquefied in a manner similar to the silverwork of the brothers Adam and Paulus van Vianen (see

Vianen, van, (1) and (2), and figs.). Auricular frames were more complicated and time-consuming

to carve than even the best ebony frames and, because of their gold leaf, more expensive. They

appear, as do ebony frames, in many 17th-century Dutch paintings of interiors, as surrounds for

mirrors and all types of paintings but always as indicators of status and symbols of luxury. They are

Mannerist in their refinement and distortions, Baroque in their flamboyant use of natural forms and

anti-classical insofar as they are removed in concept from the Italian grotesques that were their

inspiration. This lack of any classical reference may have made them acceptable to the newly

independent Dutch Republic as alternatives to French and Italian frames. The style frequently

appears in the backgrounds of the fashionable yet romanticized interiors painted by Gerard ter

Borch (ii). ‘Curiosity’ (c. 1660; New York, Met.), for example, depicts a chimney-piece with a

gilded marine Auricular frame; gilt floral festoons surround it on the sides and face of the chimney

and an elaborate cresting fronts it on the mantelshelf. Ter Borch’s Lady at her Toilet (c. 1660;

Detroit, MI, Inst. A.) shows the same chimney-piece painted white and with a white Auricular

frame, while a similar silver mirror frame is on the toilet-table. White frames also appear in

paintings by de Hooch and Jacob Ochtervelt, the light colour a possible influence from French

stuccowork.

Lutma frames also have probable French influences. They are characterized by a wide Auricular

band, like a softened strapwork cartouche: a linear shallow torus with Auricular corners. This is

overlaid with such forms as swags of fruit and flowers, putti or grotesque masks. Fine examples

frame Ferdinand Bol’s Self-portrait (1660; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), which is surmounted by a huge

trophy-like sunflower, and Steen’s Feast of St Nicholas (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), the frame of

which was originally made in 1661 for a portrait by Hendrick Berckman (1629–79; pl fig.). Lutma

frames are also seen in Steen’s portrait of the Van Goyen Family (Kansas City, MO, Nelson–Atkins

Mus. A.), where one is set in an overmantel flanked by festoons, and in Emanuel de Witte’s

Portrait of a Family (1673; Lewis S. Fry priv. col.), surrounding a mirror. They denote a degree of

modish luxury linked with a preference in the 1670s for French fashion: in spite of his wars with

France, William III, Prince of Orange, who became Stadholder in 1672, saw Paris as the cultural

centre of Europe. The floral festoons of a Lutma frame had already been sanctioned in, for example,

the gilt stuccowork of Louis Le Vau’s Hótel de Lauzun (1657) in Paris.

Both the Lutma and Auricular styles were to be influential for the development of English frames

(see §IV, 4 above), especially through the work of the goldsmith Christiaen van Vianen, as was the

trophy, the third type of Dutch carved frame. Trophy frames derived from Netherlandish altarpieces

ornamented with the blazons of donors, as well as from Crucifixions where the frames are carved or

painted with the instruments of Christ’s Passion. These heraldic shields and holy ‘weapons’ were

easily adapted to glorify such secular icons of 17th-century Dutch art as portraits of victorious sea-

captains and paintings of naval battles. Superb examples of trophy frames surround a portrait of

Admiral Tromp (c. 1655; Amsterdam, Ned. Hist. Scheepvaartsmus.; pl 37), the Exodus of the

Spanish Garrison from Breda, 10 October 1637 (c. 1663; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; pl 50) by

Hendrick de Meyer (fl 1637–83) and the Battle of the Zuider Zee (1668; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; pl

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59) by Jan Theunisz. Blanckerhoff (1628–69). The portrait of Tromp has a frame of polished

fruitwood carved with Roman corselets, sheaves of arrows and tritons. The gilt lime-wood frame

around Meyer’s painting also has carvings of armour and arrows, as well as spears, halberds,

cannon and shields in an intricate criss-crossed pattern, the whole surmounted by two bound

figures. Blanckerhoff’s frame is of bare wood but is a three-dimensional extravaganza against

which the actual painting fades into misty mediocrity. Signed and dated Johannes Kinnema 1668,

the frame took one-and-a-half years to create, Kinnema winning a bonus of 175 guilders over the

commissioned price of 400 guilders; this represented 72% of the total cost of the painting, which

was 800 guilders. It is an apotheosis of the framemaker’s art but at the same time an empty exercise

in virtuoso carving, as the function of a frame—to protect, highlight or gloss the picture—is

subverted, the setting taking precedence.

Trophy frames seldom, if ever, appear in paintings of interiors, which reflect a more general and

domestic taste. Because of their ornate form and celebratory nature, they were not displayed in the

same manner as frames on other types of works. Mirrors, for example, were hung canted forwards

and sometimes ornamented with a bow. Paintings might be covered with silk or velvet curtains and

were hung from a wooden loop in the top rail or else were held by paired hooks or bolts at top and

bottom. They were often ranged in tiers on the wall, some at a relatively low level (see Thornton,

1978, fig.).

By the end of the 17th century, the peculiarly indigenous flavour of Dutch furnishings, frames and

interiors, as seen in the paintings of such artists as Vermeer and de Hooch, was overwhelmed by the

popularity of the French taste. This is evident by a comparison of the interiors of two dolls’ houses:

one (last third of 17th century; Utrecht, Cent. Mus.) has a room hung with crested Lutma frames

above mid-17th-century farthingale chairs; the other (1690; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) has oval gilt

frames and chairs with higher backs, all in the French manner. Although the latter interior is still

haut bourgeois in general appearance, it reflects innovations brought by Daniel Marot I, a Huguenot

who left France to take refuge in the Protestant Netherlands and who worked for William III and his

wife Mary Stuart. He decorated William’s palace of Het Loo in Apeldoorn and the Binnenhof in

The Hague in the Louis XIV style. The Trêveszaal in the Binnenhof, with its late Baroque ceiling

paintings and severely classical mouldings for the portraits set into the wall panels, shows how

completely the French taste had been accepted in the Netherlands. From the late 1690s Marot

published many designs, including those for a large group of chimney-pieces with doubled patterns

for fireplace and overmantel. They depict various paintings (or niches for holding porcelain) within

a choice of frames, thus reflecting an increasing desire that a room and its furniture and ornaments

be unified in style. Marot’s suites of engravings include designs for mirrors, cornices and picture

frames. The first are torus mouldings decorated variously with all-over patterns, mirror-panels and

corners-and-centres and have elaborate crestings of figures, masks and pendant festoons. Cornices

and frames have a wide range of profiles and are rich in ornament deriving from Jean Berain I, Jean

Le Pautre and Charles Le Brun, but are lightened by Marot’s use of delicate key-shaped strapwork

scrolls. The vast majority of carved and gilt frames seen today on 17th-century Dutch paintings are

French in origin, fitted either by French collectors or by dealers in the course of trade. The French

style of frame—popular both domestically and for the export market—was produced in the

Netherlands, although it is now extremely rare. For instance, a richly carved pair of frames of bare

wood (1696; pl 94) has a torus profile of bound leaves and fruit rendered in Louis XIII style (see

§III, 4 above). Earlier examples occur from the mid-1670s, as do frames having centre cartouches

with arms (e.g. Delft, Stedel. Mus. Prinsenhof; pl 72). The French Baroque corner-and-centre style

may be distinguished as Dutch in origin by wider and indented strapwork in the cartouches, as seen

framing the portrait of Matthews van den Broucke (1666; Dordrecht, Dordrechts Mus.) by Jacobus

Levecq (1634–75).

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4. 18th century.

Variations of French styles continued to be fashionable. For example, a frame in Régence style

surrounds Judith Leyster’s Portrait of a Woman (1635; Haarlem, Frans Halsmus.), and one with a

distinctive undulating inner border in a bold Rococo style frames Nicolaes Maes’s The Dreamer

(Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.). Marot continued to work in the 18th century and designed (1734–9) the

White Dining-room of the Huis ten Bosch in The Hague in rococo hollandaise. The room’s stucco

ceiling is covered with lambrequins, dancing strapwork and scrolled leaves. Symmetrical white

frames with rocailles and ogee-arched tops provide settings for Jacob Eduard Witte’s grisailles.

Designers after Marot worked first in a mature Rococo style and then in a Neo-classical Louis XVI

style. Abraham van der Hart designed for Willem Philip Kops, a rich burgher from Haarlem, a room

(1793; Amsterdam, Rijskmus.) that includes gilt-framed panels and an overmantel of extreme

restraint decorated only with leaf-and-dart and bead-and-bobbin trims. Adriaan de Lelie’s Art

Gallery of Jan Gildemeester (1794–5; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) shows a room of a similar subdued

green to the one designed by Hart and hung with three tiers of mainly 17th-century Dutch pictures,

all of which are framed in simple linear gilt hollow or torus frames. In the later 18th century

Italianate scotia patterns with moulded ornament were produced: the frame for Cornelis Troost’s

pastel Figures in an Interior (The Hague, Mauritshuis) has an outer triple laurel-leaf torus with

bead-and-leaf sight. Frames with billowing ribbon frontons around Joseph-Benoît Suvée’s Self-

portrait (1771) and portrait of Paul de Cock (1779; both Bruges, Groeningemus.) are close

imitations of oval frames in the Louis XVI style.

5. 19th century revival styles.

French frame patterns in moulded composition were the dominant styles in the Netherlands and

Belgium for most of the 19th century. Empire frames have slight variations from their French

prototypes in section and spacing of ornament. Fine examples with continuous scrolling foliage and

honeysuckle survive on portraits (Haarlem, Frans Halsmus.) painted in 1823 by Drahounet. The

Restoration style of moulded corner and centre ornaments on ogee and frieze is seen on Cornelis

Kruseman’s portrait of the Romoudt Children (1830; Utrecht, Catharijneconvent). From the 1840s

to the 1890s Neo-classical, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Régence and Rococo Revival patterns were

produced. These followed their French Salon models (see fig. above) and dates of currency closely;

this suggests that many frames were made in France, where most Dutch and Belgian artists worked

for some time, while others were by local framemakers or by Frenchmen working in the

Netherlands or Belgium using French pattern books and techniques. Fluted scotia frames with

acanthus leaves in the corners were favoured for landscape paintings of the 1840s and 1850s by

such artists as Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (examples Dordrecht, Dordrechts Mus.) and Andreas

Schelfhout (e.g. Landscape, 1850; Bruges, Groeningemus.). The frames for Red Cabbages (1883;

Tournai, Mus. B.-A.) by Guillaume van Strydonck (b 1861) and Aboard (c. 1887; Amsterdam,

Stedel. Mus.) by George Hendrik Breitner have broad, richly moulded convex profiles in a style

between Louis XIII and Louis XIV with scrolling acanthus foliage and flowers. Paintings of the late

1890s by Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch and Maris (examples Dordrecht, Dordrechts Mus.) have Louis

XIV style frames with projecting corners and centres and the artists’ names moulded into the lower

central cartouches. The most frequently selected standard pattern from the 1870s to the 1890s was

the deep, wide, compound-profile, running-leaf frame (see fig. above) favoured by the Barbizon

school and found predominantly on landscapes and marine paintings by Dutch and Belgian artists.

Notable examples in the Dordrechts Museum are Anton Mauve’s Fishing Boat on the Beach at

Scheveningen (1876), H. W. Mesdag’s Seascape (1879) and Bernard Blommers’s Beach Scene. The

effectiveness of this steep profile in leading the spectator’s eye into the picture is demonstrated by

the frame on a large-scale panorama of a stormy landscape (Bruges, Groeningemus.) by Joseph

Théodore Coosemans (1828–1904).

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Many hybrid Rococo frames with swept sides and elaborate cartouches were made for all types of

19th-century and Old Master paintings. One of the more ostentatious and distracting frames is the

pseudo-Régence Rococo trophy frame with moulded quivers, torches and weirdly asymmetric titled

fronton made for Rubens’s Prodigal Son (Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.). As in England, France and

elsewhere in Europe, a number of more exotic and individual historical patterns were made,

deviating from the usual pattern-book designs. Louis Gallait had the frames of his paintings

decorated in the style and period of the subject-matter he depicted, as, for example, the huge canvas

of the Plague in Tournai in 1092 (1843; Tournai, Mus. B.-A.), where the massive frame has

chevrons and cabled ornament in Romanesque style. An accurate interpretation of the Italian

Renaissance style is seen in the frame surrounding Jan Frans Verhas’s The Schoolroom (Ghent,

Mus. S. Kst.), and a variation of a Baroque pattern is found on Liéven De Winne’s portrait of Paul

De Vigne (Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.).

6. Late 19th and 20th centuries.

Apart from isolated cases, Dutch and Belgian frames up to the 1880s have little originality. After

the 1880s the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites—who had begun to design frames three decades

earlier (see §IV above)—began at last to be felt in France and the Low Countries through such

exhibitions as the Exposition Universelle of 1878 in Paris and those of Les XX and Libre

Esthétique in Brussels. Pre-Raphaelite influence coincided with the rise of Symbolism and a growth

in interest in the applied arts, of which framemaking was a part. An example of an early Symbolist

frame surrounds Virgin and Child (1883; Bruges, Groeningemus.) by Théophile Lybaert (1848–

1927). It is richly gilded and shaped like a tabernacle, and is one of the designs of the 1870s and

1880s based on the Biblical and literary themes popularized by the Nazarenes. It may have been

directly influenced by the frame designed by John Everett Millais for Charles Allston Collins’s

Convent Thoughts (exh. RA 1851; Oxford, Ashmolean) with flat surface and arched sight (see §IV,

10), and the Art Nouveau designs used from the 1860s by Gustav Klimt (see §VI, 7) may also have

been prototypes. With its expanse of gold, crenellated cornice and the deep rainsill (revived by the

Pre-Raphaelites), Lybaert’s frame is characteristic of embryonic Symbolist design. Frames in the

mature Symbolist style have the same planar body, but their ornamentation tends to appear

homespun and chunky.

Following these expressive Romantic attempts to bind the picture to its setting, and in the wake of

the Impressionists’ innovations (see §III, 12), van Gogh, who was interested in the presentation of

his pictures, was stimulated to produce something more distinctive. His early letters to his brother

Théo van Gogh are full of directions about the use of grey mounts; his drawings were to be set ‘in a

deep black frame’, and oil studies to be mounted on gilt, black or red Bristol-board. His longest,

most passionate statement (1885) on framing concerns the need to put the Potato Eaters

(Amsterdam, Van Gogh Mus.) in a gold frame that would bring its blue tones to life by use of their

complementaries, or at least to hang the painting on a corn- or ochre-coloured wall. Colour

informed his ideas for frames: in 1888–9, while at Arles, he suggested one of royal blue and gold

for the Langlois Bridge (Otterlo, Rijksmus. Krôller-Müller), a landscape painting of blues, greens

and orange. Harmony and contrast in tone and texture were so crucial to him that he suggested that

the frame, if not painted, could be faced with blue plush. He also suggested a ‘warm creamy white’

frame for a painting of a pink orchard, and for other works plain white frames, ‘cold white and

rough’. Later he had his own frames specially made in bare wood—oak, pine and walnut—for such

works as the Poet’s Garden and the Poet’s Head, and he mentioned the use of chestnut-wood. As a

further simplification, he and Gauguin nailed painted lathes to their stretchers, which approximated

the borders on early medieval frames. Van Gogh then sketched an arrangement in which La

Berceuse (Otterlo, Rijksmus. Krôller-Müller), in a red frame, would be placed between two

paintings of sunflowers set in these painted lathes, the whole in the manner of a triptych. To Emile

Bernard he described a further ‘decoration’ in which six paintings of sunflowers would be arranged

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on a wall, ‘thin strips of wood painted with orange lead’ framing each and heightening the

backgrounds (which were ‘palest malachite-green to royal blue’). The effect was to be like ‘stained-

glass windows in a Gothic church’. Such ideas show how the 19th-century manuals on colour

theory by the chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul and the physicist Ogden Rood influenced Post-

Impressionist painters; they experimented not only with colour division but also with highlighting

the picture by means of complementary colours on the frame (see Neo-impressionism). Economics

was another important influence in the production of these primitive, coloured frames. Van Gogh’s

frames cost less than five francs as opposed to more than 30 francs for a gilt frame, and the

Impressionists were similarly embarrassed. Théo van Gogh, on directions from Vincent, ordered

frames painted white or of white woods, and Julien-François Tanguy, the Impressionists’ dealer and

colourman, seems to have produced some of these.

In the 1890s the influence of Seurat was strong among Belgian artists: Theo van Rysselberghe was

one of the first to adopt the Divisionist technique. By the time he painted the portrait of Maria Sèthe

(1891; Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.), he was also producing integral painted borders and frames like

Seurat’s (see §III, 12). At the same time, Alfred William Finch painted a Divisionist border on

English Coast at Dover (1891; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.), and Henry Van de Velde decorated

the frame of Garden at Kalmthout (1891; Munich, Neue Pin.). Van de Velde’s painting had already

begun to move away from the Pointillist technique to a use of expressive lines influenced by van

Gogh and Louis Anquetin. However, the wide cuff of the frame, inside its triple-reed and ovolo

moulding, is painted with coloured ‘points’ complementary to the colours of the canvas. Van

Rysselberghe was particularly interested in the applied arts and in the construction of appropriate

frames for his work. He also designed schemes for the exhibition rooms of Les XX and Libre

Esthétique in Brussels. In 1892 he painted Man at the Helm in a Divisionist technique, putting it in

a plate frame (presumably original) of strongly grained wood stained deep blue. This emulated the

generally blue tint of many of Seurat’s Pointillist frames and also produced the foil-like emphasis of

a dark proscenium arch, an effect desired by Seurat. By 1890 Van Rysselberghe was apparently also

using a version of the reeded ‘Whistler’ frame (see §IV, 10). One surrounds Canal in Flanders

(priv. col.), its linear format suiting the increasingly expressionistic geometry of his compositions.

The combination of this interest in expressive line with the decorative Symbolism of late 19th-

century French art, the growth of the applied arts, and Belgian connections with the English Arts

and Crafts Movement, all put the Low Countries in the forefront of the development of Art

Nouveau. In 1892–3 Victor Horta designed his first house, the Hótel Tassel in Brussels, in a fully

fledged Art Nouveau style, with curving tendrilled ironwork echoed by the painted walls and

ceilings. He produced every item in the interior himself, including frames for mirrors and pictures.

Jan Toorop exploited the sinuous patterns of Art Nouveau in his paintings and frames of the early

1890s. His Symbolist works, combining dense allegory with decoratively abstract surfaces, are

among the few paintings since the time of the Gothic altarpieces (see §1 above) that are bound so

inseparably to their settings. In Song of the Times (1893; Otterlo, Rijksmus. Krôller-Müller), for

example, continuations of the linear patterns that decorate the painting itself are engraved across the

wide flat frame and its deep bevel at the sight, while between and around them appear the shapes of

a starry sky, sea, flowers, a skull and pickaxe. Here the frame also becomes the work of art, no

longer merely an area of transition between painting and wall; at the same time, it is related to those

medieval frames with motifs, inscriptions and crests that gloss the painting within and also delimit

and protect it.

Symbolist ideas were also important for the Belgian Fernand Khnopff, who in the late 1870s had

been influenced by the work of Burne-Jones, Millais and Gustave Moreau. His paintings became

increasingly enigmatic portrayals of isolation and solipsism, related stylistically to the work of the

Pre-Raphaelites. The frame around I Lock my Door upon Myself (1891; Munich, Neue Pin.) has an

enriched chain moulding and a deep bottom cuff, similar to the differently sized rails used by

103

Gustav Klimt and Franz von Stuck. With Khnopff, however, it creates a sense of unease and

imbalance. The frame for Brown Eyes and a Blue Flower drastically crops the subject, emphasizing

the claustrophobic intensity of the brown eyes; it is a reworking of the tondo frame, which looks

forward to the minimalist ornament and machined finish of Art Deco objects of the 1920s. In the

1890s and early 1900s Khnopff executed several triptychs, one of which is D’Autrefois (1905;

untraced; see R. L. Delevoy, C. De Croës and G. Ollinger-Zinque: Fernand Khnopff: Catalogue de

l’oeuvre (Brussels, 1979, p. 345). In its structure and flat borders, the frame is reminiscent of the

winged triptychs designed in the 1870s by the English artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema, with the

addition of a classicizing cornice and plinth. The Symbolists were attracted to retable-like forms;

these gave importance to a painting and supported it decoratively and symbolically, while also

enabling multiple images to be framed together. Often, as with D’Autrefois, there is no connection

between the images save that forced by the frame itself, creating a sense of mysterious significance

and poetic meaning.

Piet Mondrian’s Evolution (1910; The Hague, Gemeentemus.), also a triptych but of three separate

panels, is somewhat indebted to van Gogh’s ‘arrangements’ in its minimal lathe-like frames and its

form as a linked symbolic group. However, Mondrian’s frames are mere delimiting lines, the

‘frame’ itself becoming the wall on which the paintings are hung.

In the course of the 20th century the frame has been demoted in importance and in some instances

disappears entirely. However, its long history allows the artist to make visual play on its traditional

role and conventional appearance. René Magritte’s L’Evidence éternelle (1930; Houston, TX, Menil

Col.), for example, is an ‘arrangement’ of five separate canvases that together form a type of

‘polyptych’. Intended to be hung vertically, each shows a part of a naked female body as a lover

would see it, in close-up. The whole thus becomes a memory of the beloved, reconstructed from

those fragments, each of which is fractionally different in scale. The canvases cannot be assembled

into a ‘whole’ woman, and their separate framing underlines this. The idea of the frame as a

delimiting border has been converted into part of the message of the work. Generally, however,

20th-century frames play a strictly functional and undistinguished role. The flat or deeply cambered

frames in stained wood or gold surrounding such paintings as Gustav De Smet’s Circus III (1924;

Grenoble, Mus. Grenoble) and Rik Wouters’s portrait of Beeldhouwer Wynants (Bruges,

Groeningemus.) are repetitions of styles current in England, France and Italy in the early 20th

century. Textured ogee mouldings are equally ubiquitous, as seen on frames around Frits Van den

Berghe’s Dancers (1925) and De Smet’s Married Couple with a Rose (1932; both Bruges,

Groeningemus.). Only Mondrian continued to play with form and function in frames for his later

paintings. The austere linearity of the traylike frame around New York City (1942; Paris, Pompidou)

matches the geometric latticework of painted lines within. The picture is set forward of the cuff so

that its vestigial recession is reflected by that of the frame, which, like much of the painting, is

white, thus making it ‘disappear’ against the pale walls for which it was designed. This manner of

display is perhaps the 20th-century artist’s ultimate comment on the purpose of a frame: to use it

while dismissing it absolutely.

Bibliography

W. Martin: Alt. holländische Bilder (Sammeln/Bestimmen/Konservieren) (Berlin, 1921)

S. Slive: ‘Notes on the Relationship of Protestantism to 17th-century Dutch Painting’, A. Q.

[Detroit], xix (1956), pp. 3–15

W. Gaunt: Flemish Cities: Their History and Art (London, 1969); R as The Golden Age of Flemish

Art (New York, 1983)

104

J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer: ‘A Technical Examination of the Frame of Engebrechtsz.’s

Crucifixion and Some Other 16th-century Frames’, Ned. Ksthist. Jb., xxvi (1975), pp. 73–87

P. Thornton: Seventeenth-century Interior Decoration in England, France and Holland (New

Haven and London, 1978)

The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, 3 vols (London, 1978)

The Stavelot Triptych: Mosan Art and the Legend of the True Cross (exh. cat., New York, Pierpont

Morgan Lib., 1980)

Masters of 17th-century Dutch Genre Painting (exh. cat., ed. J. Landela Watkins; London, RA,

1984)

Prijst de lijst: De hollandse schilderlijst in de zeventiende eeuw [Praise/prize the frame: The Dutch

picture frame in the seventeenth century] (exh. cat. by P. J. J. van Thiel and C. J. de Bruyn Kops,

Amsterdam, Rijksmus., 1984) [pl]

P. J. J. van Thiel: ‘Eloge du cadre: La Pratique hollandaise’, Rev. A., 76 (1987), pp. 32–6

A. Hoenigswald: ‘Vincent van Gogh: His Frames and the Presentation of Paintings’, Burl. Mag.,

cxxx (1988), pp. 367–72

H. Verougstraete-Marcq and R. van Schoute: Cadres et supports dans la peinture flamande aux 15e

et 16e siècles (Heure-le-Romain, 1989)

E. Mendgen: ‘Der Bilderrahmen: Ein Randphänomen?’, Eur. J. A. Historians, 4 (1992), pp. 258–66

For further bibliography see §I above.

Paul Mitchell, Lynn Roberts

Copyright © Oxford University Press 2007 — 2015.

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Frame, §VI: Germany and Central Europe

article url: http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T029196pg6

Frame, §VI: Germany and Central Europe

VI. Germany and Central Europe.

1. Gothic.

(i) Altarpieces.

The first German and Central European frames seem to have been most influenced by early

illuminated manuscripts. In the 13th century, when simple architectural motifs were being

introduced to the wooden borders of painted panels in Italy and France (see §§II, 2 and III, 1

above), German artists were treating their altarpiece panels like the flat sheets of vellum they were

used to working on, and decorating the raised edges around the gouged-out picture surface with the

motifs they would have painted, still in Byzantine style, in a Missal. The outside of the altarpiece

wing known as the Worms Panel (c. 1260; Darmstadt, Hess. Landesmus.) demonstrates this quite

dramatically, the style of the martyred saint and his trefoil border coming very close to

contemporary manuscript illustrations. The inside of the panel, with relief lobed quatrefoils on the

frame, is also dissimilar to altarpieces of the time, in other countries. This way of regarding a

retable frame as a decorative patterned margin influenced the development of subsequent altarpiece

frames. The French Gothic style was slow to be accepted in Germany, and this meant that there

were fewer alternatives than elsewhere to the evolution of richly patterned polychromed surface

decorations as the defining boundaries of an image; mouldings existed but were subsidiary to these

coloured motifs; and architectural structures were late in arriving in Germany and were adopted in

different ways than in southern and western Europe. The Cologne Diptych with the Virgin and

Child and the Crucifixion shows the development of this idiom, where dense, detailed abstract

patterns of oblongs and lozenges in red and blue-black cover the flat of the two rectangular outer

frames, and the small mouldings are swallowed up in this surface ornament. Roundels and lozenges

are carved out between the painted motifs and would originally have been filled with relics or semi-

precious stones; the precursors for this are not the more architectural large-scale frontals and dossals

but smaller reliquaries and book covers. A portable triptych with the Life of Christ (c. 1300–30;

Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.) still retains a band of semi-precious stones.

Byzantine influence was still important, especially when Prague emerged as an artistic centre—the

setting for the court of the Holy Roman Empire—in the second half of the 14th century (see Prague,

§II, 1). Imperial influence stimulated such works as the decorative scheme in the chapel of the Holy

Cross, Karlštejn Castle, where Master Theodoric painted 127 panels, some depicting saints (e.g. St

Matthew, see Cutter, 1972, pl. 5). Here, the saints’ painted heads are set, icon-like, against coloured

grounds covered with decorative gilt-embossed patterns that flow out over the frame. At the same

time, northern European trompe l’oeil techniques can be seen in the carrying of draperies etc on to

the painted frame surface, rendering the image more immediate. In the 15th century this type of

painted decoration became so standardized on one type of altar frame that the ornamented motifs

were stamped rather than painted on to plain grounds. This was done either with opaque colours or

with a type of mordant gilding such as that used for the patterns of robes within the picture. Among

paintings that display this technique are the Apocalypse altarpiece (c. 1400; London, V&A; see

Grimm, 1978 and 1981, pl. 26) from the workshop of Master Bertram, the altarpiece of the Passion

(the Lempertz Altarpiece, c. 1420; Münster, see Fuchs, 1985, pl. 10) and the altarpiece with the

106

Coronation of the Virgin and the Ascension (c. 1415–40; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.). The last

has internal bands of painted pattern dividing the panel into quarters, and these bands are edged in

pastiglia and have pastiglia rosettes, like vestigial carvings. The deep sight bevel of the altarpiece in

Cologne also anticipates the rainsill (or Wasserschlag), which is copied from church windows and

becomes such a feature of northern European retables (see §V above).

After a slow beginning the Rayonnant style spread swiftly in Germany and quickly took on the

more elaborate elements characteristic of Gothic art in northern Europe. For example, the pierced

lacework spire of the cathedral at Freiburg im Breisgau, the only one of its kind, illustrates the

German fascination with fantastic attenuated fretwork that also characterizes German Rococo.

Thus, altarpieces were produced that have simply moulded wooden stained, painted or parcel-gilt

frames in the oblong or ogee-arched format of the northern and southern Netherlands, but that have

been elaborated inside by flamboyant curlicued tracery painted on the picture surface. This is seen

on the altarpiece of the Trinity with Saints (second half of the 16th century; Cologne, Wallraf-

Richartz-Mus.), where a triptych-like effect has been given to an oblong panel painting by the

imposition of Renaissance pillars and three round-headed arches filled with bushy foliate tracery.

All this is held in an ordinary, parcel-gilt, rectangular rainsill frame, giving a very rich effect

extremely economically. The Master of Bodensee’s ogee-arched Hakenlandberg Triptych (c. 1500;

Karlsruhe, Staatl. Ksthalle) has a similar arrangement. Like Netherlandish altarpiece frames of the

same period, the silhouettes of German, Austrian and Bohemian retables show little tendency to

fragment into complex tiers of spires and pinnacles, as do the great Italian Gothic altars. Instead,

possibly because of this technique of decorating the panel itself within a simple frame, Central

European altarpieces preserve a rectangular outline, although complicated arrangements of tracery

and elevation often appear within.

Stefan Lochner’s SS Mark, Barbara and Luke (c. 1440s; Cologne; see Fucks, pl. 18) is framed in

this way, in a flat, oblong format, with panels of carved pierced tracery applied at top and bottom to

the picture itself. An altarpiece of the Swiss school (c. 1450) has a whole carved microarchitectural

gilded inner frame with tracery, gables, pinnacles, finials and crockets. The upper tier is set, as in

Spanish altarpieces, against a painted background, like the night sky, full of praising angels; the

whole work is set in a black-painted frame of determinedly anti-classical type, with a broad

inscribed top rail. The outer, defining edge of the frame is a gilded rope moulding, which would not

be found in a similar position on French or Italian altarpieces. The whole structure is of a vertical

format, as Italian and Spanish retables—especially the latter—tend to be. German alters, however,

are generally of one or, at most, two storeys, and are correspondingly very wide. The effect on the

composition and arrangement of the picture panels is marked; in a Spanish or an Italian polyptych,

the eye is drawn upward through a pyramid of focal lines, over the major narrative scene, to the

celestial regions of the upper tiers inhabited by Christ in glory and God the Father. It is helped by

the aspiring lines of the frame—by colonnettes, finials and pinnacles. With a German altarpiece, the

eye is led from left to right, as in a book, before being pulled back to the central significant scene

(which may occasionally rise a little above the others). This helps to underline the didactic elements

in the painting and also softens the alien aspects of the soaring heavenly scenes. By keeping all the

panels on the spectator’s level, he is more easily involved, and the supernatural is rendered more

immediate, everyday and comprehensible. The relative plainness of the frames also helps this

reassuringly mundane presentation, as against the painted buttresses and broken silhouette of an

Italian retable or the jewel-like patterns and gilding of a Spanish one. Examples of this drawn-out,

horizontal structure include Lochner’s triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (c. 1440–45; Cologne

Cathedral), with internal cusped tracery applied to the panels; and the characteristically wide

Güstrow Retable (1520; Güstrow Cathedral; see 1990 exh. cat., p. 38) and Michael Pacher’s St

Wolfgang Altarpiece (1471–81; St Wolfgang, Parish Church; see 1990 exh. cat., p. 38). Pacher’s is

unusual among German altarpieces in that it is crowned by a towering confection of lacey

pinnacles; yet these do not grow out of a polyptych structure, as in a Venetian Gothic frame, but are

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planked on top of the basic horizontal oblong format. Pacher was commissioned in 1471 to create

the whole altarpiece himself, including two pairs of folding wings on each side, complete with two

panel paintings to each shutter-surface, the Gothic crest, and the main scene; this is actually carved

completely of wood, in a three-dimensional representation of the Coronation of the Virgin, to which

the frame acts as a proscenium arch. Above the figures and dependent from the upper rail of the

frame is a filigree elaboration of the tracery on Lochner’s Adoration of the Magi—a forest of

slender colonnettes and crocketed pinnacles, ogee arches and pendent drops. Pacher finished the

work ten years later, signing the frame in 1481. He was paid 1200 guilders. The design,

construction, painting, carving, gilding and colouring of the sculpted scene is a prodigious

achievement. It is also striking for the combination of styles it represents. The painted panels have

the recession and arrangement of figures that belong to Renaissance art, while the drama and

movement are mannered—almost Baroque. The sculpted scene displays a Renaissance humanism

and grace, but the differences of scale, the crowded space and especially the ornament are

uncompromisingly Gothic. This is a demonstration of the enduring nature of Gothic decoration, in

Germany and Central Europe just as in Venice, Spain, England and the Netherlands, and of the

relative scarcity in these places of Renaissance ornament and frame designs.

(ii) Small devotional and secular paintings.

The design of frames for small devotional and secular pictures follows very closely the prototypes

established in the Netherlands from the 1430s, namely the van Eyck type (see §V, 1 above).

Characteristic Gothic ogee mouldings with a flat outer section are found on a north German portrait

of c. 1480 (Madrid, Mus. Thyssen–Bornemisza; g 42). This imitates the marbling on Jan van Eyck’s

portrait of Margaret van Eyck (1439; Bruges, Groeningemus.; see fig., a). Occasionally, continuous

moulding frames were produced in ebonized wood with multiple series of cavettos, ogees and steps

that have the appearance of being distinctly German, rather than Netherlandish, in character. A rare

surviving pair are those framing the double portraits of Johan Stralenberg and Marguerite

Stralenberg (both Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.) by Conrad Faber Creuznach

(1500–52/3). The most frequent design following south Netherlandish prototypes is the Gothic

‘colonnette’ moulding running on to a rainsill that often carries an inscription. An all-gilt example

with inscribed sill frames the right half of a diptych (1493; Berlin, Gemäldegal.; see Grimm, pl. 45)

by Hans Holbein the elder, originally part of a Mater dolorosa. An original polychrome and

marbled version with inscription surrounds Holbein the elder’s Portrait of a Young Lady (1516–17;

Basle, Kstmus.), but, unlike Netherlandish examples, the sill is divided into two sections: a steeper

bevel at the sight and a longer, shallow section below. The rainsill frame continued well into the

16th century, and occasionally examples are found that may be described as more individually

German than Netherlandish: for example on Bernhard Strigel’s portraits of Hans Rott, a Patrician

of Memmingen and his wife Margaret Volhin (both 1527; Washington, DC, N.G.A.). These frames

have abruptly stepped mouldings, strikingly finished in polychrome, matching the sitters’ costumes.

The outer steps, continuous around the frames, are black, and the inner steps are brown; below, gilt

ogee sections with brown fillets inside run down to brown painted sills that have inscriptions

relating to the year in which the sitters were portrayed.

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German secular frames, c. 1480–1550: (a) ogee-arched frame with vestigial…

At least as frequently in Germany as in the Netherlands, the most popular style of frame for secular

portraits had a shaped top, either an ogee or arch, providing a window-like focus on the sitter. The

ogee-arched frame with rosettes (see fig.) is reminiscent of Early Gothic frames, although the

reverse ogee arch (b) was more common in the 16th century. Curiously, many surviving arched

frames in museum surveys are found on works by the Cologne artist Bartholomäus Bruyn the elder.

The compact round-arched frame is generally favoured for smaller format pictures, such as the

hinged diptych surrounding portraits of Gerhardt Pilgrim and his wife Anna (both c. 1525;

Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.). These are in black and gold, whereas the frame around Bruyn the

elder’s Lady with a Carnation (1540; Bonn, Rhein. Landesmus.) is polychrome, the outer surface

enlivened with a painted spiralled leaf. For slightly larger three-quarter-length portraits painted

about the mid-16th century, a reverse ogee arch was widened with the addition of hollow sections to

each side—reminiscent of the centre panel of a Netherlandish triptych—as in Bruyn the elder’s

portraits of Heinrich Salsburg and Helene Salsburg (both 1549; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.).

A highly distinguished Gothic frame, the style of which is unrecorded elsewhere, surrounds Bruyn

the elder’s portrait of W. Kannengieser (1550; priv. col.). The upright portrait is framed in a

rectangular Gothic structure of pilasters and finials with an elaborate sill. Within this, an ogee arch

surmounts the portrait, the spandrels filled with flowers and foliage. Simple ogee or entablature

profiles, often with inscriptions, were employed in the production of circular frames for miniature

portraits, as, for example, Hans Holbein the younger’s portrait of Desiderius Erasmus (1532; Basle,

Kstmus.) and Bruyn the elder’s portrait of Dr Petrus von Clapis (1537; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-

Mus.). This treatment closely echoes the production of inscribed medals of rulers and miniatures in

metal frames, and continued into the second half of the 16th century in works by Bartholomäus

Bruyn the younger. Again the tradition for these relates to Netherlandish models found, for

example, on works by Dieric Bouts I and Hans Memling. Occasionally, sitters were framed in

rectangular entablature profile frames bearing biblical inscriptions on each side, as in Hermann tom

Ring’s portrait of Domherrn Gottfried von Raesfeld (1566; Münster, Westfäl. Landesmus.; f 25).

2. Renaissance.

The diffusion of Renaissance art, architecture and ideas throughout Germany was aided by the

invention of printing in Germany in the mid-15th century. For the first time, representations of

ornament and structure could be disseminated swiftly throughout Europe, and the effect was

enormous. Ideas were also transmitted by Netherlandish artists who worked in Italy, as well as

Germans who visited the country. Dürer had first visited Venice in 1494, and Hans Burgkmair I, the

leading painter of the Augsburg Renaissance, was in Venice, and possibly in Lombardy, from 1507.

Since no single school was established in Germany, numerous small centres arose instead where

artists of individuality worked for the bourgeoisie or court patrons. In the last quarter of the 16th

century the courts of Munich and Prague, whose rulers—dukes Albert V (reg 1550–79) and

William V (reg 1579–98) of Bavaria and the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (reg 1576–1612)—

were devoted to art, attracted many talented artists from Italy and the Netherlands. Through

Augsburg, which had been the traditional gateway to southern Germany from southern Europe, the

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Fugger and Welser families brought the first Italian artists to Germany. Several German artists,

including Lambert Sustris, Friedrich Sustris and Hans Rottenhammer I, had themselves worked in

Italy. Rudolf II’s passion for collecting turned Prague into an international centre for the arts (see

Habsburg, §I(10)), and several German and Netherlandish artists arrived to work in the city, among

them Bartholomäus Spranger, Hans von Aachen, Joseph Heintz (i), Roelandt Savery, Hans

Vredeman de Vries and Paul de Vries (1567–after 1630). Having worked in Italy as well as in the

Netherlands, these cosmopolitan figures would have been familiar with the types of frames found

there and no doubt brought pattern books with them or had artisans travelling in their entourages.

The considerable number of engravings published by Hans Vredeman de Vries, including

architectural interiors and the earliest furniture pattern book (see §V, 3(i) above), contributed to the

production and decoration of frames employing Renaissance and Mannerist ornament.

Surviving frames made in Germany in the Renaissance style (see fig.) are exceptionally rare. A

northern European form of the Italian cassetta frame, which may be called an entablature profile,

had long been popular in Germany, as in Tom Ring’s portrait of Domherrn Gottfried von Raesfeld

bearing an inscription on the frieze (see §1 above). The same entablature profile frame appears on

Johannes Münstermann (Münster, Westfäl. Landesmus.), also by tom Ring, but here with the frieze

decorated in a continuous arabesque more Italianate in style. Foliage decoration in the frieze is also

seen on the frame (a) that is contemporary for Lucas Cranach the elder’s Portrait of a Man in a Fur

Cap (Berlin, Gemäldegal.). This profile, bordered by a painted cavetto with gilt mouldings, is in a

style that must be considered more German than Italian. A similar Northern Renaissance cassetta

frame, with multiple ribbed mouldings either side of a frieze, surrounds Dürer’s Portrait of a

Clergyman (Washington, DC, N.G.A.). The Italianate use of gilt ornament applied only at corners

and centres of frames is equally rare, although it appears on two frames distinctly Germanic in

character because of their stepped mouldings and the use of strapwork in the ornament. Both are

contemporary with, and adapted to, their pictures: Wolfgang Huber’s Marggret Hundertpfundt

(1526; Philadelphia, PA, John C. Johnson Col.) and Cranach the elder’s Lamentation (1538;

Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). One of the most distinguished northern European Renaissance frames—

contemporary with, if not original to, the painting—is that on Hans Wertinger’s portrait of Duke

Wolfgang of Bavaria (first quarter of the 16th century). The upper edge is flat, painted black, with

pronounced ogee and sharp mouldings reminiscent of Strigel’s portraits (see §1 above). It is the

decoration of the frieze that distinguishes this frame from any Italian precedents; the sides are

painted with elaborate grotesques in black, the top and bottom with painted cartouches linked to the

sides with elongated scrolls.

Due to the exceptional rarity of recorded German Renaissance altarpiece frames, knowledge is

limited to the celebrated frame (Nuremberg, Ger. Nmus., see Grimm, pl. 64; drawing Chantilly,

Mus. Condé) designed in 1508 by Dürer for the Landauer Altarpiece (1511; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.)

and carved in 1511 by Veit Stoss. The design—which follows Italian aedicular frames like that of

Mantegna’s S Zeno Altarpiece (1456–9; S Zeno, Verona)—has columns standing on a predella and

supporting an entablature with figures and a segmental pediment. Although the structure is classical

in form, the vine-leaf decoration of the predella, half columns and tympanum is more Gothic in

feeling. The retable frames of the other great German Renaissance artist, Grünewald, are still more

or less completely Gothic. The Isenheim Altarpiece (1512–15; Colmar, Mus. Unterlinden) has a

simple outline frame of reeded mouldings and is parcel-gilt and marbled. The central sculpted scene

and probably the pendent Gothic canopy were carved by Nikolaus Hagenauer.

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German Renaissance frames: (a) Italianate black-and-gold cassetta frame with

continuous…

Some of the earliest sources for Italian Renaissance decoration in Germany were the engravings of

such furniture-makers and designers as Peter Flôtner from Nuremberg, who visited Italy in 1520–21

and is regarded as one of the principal exponents of the Renaissance style in Germany. The effect

on frames may be glimpsed only rarely and is characterized by what may be termed the compound

profile architectural frame (see fig., b–h). An impressive collection of such frames, unique in

number and quality, is in the Gemäldegalerie, Dahlem, Berlin, and they are occasionally found

elsewhere. Although these are based on Italian models, the differences in their profiles, their

pronounced carving and the fact that they are invariably of polished rather than gilded wood all

suggest that they were made in workshops in northern Europe. These sharply defined wooden

mouldings appear to demonstrate a German affinity with the purity of Tuscan architectural frames

in natural wood, the austere forms of which accorded with the Protestant faith at this time of the

Reformation. The undecorated form, typically Germanic in profile, has a deep scotia behind the

frieze (b), which could effectively be enriched by scale-and-bead carving (c). The frieze may have

geometric motifs reminiscent of furniture inlays (d); here, the natural colour of the wood

complements the blue-green background of the picture (as often found also in Cranach the elder’s

paintings). More Baroque in character is the forward-projecting fluted moulding (e), surely more

German than Italian and certainly an original variation. Frames with bold gadrooning and fluting (f)

are almost Mannerist in their definition, and those with interlacing (g) recall Venetian and Tuscan

prototypes. All-over carving (h), recalling the ornamentation of interior—notably ceiling—

architectural mouldings, is equally rare. The spirit of these mouldings is reflected in views of

northern European interiors such as those painted by Bartholomeus van Bassen (e.g. in Darmstadt,

Hess. Landesmus.). An unusual use of ornament—pointing to a German rather than Italian origin—

is seen on Holbein the younger’s Portrait of an Unknown Falconer (1542; The Hague,

Mauritshuis), where the cassetta-style frame, with a natural wood finish, has a frieze inlaid with a

Greek key pattern.

3. Baroque.

17th-century German cabinet frames: (a) compound profile frame in ebony,…

Because Germany was divided into hundreds of small principalities—Catholic, Lutheran and

Calvinist—no national Baroque style developed, as it had done in the centralized workshops of

France. Italianate Baroque carved and gilt frames are rare in Germany, and in fact the dominant

frame made here and in Austria from the late 16th century to the early 18th is the product of the

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cabinetmaker’s workshop rather than that of the carver’s and gilder’s. The natural wood frame in all

its forms, with inlaid and ripple decoration, is a product of the skilled craftsmen and designers in

workshops in Nuremberg and Augsburg. The cabinets (examples Dresden, Kstgewmus. Staatl.

Kstsamml.) they produced, exported in considerable numbers, demonstrate their astonishing

technical skills in the use of veneers, inlays and semi-precious stones, filigree metal, tortoiseshell

and ivory, with reeded and ripple mouldings. Equally luxurious frames, similar to those produced in

Flanders, were demanded for pictures destined to hang in a Kunstkammer (see fig.). The frame for

Landscape with an Inn (Munich, Alte Pin.; see Grimm, pl. 64) by Jan Breughel the elder is a rare

example, with a tortoiseshell ogee outer edge and a veneered ebony frieze overlaid with elongated

brass cartouches containing further tortoiseshell veneers. Occasionally, frames were inlaid with

marquetry (e.g. Cranach the elder’s Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, c. 1535; Ottawa,

N.G.) or were of walnut with marbled frieze (e.g. Holbein the younger’s Portrait of a Man with a

Lute; Berlin, Gemäldegal.).

These exotic inlaid frames are exceptional, the vast majority being in ebony or ebonized fruitwood.

Some are plain mouldings, but most are decorated with various forms of wave and ripple

enrichment. The development of the wave-moulding machine in Germany in the late 16th century

enabled this form of decoration to spread thoughout Europe (see §V, 3(i)); it was particularly

prominent in Austria and Switzerland, being seen on frames, cabinets and other furniture, and

indeed interiors (e.g. in the Swiss Period Room; New York, Met.), where wave mouldings were

used to define the borders of panels. One of the earliest examples of this ornament is seen on an

entablature profile frame for Pieter Bruegel the elder’s Sleeping Peasants (1566; Munich, Alte

Pin.). The section— essentially the same as in Late Gothic frames—appears transformed by the

addition of ripple mouldings on the inner and outer edges, the whole being stained black. In

southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland, increasing numbers of sophisticated wave and ripple

ornaments were produced on jigs and distributed on picture and mirror frames in endless

combinations (see fig., b). These enrichments are aptly referred to as Flammleisten (Ger.: ‘flame

mouldings’), describing the effect caused by candlelight flickering across their surfaces. Such broad

black frames would not interfere with the picture’s colour scheme, and would successfully isolate

the image from the surrounding wall surface while also creating a shimmering focus. In comparison

with their richly carved and gilt ‘Catholic’ counterparts, such frames achieve some of the most

aesthetically satisfying presentations of paintings. For example, van Dyck’s portrait of Pieter

Snayers (Munich, Alte Pin.) is superbly set off by a forward-projecting, broad, undulating wave

band adjacent to finer outer ripple mouldings. The distinctly Mannerist four-bead zigzag ornament

in the frieze of the frame surrounding Pieter Bruegel the elder’s Head of an Old Peasant Woman

(Munich, Alte Pin.) is a more dramatic and rarer example—an inspiration for the frames designed

by Franz von Stuck at the end of the 19th century.

In the later 17th century frames became heavier and were broader in width in relation to their

aperture, having up to a dozen different sections and runs of ornament along each side. Zigzag or

chevron ornament in miniature is combined with a novel basketweave moulding in the ebony frame

surrounding Rembrandt’s Self-portrait (1652; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.). A more dynamic and

Mannerist innovation is the use of outset or eared corners breaking the rectangular contour of the

frame (see fig., c). This device is seen in ceiling decorations and on the fronts of cabinets made in

northern Europe, and was employed with either plain mouldings, as on Cranach the elder’s Eve

(Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.), or with ripple mouldings.

Although apparently there are no recorded examples, frames in the Auricular style, so popular in the

Netherlands, must have appeared in Germany, evidenced by suites of engravings. Johann Matthias

Kager published prints of ornamental frames in an Auricular style (see Jervis, 1984, p. 265) in the

second edition of Fuggerorum et fuggerarum imagines (Augsburg, 1618). In the early 17th century

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Lucas Kilian, also a pioneer of the style, published a series of designs for Auricular ornaments,

most of which were dedicated to goldsmiths (see Kilian, (1)).

German gallery frames, c. 1700–45: (a) ‘Pommersfelden’ Baroque frame with…

In the mid-17th century Italian influences introduced Baroque design to Germany: pietra dura

craftsmen and cabinetmakers settled in Bohemia, Moravia, Prague, Würzburg, Salzburg and

Vienna, drawn there by the Habsburg court, which encouraged Italian craftsmen to immigrate. In

Munich, Schloss Nymphenburg was begun (1663) under the supervision of the Italian architect

Agostino Barelli. Florentine influence touched the Palatinate and Baden-Baden, the rulers of which

were connected with the Medici family through marriage. German craftsmen copied Florentine

techniques of pietra dura and scagliola, ultimately influencing the production of luxury frames. The

fashion for stucco decoration in Bavaria and Austria, introduced and fulfilled by Italian stuccoists

(see Stucco and plasterwork, §III, 10(i)(e)), also had its effect on the production of elaborate picture

frames. Although the furniture in Schloss Weissenstein at Pommersfelden, Bavaria, is relatively

sparse, picture frames in the collection (see fig.) were profusely decorated with strongly accented

cartouches in order to stand out against the surrounding abundance of gilded wood and plasterwork

ornament. Pommersfelden frames—and there are a number of variations in the collection—are

among the first examples of those series coming from the hands of the architect or interior designer.

They needed to harmonize with the interior; and thus pictures of earlier dates and of different

nationalities were reframed in a uniform style to suit the interior rather than the pictures themselves.

Other examples from the Pommersfelden collection are Piedmontese in character, with a carved leaf

sight edge and ogee moulding decorated with foliage and strapwork in the French manner. A similar

example, on a larger scale and possibly executed by Italian craftsmen in French style, surrounds

Adriaen van der Werff’s Entombment (1703; Munich, Alte Pin.).

Baroque ornament, which may have influenced frame design, is found in engravings in the manner

of the French designer Jean Le Pautre, published, according to Jervis (1984), by Joachim von

Sandrart after he settled in Nuremberg in 1656. Designs for Italianate Baroque frames, crestings and

brackets with rich acanthus ornament were published in Neue romanische Ziehraten (Augsburg,

before 1686) by the architect and cabinetmaker Johann Indau. Similar acanthus frames, friezes and

brackets were also included in designs published between 1690 and 1696 by the cabinetmaker

Johann Unselt (fl 1681–96) from Augsburg (e.g. Neues Zierrathen Büchlein, 1690).

The various strands of Italian influence, however, were superseded in Germany by those of France

during the late 17th century and the 18th. This was brought about by two events: first, the admission

of 20,000 French Huguenot émigrés to Germany, under the Edict of Potsdam (1685). Among those

who went were many craftsmen who worked for Frederick III of Brandenburg (reg 1688–1713) on

the decoration of Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin, and Schloss Oranienburg (interior destr. 1945),

north of Berlin. Second was the return, in 1715, of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria (reg

1679–1704; 1715–26), from exile in the Netherlands and France (see Wittelsbach, §I(7)). He

brought with him French and Dutch artists and craftsmen as well as first-hand knowledge of the

château of Versailles. Among the most influential of the Germans whom he had taken with him to

France was the architect Joseph Effner; from 1716 he was responsible for the enlargement of

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Schloss Nymphenburg in Munich and the completion of Schloss Schleissheim, near Munich. The

so-called ‘Effner’ frame (65b) is characterized by highly decorative corners linked by straight,

almost plain sides with an engraved surface, a feature common to the later Rococo frame. The

corners serve to emphasize the diagonals and are essentially Régence in their formation of scrolling

foliage and strapwork, inspired by Versailles but in a more ‘mechanical’ and rigid form. The refined

quality of carving and gesso recutting is highlighted by the sparse surface between the corners.

Produced in considerable quantity and in groups with different corner cartouches, either incised or

fully carved, these gallery frames came to dominate and regularize the appearance of the picture

collections at Nymphenburg and Schleissheim. A later variation (see fig., c), between Régence and

Rococo, surrounds a number of pictures; it has more freely carved cartouches with acanthus and

palm foliage, and rocaille edges linked by ogee panels incised with strapwork compartments.

Simplified and cruder versions of the ‘Effner’ frame, either all gilt or with gilt cartouches on

straight black ogee sides, were produced in Austria in the 1720s (g 331–2). A similar formula with

more elaborate cartouches, again on black rails, became an effective and economical Rococo frame

in Austria in the 1740s (g 333).

4. Rococo.

German Rococo gallery frames, c. 1740–65: (a) ‘Cuvilliés’ frame with…

The Rococo style was enthusiastically adopted by the independent courts of Germany, each of

which rivalled the others for architectural splendour, and soon spread to Austria and elsewhere in

Central Europe. Although principally an aristocratic and moneyed style in France, it was taken up

by the Church in Germany and Central Europe. This widespread and passionate adoption of Rococo

decoration, combined with the innate German sense of uniformity, was embodied in the picture

frame, which was produced in a series of elaborate standardized forms to harmonize with the

display of entire princely collections. The finest of these were in Munich, Berlin, Potsdam and

Dresden (see fig.). The exotic nature of the independent German Rococo frame, which pushed the

elements of the style to its extreme, must be seen in the context of the fixed inset picture and mirror

frames that were the ultimate expression of the frame in an interior. Most notable here is the

Ahnengalerie (1726–31) in the Residenz in Munich. This masterpiece of German Rococo was one

of the Reichen Zimmer of Elector Charles. The gallery contains a sequence of superbly carved and

gilt frames with vases, flowers, allegorical figures, trophies and legendary beasts, produced by

Wenzeslaus Miroffsky (d 1759). From 1730 to 1737 the room was converted to house 120 portraits

of ancestors and relatives of the Wittelsbach dynasty. Hořìn Castle, near Melnik, north of Prague,

has a suite of Stone Rooms, decorated by the stuccoist Carlo Giuseppe Bessi and containing large

landscape murals framed in the most delicate and attenuated style of middle European Rococo (see

Jackson-Stops, 1990).

The interior designer François de Cuvilliés, his mastery of the decorative vocabulary learnt from

over 40 years’ Electoral service, was eminently capable of handling the picture frame. He was the

central figure in the great flowering of the Rococo style in Munich from the 1720s. His imaginative

interpretation of French Rococo was published (in c. 400–500 engravings) in such collections as

Livre de cartouche (Munich, 1738), which included frames, ceiling and wall elevations with

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panelling, and furniture. Another series in 1745 covered many aspects of interior decoration and

objets d’art, as well as picture frames. Among other designers whose prints helped to disseminate

the Rococo style in Germany was the painter and engraver Georg Sigmund Rosch. In 1745 he

engraved one of Cuvilliés’s suites of ornament, and later some 32 plates of his own designs were

printed in Augsburg, including patterns for mirror frames and for general Rococo ornament. Rococo

frames and cartouches also appear in some of the 40 plates published by Georg Michael Roscher (fl

1740–50) in Augsburg c. 1750. Perhaps the most influential Augsburger was Johann Esaias Nilson,

however, whose 400 or so designs comprised allegorical figures in Rococo frameworks or

cartouches, and in 1756 a Neo-classical mirror frame. Cuvilliés’s well-balanced designs of frames

(see fig., a) for sequences of pictures, formerly in the parade rooms of the Residenz in Munich, both

enhance and reinforce the painted compositions without disturbing them. Following the concept of

the earlier ‘Effner’ frame (see §3 above; Cuvilliés had been Effner’s draughtsman), elaborate

rocaille ornament spills over the corners of the picture and is linked by delicately engraved sides

bounded by a double-bead astragal on the outer edge. An important characteristic of this frame is

the treatment of the scotia between the spectacular corners. This is carved in the gesso with a series

of parallel grooves, interrupted by broader double burnished bands. These create a regular rhythm

around the frame and could pick up and scatter candlelight freely. More prominence was given to

these bands in versions where the scotia is wider; and they can take on an almost military

appearance as in the frame on Louis Tocqué’s Frederick Michael of the Palatinate (c. 1745;

Munich, Alte Pin.). The creation of such frames—and of related furnitue—was the responsibility of

Miroffsky, Joachim Dietrich and Johann Adam Pichler (fl 1717–61), master carvers in the court

workshop.

The rivalry between the various German princes is reflected in the astonishing frames created for

Frederick William I of Prussia (reg 1713–40) for his son Frederick the Great (reg 1740–86) in his

palaces of Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin, the Stadtschloss (destr. World War II) and Schloss

Sanssouci, Potsdam (66b); and later for Frederick-Augustus II, Elector of Saxony (reg 1733–63) at

the Zwinger in Dresden (66c). Two flamboyant Rococo trophy frames, for example, were created

for the pair of portraits (c. 1740; Stockholm, Drottningholm Slott) by Antoine Pesne of Frederick

William I and his English queen, Sophia Dorothea . This is virtuoso carving functioning as

propaganda, celebrating and aggrandizing the power of the Prussian throne. The relatively simple,

straight-railed carcass is transformed by characteristic German Rococo features: it has been overlaid

by six huge cartouches, only the paired corners on each side matching; all are asymmetric, notably

the great fronton, and all the central elements stray markedly on to the picture surface. The fronton

combines the Prussian eagle, a shell cartouche with Frederick’s monogram, his crown and a pendent

order. Neither the pose of the tubby monarch nor the sober line and colour of his armour have the

dynamism to transcend this Baroquely dramatic ornament; although the spectator’s eye is certainly

drawn to such an obtrusive frame, it does not necessarily leave it to dwell on the image of the King.

This is a further example of the carver’s mastery defeating his object, so that the frame, instead of

protecting, enhancing, subtly annotating or isolating the image, smothers it. Even the interplay of

lines between the cartouches is at odds with the compositional lines of the painting, and this

disjunction is increased by the unintegrated relationship of rail and ornament—the fronton in

particular appears like a large gaudy butterfly that has alighted on the frame.

The frames created for Frederick the Great’s palaces are more successful versions of the same

flamboyant genre. They have exceptionally broad, asymmetric rocaille cartouches at the corners,

joined by slender straight mouldings at the sides (see fig., b). Here, however, this deliberate

accentuation of the unequal scale of sides and corners gives the effect of ‘floating’ the picture off

the wall. In many instances the sides are incised with scrolling foliage and flowers, a two-

dimensional echo of the deeply sculpted corners. The designs for these frames are attributed to the

King’s architect Georg Wenceslaus von Knobelsdorff, working in collaboration with the ‘Directeur

des ornements’ Johann August Nahl and the brothers Johann Michael Hoppenhaupt (i) and Johann

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Christian Hoppenhaupt. Having worked in Rome and Paris, Knobelsdorff—influenced by Cuvilliés

and several French designers— introduced a novel and confident version of the Rococo style to

Berlin. The design process is brilliantly captured in an anonymous sketch (1743–4; Berlin, Schloss

Charlottenburg; g figs 24 and 25) from the so-called ‘Knobelsdorff Sketchbook’, showing corner

and centre ornaments of picture frames. Frames for small works had only corner cartouches (see

fig., b); centres were added for larger canvases: both formats combined perfectly with the interiors

at the Schloss Sanssouci and Neues Palais, Potsdam. The more expensive swept-sided frames were

much less common in German than in French Rococo and were not always as skilfully designed, as

in that for Breakfast (1723; Berlin, Gemäldegal.) by Jean-François de Troy (ii).

Outside the princely collections fine German frames are rarely seen in public collections. A

distinguished example surrounds the Family of Graf von Fries (1752; Düsseldorf, Kstmus.) by

Johann Heinrich Tischbein I. The upper side of this novel frame has majestic asymmetric corner

cartouches bearing the family arms, each surmounted by a crown, centred by an elaborate pierced

fronton. There are minor centre flourishes at the sides running to rocaille corners, and an

uninterrupted lower side. This apex formation of cartouches is beautifully echoed in the overdoor

boiserie painted within. The pair of frames for Georges Desmarées’s portraits of Charles Theodore,

Elector of Bavaria and his wife (both Madrid, Mus. Thyssen-Bornemisza) are equally sumptuous,

having asymmetric corners and centres, and finely engraved ogee sides. Smaller-scale versions of

the Munich and Potsdam frame styles with narrow sides were favoured for conversation pieces and

portraits exemplified in the pair by Georg Karl Urlaub (1749–1811) and a set of three by Johann

Georg Ziesenis (all Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.).

The tradition in 18th-century Germany for framing entire collections in a Rococo style reached its

zenith in the astonishing reframing programme in Dresden commissioned by Frederick-Augustus II.

Hundreds of his paintings in this standardized frame style (see fig., c), each carrying the King’s

arms at the top and a crowned ar (‘Augustus Rex’) cipher at the base, hang in the now restored

Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. The design is fundamentally similar to the Cuvilliés pattern, with the

back edge occasionally having an egg moulding. The frame was produced in countless formats and

dimensions, from such large canvases as an Annibale Carracci (3.3×4.5 m) to miniatures by Jan

Breughel the elder (each c. 130×90 mm). The apertures were brilliantly adapted within a

rectangular contour to accommodate canvases of all formats—oval (see fig., c); ogee, arched top

(e.g. Adoration of the Magi (c. 1516) by Joos van Cleve); octagonal (e.g. Carlo Dolci’s Head of St

John the Baptist) and arched top (e.g. Frans van Mieris the elder’s Music Lesson). This reframing

programme, unrivalled elsewhere in Europe, is a testament to the zeal and determination of

Frederick-Augustus II to present his entire collection in a unified style, harmonizing with the

interiors. The production of these frames, during a remarkably short time in the early 1760s, was the

responsibility of the master wood-sculptor Joseph Diebel in his Dresden workshop. Diebel had

worked for the court since 1740 and had introduced Rococo ornament to Dresden.

The display in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister of some 60 pastel portraits in Rococo swept-sided

frames is equally remarkable. In contrast to the uniformly straight-sided frames on the oil paintings,

these intimate portraits by Rosalba Carriera, Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Etienne Liotard and

others are presented in a sequence of frames, every one of which is different—with subtle variations

in the design of cartouches and disposition of ornament—underlining the inexhaustible

inventiveness and virtuosity of Diebel and his team of carvers and gilders. The centrepiece is a

stunning pastel by Liotard—La Belle Chocolatière (c. 1744–5)—for which each cartouche on the

frame is carved with such household objects as flower-baskets, keys, fans, sewing-bags, needles and

balls of wool. Other pastels and oils by Liotard in museums in Geneva, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit

and Houston, have survived in superbly designed and carved Rococo frames, more German than

French in character, which suggests that possibly Diebel or a Swiss framemaker was involved in

their creation.

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5. Neo-classical, Empire and Biedermeier.

Court decorators were still working in the full Rococo style well into the 1770s, and it was not until

c. 1780 that Neo-classical designs for furniture were published in Germany. Among the recorded

engravings, including picture and mirror frames, appearing at this time were those by the designer

Ignác Michal Platzer from Bohemia, who worked in a provincial Neo-classical style in the late

1780s and after. The classicism of the Louis XVI style never took hold in Germany to the extent

that it did elsewhere, and it was soon overtaken by the Empire style, which spread quickly from

France. The more precise use of antique ornament of the Empire style appealed to German taste,

and frames were created to furnish entire galleries—as in the Rococo period—with a few individual

patterns alongside. Probably the earliest livery frame was that created for the gallery of the Electors

in Düsseldorf (the Kunstmuseum im Ehrenhof in Düsseldorf displays a number of them on Flemish,

Dutch and Spanish pictures). The pattern (g 373) is a hybrid of late Baroque and Neo-classical

forms, with furled leaf sight, frieze, ribbon moulding and broad outer torus of bound oak leaves and

acorns, flanked on the outside by a garland of laurel. The torus resembles French Louis XIII frames,

but noticeably Germanic—as in its Régence and Rococo predecessors (see §§3 and 4 above)—is the

incision of fine striations over the carved areas, contrasting with the smooth frieze.

German Neo-classical and Empire style frames, 1790s–1820s: (a) fluted

shallow…

Another early Neo-classical frame is based on designs by the court architect Carl Albert von

Lespilliez (1723–96), produced c. 1779 for the collection in the Hofgarten Galerie, Munich (g 374).

This closely resembles contemporary French patterns, with leaf, frieze, beading and scotia.

Instances of more specifically German Neo-classical frames are found on pictures from the

Mannheim Collection, formed by the Electors Palatine. Two examples show the continuing fashion

for recutting ornament in the gesso; the burnished shallow flutes (see fig.) act as miniature light-

catching mirrors, as in the Rococo frames—here set against a textured background with stylized

lambrequin corners. Equally novel is the alternating frieze of smooth bands and reeds (b) with an

outer fasces moulding. Jean-Baptiste Perronneau’s Portrait of a Young Girl with a Kitten

(Karlsruhe, Staatl. Ksthalle) has similar regular shallow grooves recut into the frieze of the

entablature profile frame. Bunched laurel leaves are the principal ornament in the frame made for

Pompeo Batoni’s state portrait of Charles-Eugene, Duke of Württemberg (1765; Stuttgart,

Staatsgal.), and are also prominent on the frame for his portrait of Emperor Joseph II and his

Brother, Leopold I, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1769; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.; g 349).

More Italian than French in origin are the scotia profile frames. One version, current from the 1790s

to the early 1800s, has textured laurel leaves and leaf tips separately carved and applied, with

moulded beading (c). Another—one of the most regularly produced classical patterns—is a frame

with applied carved mouldings (d); it is virtually identical to contemporary Italian models, more

Greek than Roman in taste, appropriate to the inclinations of German architects. The frame around

Gerhard von Kügelgen’s Saul and David (1807; Dresden, Gemäldegal. Neue Meister) is a luxurious

and rare embellishment of this design, having a scotia filled with a series of running foliate scrolls

applied in pressed metal. Close imitations and variations of French Empire style patterns were

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produced extensively in Germany, several creative examples of which are on works by Joseph

Anton Koch and Johann Christian Reinhart in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie,

Frankfurt am Main. A novel combination, contrasting refined acanthus leaves with heavier egg-and-

flower moulding, provides an appropriate presentation for the Nazarene devotional picture (e).

Creative use of the imperial ornamental vocabulary—well suited to the purposes and themes of the

Nazarene movement—is a feature of these frames, a fine example of which surrounds a

Raphaelesque work by Friedrich Overbeck, one of the founders of the group (f). The frame is

distributed with broad palmettes and honeysuckle linked by undulating scrolls, all on a larger scale

than contemporary French frames, which on this profile would have been decorated only at centres

and/or corners. (For Nazarene frames see also §6 below.)

Doubtless encouraged by Napoleon I’s programme of reframing in Empire style the pictures in the

Musée du Louvre, the desire for streamlined presentation of paintings in German public collections

was manifested in two major reframing programmes. As in the 18th century, leading architects were

responsible, after whom these frames have been named. In Berlin, the architect Karl Friedrich

Schinkel designed a standard gallery frame for the Altes Museum (1823–30; partially restored

1960s). Although having a number of variations, it is basically a broad ogee section decorated with

moulded ornament in the form of regularly spaced palmettes on the sides, with much larger

palmettes running into Greek scrollwork at the corners (g 370). In Munich Leo von Klenze,

architect of the Alte Pinakothek, also provided designs for the frames, which were applied between

1830 and 1836. The section basically follows that of the French Empire-style patterns, with friezes,

scotias and ogees, and the sight decorated with continuous patterns of anthemia and foliage (g 371).

Biedermeier frames, c. 1815–50: (a) scotia frame with rais-de-coeur sight,…

French Empire-style patterns were closely imitated from about 1800 to the mid-1830s, but by far

the most widely produced frames were influenced by the Biedermeier style, produced for the newly

prosperous middle classes in Austria and Germany as well as in Scandinavia. Frames, like furniture,

were essentially simplified and popularized versions of the French Empire style (see fig.). Many

paintings by Biedermeier Realists still retain original frames (e.g. Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller’s

Portrait of the Artist’s Son Ferdinand with a Dog, 1836; Munich, Neue Pin.). Earlier Biedermeier

designs were simple and sparse, reflecting the austerity of interiors, and were generally in styles

closely following French Restoration models. The simplest were plain scotia or ogee mouldings.

Five are depicted in the background of the View from a Room in the Diana Baths (1830; Vienna,

Hist. Mus.) by the Viennese artist Nikolaus Moreau (1805–34). The sight edge could be enhanced

with leaf moulding (a) and further with the addition of Greek scrollwork corners (b). Biedermeier

frames, as Empire, were relatively economical to produce, with their ornament in moulded

composition. However, as they lacked the discipline of hand-carved frames, this occasionally led to

an opulent tastelessness, especially in the revival Rococo patterns (c, d, e). An innovation was the

application of lace to the surface of the mouldings, giving a novel texture and linking the frame

intimately to the fabrics of interior furnishings and to trimmings on clothing. The fine texture of

lace was an effective and economical way of introducing surface contrast, previously achieved in

hand-carved frames only by punch-work, the use of sand, and laborious recutting in the gesso.

Occasionally the Biedermeier style was somewhat awkwardly adapted to the framing of large-scale

canvases; the ogee profile frame (e) on a painting by Carl Friedrich Lessing is augmented by three

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cartouches on the long sides and two on the short. Corner ornaments have also been added, as well

as an outer scotia with continuous fluting. Other ornamental devices and techniques included the

use of pressed metal mouldings. Good-quality print and drawing frames were produced in large

quantities in mahogany or stained fruitwoods, often with stringing inlays and sometimes marquetry

floral decoration.

6. 19th-century revival styles.

Revival frames, 1830s–1890s: (a) Neo-Gothic/Empire frame with ivy and

acanthus…

As elsewhere in Europe, framemakers in Germany and Austria responded to the various 19th-

century revival styles by producing a wide diversity of frames. As well as standard First Empire

styles in the first three decades of the century, many new patterns were created to correspond with

the historical periods represented in paintings. Frames were sometimes tailor-made one-offs, as was

the case for some of Caspar David Friedrich’s works. Cross in the Mountains is a superb example

of the 19th-century artist’s frame, elaborating on the symbolic content of the picture. The arched

palm branches allude to God’s satisfaction with mankind. The base, which is analogous to the

predella of a Gothic retable, carries the eucharistic symbols of wheat and vine branches. These form

an arch over beams of light that echo the rays of the setting sun in the painting itself and that are

centred on the Eye of God inside a triangle, symbolizing the Trinity. The frame was made by the

sculptor Karl Kuhn from a sketch by Friedrich. Other Romantic landscapists, with their realistic

approach to nature, employed equally individualistic frames (see fig.). This example is a completely

novel combination of Empire and Gothic styles, with its acanthus scotia and broad band of trailing

ivy leaves.

The Nazarenes, dedicated to the rejuvenation of German art in the Christian spirit of the Middle

Ages, emphasized their links with 15th-century religious works by neo-Gothic and neo-Renaissance

frames. The earliest example of a Nazarene frame, with a segmental arched setting enclosing two

oblong panels in double lancet form, is on Franz Pforr’s diptych Shulamit and Maria (1811;

Schweinfurt, Samml. Schäfer, on loan to Nuremberg, Ger. Nmus.). These early frames, simple and

severe, are relatively rare in public collections. One survivor surrounds Julius Schnorr von

Carolsfeld’s Tribute Money (1822; Düsseldorf, Kstmus.); its Gothic profile shows pronounced ribs

overlapping at the corners. A more elaborate example (b) has moulded paisley-like ornament

running to quatrefoils in the corners. Victor Orsel’s Good and Evil (exh. Salon 1833; Lyon, Mus.

B.-A.; see 1990 exh. cat., no. 28) has a 19th-century polished wooden version of a Romanesque

round-headed arch, with an inner painted border resembling a stained-glass window and illustrating

episodes from the story dealt with in the picture; while a striking design is realized in the pair of

Gothic lancet-shaped frames with moulded cusped ornament, echoing the architecture depicted in

two views of Gothic churches by Carl Gustav Carus (both 1836; Munich, Neue Pin.). A more

elaborate Gothic frame was designed for the Austrian Nazarene Joseph von Führich’s On the Road

to Emmaus (1837; Bremen, Ksthalle; g 389). Here, both inner and outer ribs cross at the corners.

The deep scotia has continuous scrolling and counter-scrolling Gothic foliage painted in outline on

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the gilding, in a careful historicizing idiom that is both more attractive and truer to the painting than

the neo-Gothic diapering used by both English and German Nazarenes.

Renaissance Revival frames are recorded intermittently from the 1820s to the 1880s on religious

and classical subjects by the Nazarenes and others. Friedrich Overbeck’s Raising of Lazarus (1822;

Karlsruhe, Staatl. Ksthalle) is appropriately framed in a magnificent aedicule in the style of the

Venetian Renaissance of the early 16th century, with Corinthian pilasters and entablature covered

with scrolling foliage. Moritz von Schwind’s History of a Holy Fool (untraced) is presented as a

pedimented hinged triptych in the Renaissance style, while an intricately decorated upright arched-

top frame, also Renaissance in type, was created for his Symphony (1852; Munich, Neue Pin.).

Appropriately, Renaissance cassetta frames with punched scrolling foliage reminiscent of

Bolognese examples (see §II) and related to English patterns were the perfect counterparts to

Anselm Feuerbach’s depictions of classically inspired figures (see fig., c). Similar frames are found

on Arnold Bôcklin’s work, as are several deep foliate frames in an Italian Baroque style (see

Mendgen, 1991).

In the 19th century the spread of artistic movements internationally was matched by an increasing

variety of frame styles. Pattern books became somewhat standardized, each country producing

virtually identical versions of a given style. Just as the First Empire patterns had become

widespread, so too did those of the Second Empire frames favoured for paintings to be hung in the

annual Salons. The skills and refinements of German framemakers were no less than those of the

French, as is shown by an elegant frame in a late Baroque style with oak-leaf torus, finely beaded

ribbon and—unlike the French version—leaf-tip back edge (see fig., d) surrounding a landscape by

Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910), a leading light of the Düsseldorf school. Almost the same

versatile pattern appears equally successfully on Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s portrait of Ferdinand

Lottner (1852). These French Revival patterns seem to be current from the 1840s to the end of the

century. Adolph von Menzel’s Sermon in the Old Monastery Church in Berlin (1847; Dresden,

Gemäldegal. Neue Meister), for example, has a frame with deeply undercut moulded scrolling

acanthus leaves and flowers in a revival of the straight-sided Louis XIV style. The same design is

seen on Fritz von Uhde’s Supper at Emmaus (1884; Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt.

Gal.). A typical deep scotia fluted Neo-classical frame with laurel garland on the top rail is used

successfully to enhance the perspective of Cattle in an Alpine Landscape (1871; Frankfurt am

Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.) by Anton Berger. Richer and heavier versions of the deep ogee

compound profile frame surrounding paintings of the Barbizon school, with laurel, acanthus,

beading and water-leaves (see §III, 11 above), were produced in Germany, as seen on Departure of

the Emigrants (1882; Dresden, Gemäldegal. Neue Meister) by Christian Ludwig Bokelmann (1844–

94).

From the 1860s to the early 20th century Italianate Baroque frames were as popular as French

Empire patterns. A number appear on works by Frans Xaver Winterhalter, including one with

pierced openwork scrolling leaves and flowers for a study of a Girl in Profile (1862; priv. col.).

Most designs resemble 17th-century Bolognese models, such as the spiralled leaf moulding on the

frame for Child with Doll (1894; Düsseldorf, Kstmus.) by Arthur Kampf (b 1864) and the broad

running stylized acanthus leaves on Max Liebermann’s portrait of Dr Frans Adickes (1911;

Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.).

A reaction to the standard pattern-book frames took place in Germany in the second half of the 19th

century, as in France and elsewhere; and artists either used, commissioned or designed frames of

greater individuality for their pictures. The highly popular portrait painter Franz von Lenbach

preferred Italian-style frames, particularly antique examples. This taste was doubtless encouraged

by his visits to Rome in the 1860s to make large copies of the Old Masters for the Munich

connoisseur Adolph Friedrich, Graf von Schack. A number of Lenbach’s portraits became visually

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associated with Old Masters through their frames. His portraits of Alfred Oberlander (c. 1888–90)

and Ludwig von Undzuder Tann-Rathsamhausen (c. 1880; both Munich, Lenbachhaus; see

Mendgen, 1991), for example, are set in Venetian Renaissance ‘Sansovino’ frames (see §II, 4(i)).

However, a number have modern interpretations of Baroque designs: Russian Woman is surrounded

by a frame (71e) with conventional Baroque inner and outer mouldings but a completely new and

striking fanned lambrequin motif running along the frieze.

7. Late 19th and 20th centuries.

As well as these historicizing Revival styles, there were many artists’ frames, modern and

innovative, that were produced for specific pictures. Hans Thoma designed highly individualistic

frames. His romantic landscapes, classical subjects and symbolic portraits occasionally had the

friezes of the frames painted overall by the artist. The cassetta frame that he painted for Apollo and

Marsyas (1888; Bernheimer priv. col.), for example, is stained brown and painted in black, ochre

and white with gold corners and centres, the lateral centres holding a bugle and violin as appropriate

to the subject. Other frames for Thoma’s work were equally and ingeniously novel in their use of

ornament. Landscape with Cattle Drinking by a Lake (1885; Düsseldorf, Kstmus.) has a cushion

profile frame with stylized lotus leaves, their tips interlocking and running towards the centre—a

complete break with traditional patterns. So too is the sculptural handling of foliage—appropriately

Italianate—for the frame surrounding a View of Carrara (see fig., f). Self-portrait (1880; Dresden,

Gemäldegal. Neue Meister), depicting Thoma in an apple orchard, has a gilt cassetta frame with a

top frieze of children’s heads representing the Fruits of Life, and sides and base with naturalistically

painted floral garlands. This type of symbolic portrait and emblematic frame is a descendant of the

17th- and 18th-century portrait in its trophy frame. Later 19th-century examples by other artists

include Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Josef Pembaur (1890; Innsbruck, Tirol. Landesmus.; g 408) in a

wide, flat, gilded plate frame, with polychrome decoration in the style of an ancient Greek vase

painting showing Apollo with his lyre, in honour of the sitter, a pianist.

Art Nouveau and artist-designed frames, 1870s–1920s: (a) reeded cushion

frame,…

A modern pattern-book frame that broke with tradition was the convex reeded frame (see fig.),

comparable to frames used by Whistler and Degas from the early 1870s to the late 1890s. The Art

Nouveau stylization of traditional ornament is effectively employed in the picture frame and must

have encouraged a revival of 17th-century wave and ripple mouldings (b), which create a strong

rhythmic pulse of light around the subject. Such a stock pattern surrounds The Dinner (1913;

Munich, Neue Pin.) by the Munich Secessionist painter Franz von Stuck, who, being as much a

student of the applied as the fine arts, had a strong feeling for the decorative effect of frames, and

designed many that give his work great individuality. The broad triple waveband (c) with stylized

egg moulding on the frame for Head of a Young Girl adds great potency to the image; the pattern

derives ultimately from such 17th-century prototypes as that on Jan Breughel the elder’s Head of an

Old Peasant Woman (Munich, Alte Pin.)—but now has the added lustre of gilding. The same

pattern appears again on the frame around Stuck’s Spring (1912; Darmstadt, Hess. Landesmus.);

here, the framemaker has been identified as Irlbacher (Mendgen, 1991, p. 323). Stuck employed an

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antique egg moulding in several other frames for classically inspired subjects, including The Sphinx

(1904; Darmstadt, Hess. Landesmus.), where it is given the stylized and chunky treatment peculiar

to Sessionist frames. The altar-like frame for Sin (1893; Munich, Neue Pin.; g 406) has the same

solid presence. Heavy, baseless, fluted columns support an entablature incised with lotus leaf; the

plinth mirrors the entablature, and its frieze inscribed with a cartouche containing the title. This

theatrical presentation further dramatizes the shadowy, brooding figure in the painting and

emphasizes her role as a femme fatale in the Symbolist canon. Along with Gustave Moreau’s

Salomes and vampires, the women painted by Fernand Khnopff, Stuck and even Dante Gabriel

Rossetti have a sinister air, half-supernatural, underlined by the treatment of frames like this—

primitive and temple-like.

Christmas (1910; Cologne, von Abercron; g 410) by Hans Pellar (1886–1971) has a 20th-century

simplification of the classical aedicular frame; it is also a return to the engaged frame and panel of

the Early Gothic altarpiece. The frame, part of the board on which the picture is painted, is made up

of four straight, flat rails, with a shallow top, slightly broader sides and a deep base engraved with

volutes and the picture’s title—all bordered by gilt ripple moulding in the chunky Secessionist style.

Similar ripple frames appear on other works by Pellar (g 409).

The Viennese Secessionist Gustav Klimt also set his paintings in stylized trabeate frames, with rails

of unequal depth, shallow engraved ornament and inscriptions. Some of these were made by his

brother Georg Klimt (b 1867) in repoussé sheet copper and are often gilded or silvered. A

distinguished example surrounds Judith I (1901; Vienna, Belvedere; g 407), where abstract patterns

have overflowed from the painting on to the frame (see Kosinski, 1993). The materials used may

have been influenced by William Holman Hunt’s repoussé copper frames for the two versions of

May Morning on Magdalen Tower (see §IV, 10). Klimt was typical of Symbolist artists in his desire

to unify the frame and its decoration with the picture’s content; this was successfully achieved in

such works as Children Praying (c. 1890; Vienna, Belvedere). A number of his metal frames are

extremely narrow, with motifs and inscriptions, an elegant example surrounding the portrait of

Sonia Knips (1898; Vienna, Belvedere), which is gold-plated, with the ornament in contrasting

copperplate. These minimal frames were very effective, for instance the attenuated rails of steep

arch-shaped section with continuous gilded ribbed moulding on Klimt’s portrait of Mada Primavesi

(1903; New York, Met.).

Frames in Germany in the 20th century, as elsewhere, are economical, geometric profiles—stained,

gilded, painted with colour or bronze or in combinations of these finishes, generally to complement

the picture’s palette. Many Expressionist works retain their original frames, an exceptional example

of which is on a painting by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. It has a rudimentarily carved wave moulding

adjacent to a straight line, finished in bronze (72d). Many original frames for Ernst Ludwig

Kirchner’s paintings are in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main.

The frame for West Docks at Frankfurt has a double cushion moulding (see fig., e), echoing the

arched spans of the bridge in the painting, and that for Nude Woman with Hat (1907) has a double

stepped architrave, the outer gilt and the inner painted red. In Cubist paintings the lines of

composition are emphasized by the angularity of the frame section (see fig., f). The frame around

Lyonel Feininger’s In Neubrandenburg (1925; Karlsruhe, Orangerie) achieves this with a reverse

profile with step and canted back finished in silver leaf. Arthur Segal, on the other hand, unified his

work by treating a conventional plain frame moulding as part of the pictorial surface,

undifferentiated from the canvas, so that ‘the viewer’s eye looks at everything equally’ (see 1995

exh. cat., pp. 238–9). Kurt Schwitters ensured that the frames became integral parts of his collages

by nailing strips of wood directly on to his compositions, as in Little Seamen’s Hostel (1926;

Düsseldorf, Kstsamml. Nordrhein–Westfalen). This procedure typified the attitude of many 20th-

century artists to the frame and its historical function: it was a form to be reduced to a bare

minimum or to be totally excised.

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Bibliography

C. D. Cutter: Northern Painting (New York, 1972)

F. G. Conzen and G. Dietrich: Bilderrahmen: Stil–Verwendung–Material (Munich, 1983)

S. Jervis: The Penguin Dictionary of Design and Designers (Harmondsworth, 1984)

S. E. Fuchs: Der Bilderrahmen (Recklinghausen, 1985) [f; 146 figs]

G. Jackson-Stops: ‘Reviving Rich Ruins’, Country Life (8 Nov 1990), pp. 98–105

Polyptyques: Le Tableau multiple du moyen âge au vingtième siècle (exh. cat., ed. C. Clément;

Paris, Louvre, 1990)

E. Mendgen: Künstler rahmen ihre Bilder: Zur Geschichte des Bilderrahmens zwischen Akademie

und Sezession (Konstanz, 1991)

E. Mendgen: ‘Der Bilderrahmen: Ein Randphänomen?’, Eur. J. A. Historians, 4 (1992), pp. 258–66

Gustav Klimt (exh. cat. by T. Stooss and C. Daswald, Zurich, Ksthaus, 1992)

D. M. Kosinski: ‘Klimt in Zurich’, Apollo, cxxxvii (1993), p. 59

E. Mendgen: ‘Patinated or Burnished’ and ‘Art or Decoration’, In Perfect Harmony: Picture and

Frame, 1850–1920 (exh. cat., Amsterdam, Van Gogh Mus., 1995)

For further bibliography see §I above.

Paul Mitchell, Lynn Roberts

Copyright © Oxford University Press 2007 — 2015.

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Frame, §VII: Scandinavia

article url: http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T029196pg7

Frame, §VII: Scandinavia

VII. Scandinavia.

1. Medieval.

The earliest picture frames in Scandinavia are associated with church art, and their structure,

ornament and iconography are dependent on the countries through which Christianity was

introduced—France, Germany and England. Christianity, however, also brought the world of

Classical art to Scandinavia: Byzantine and Classical ornaments were added to the geometric and

zoomorphic decorations of the Stave (carved wooden) churches, and influences from Flanders,

Normandy and even the Lombard builders of Lund Cathedral in Sweden (from 1103) began to

appear. French enamels were imported during the 12th and 13th centuries, and in Denmark such

works as the Lisbjerg Altar, an embossed copper frontal and retable, were found, although this may

have been imported. English art was very important in Norway and in turn influenced Denmark and

Sweden; French art and architectural influence in Sweden were, however, greater. Hakon Hakonsen

of Norway, a great patron and collector, started a school of Norwegian painting that was based on

that of western Europe; he transformed his country in the same way, keeping close political links

with England. When he was invited on a Crusade by Louis IX of France, the ambassador to his

court was the English artist Matthew Paris of St Albans.

The earliest framed panel paintings that survive—thirty-one Norwegian antependia and one retable

(most in Oslo, U. Oldsaksaml., and U. Bergen, Hist. Mus.)—are thus closely linked to

contemporary English paintings and manuscript illuminations, with some influence from Flanders

and northern France. Their frames continue the pre-Christian geometric style of decoration used for

the interiors of the Stave churches, here applied to the graphic or relief representation of precious

stones: a technique also found in the ornamentation of metalwork antependia from France and

Germany, and in a work brought in the early 12th century from Byzantium by a Norwegian king.

This style of decoration is particularly close to that of early Spanish antependia and retables.

Variations in the style have been traced (Lindblom, 1916, p. 22), from the plain flat and deep bevel

of, for example, the Heddal Church antependium (mid-13th century; Oslo, Nmus.), through the

round and oval hollows and lozenges of the antependium of Skaun Church near Trondheim (in situ)

to the painted square cassettes, oval bosses, contour lines and roundels of the St Olaf antependium

(Copenhagen, Nmus.). The final variation adds carved or painted floral paterae, as on the Rijsby

antependium (in situ) in Denmark and that from the church of Tresfjord, Norway (in situ). These

last ornaments probably originated in the neighbouring German states: stylistic influences were

perpetually diffusing across the borders.

Very few of the early English altarpieces that seem to have inspired these Nordic versions survive;

the latter, however, show what the missing English works would have been like. As in Spain, they

seem to have survived partly because the ordinary parishes were not rich enough to replace their

altars and antependia as artistic fashions changed. The impression of relative poverty is supported

by an examination of the frames themselves: many have the shaped hollows, which mimic precious

stones, but none has survived with an actual inlay of stone, painted glass or enamel. Moreover, the

frames of Scandinavian altarpieces are rarely gilded; more often they are silvered or lacquered with

a golden varnish, a trick that continued until the 19th century, when base-metal substitutes for gold

leaf appeared. The Tresfjord antependium has been treated in this way.

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The Black Death, which arrived in Norway in 1349, effectively diminished the number of potential

patrons and impoverished the Church. There are apparently no architectural frames in any of the

Scandinavian countries; interior architectural settings are painted, and even as late as the end of the

14th century there seems to be no progression beyond the mid-13th-century style of flat moulding

and deep bevel with coloured decorations. Prosperity began to return only with the Kalmar Union of

Norway and Denmark in 1387 and Sweden (1389) under Margaret I of Denmark (reg 1387–1412).

The huge political effort involved in this seems to have left little room for artistic patronage,

however, and very little 15th-century Scandinavian art survives. A Norwegian antependium, from

Volda Church, Sunnmore (c. 1500; Bergen, Vestlandske Kstindustmus.), has the same flat and

bevel structure as the 13th-century antependia and was treated like a Flemish altarpiece, with a

Gothic black letter inscription along the bottom rail, in white on gold. It is a native copy of the

Netherlandish and Flemish altarpieces that were imported during the 16th century, together with

wood-carvings from Antwerp. Flemish influence is also seen in the portrait of Christian II of

Denmark (Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst) by the Bruges-trained Michel Sittow, which has a round-

arched frame in a simple half round or torus section, such as would be used in Flanders for a sitter

of the middle or mercantile class.

2. Renaissance.

Although Christian II (reg 1513–23) had tried to introduce Renaissance ideas and art, the growth of

Lutheranism and the coming of the Reformation proved more powerful. The Renaissance initially

had little impact on the Nordic countries, and only folk art flourished, especially wood-carving and

decorative painting. The end of the Union came in 1513 (although Norway merged with Denmark

in 1537), and the upheavals this involved, together with the reorganization caused by Lutheranism,

meant that it was not until c. 1550 that artistic interests and patronage began to increase. By this

time many Scandinavian nobles were being educated in Italy, France and Germany and were

learning of Renaissance art and architecture at first hand; they then brought foreign artists and

craftsmen to build their houses and art collections. Such patrons as Frederick II of Denmark and

Norway (reg 1559–88) and Eric XIV of Sweden (reg 1560–68) assisted this process. Work

produced included Willem Boy’s carved wooden relief of Gustav I Vasa (c. 1558; Mariefred,

Gripsholm Slott), with its integral frame. Here the King stands in the full court dress of a

Renaissance prince, gilded against a green ground and supported on a three-dimensional strapwork

plinth. A small astragal and ogee moulding outlines the whole work, but the figure of the King is

held in an inner gilt frame of a running flamelike motif with beading, and the top rail is a

lambrequin canopy holding arms and a crowned g. It is a comparatively simple frame, but it

illustrates the sudden late flowering of the Renaissance—principally at the court of Frederick II.

When Christian IV (reg 1588–1648) succeeded to the Danish throne in 1588, he was one of

Europe’s richest princes. However, as a patron he had no native tradition to build on; most artists

and architects were still brought in from the south. Only the frames for these foreign artists’ work

were genuinely Scandinavian, because of the strong vernacular wood-carving skills; the royal

cabinetmakers were the Danes Gregor Greuss (fl 1600–16) and Bertil Moller (1617–84), while the

Court painters were Dutch. Architecture was also in the hands of Dutch or Flemish builders, and

furniture and such items as frames were naturally affected by this contemporary ‘Dutch

Renaissance’ style; they also acquired ornamental detail from such sources as the designs of

Corbinian Saur of Bavaria, who was Court Goldsmith to Christian IV in Copenhagen from 1613.

From the early 1590s, Saur had published refined engravings of jewellery, which set flowers and

heraldic motifs within delicate strapwork designs.

Italian Renaissance ornament, entering Scandinavia via Germany and the Netherlands, can be seen

in such frames as that on the relief plaque of Frederick II of Denmark and Norway (1589;

Mariefred, Gripsholm Slott). The whole relief is given a complete frame with wide, complex gilt

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outer mouldings and a small answering moulding at the sight. Between is a black flat with fine

scrolling foliate decoration in gold, Florentine or Bolognese in style and probably in sgraffito: very

dense and Italianate. The two shutters fastened to the lateral mouldings are similarly decorated, on a

much larger, coarser scale. The disparity of proportion in the two areas of decoration cannot be

Italian and is probably a Danish response to a style that had still not been completely digested and

was also 30 to 40 years out of date. A similar relic of an older style can be seen in the portrait of

Henrik Rantzau (1598; Hillerød, Frederiksborg Slot). The sitter wanted to form a collection at his

palatial manor house that would rival those of other late 16th-century princes; but his portrait with

its inscribed sill mimics Flemish memorial pictures of 100 years earlier.

3. Mannerist.

In the early 17th century Christian IV devoted 20 years to the building of Frederiksborg Castle in

Hillerød, making it the most splendid in contemporary Europe. Much of the castle and its contents

were Mannerist in style: the oratory of his chapel (destr. 1859) was covered with a series of large

paintings on the Life of Christ, framed in and interspersed with richly inlaid foliate and strapwork

panels, as seen in a painting by Heinrich Hansen (Hillerød, Frederiksborg Slot). The panelling was

articulated by tapered Mannerist pilasters, brackets and small caryatids or herms, and the paintings

were held in bands of ebonized or stained-wood ripple moulding. The whole scheme was one of the

earliest examples in Scandinavia of an interior in which paintings were integrated with their frames

and with the surrounding decoration. The use of Mannerist motifs similar to this foliate and

strapwork inlay, gilt or parcel-gilt ornament and grotesque caryatids can be found in contemporary

furniture and also informs frames such as the original one on Reinholt Thim’s Ecce homo:

Christian IV’s Vision at Rothenburg Castle on 8 December 1625 (Copenhagen, Rosenborg Slot).

This is a simple cassetta or entablature frame with oblong panels in the centre of each rail, the

bottom one holding Christian IV’s own summary of his vision, and each supported by shallow-

relief strapwork motifs.

It is in a sombre style, however, untypical of Christian IV’s reign. His castles were full of colour:

pictures and their frames competed with walls hung with gilded leather or tapestries; ceilings of

moulded or carved stucco or wood; furniture made from exotic woods; embroideries, hangings and

upholstery. Against this rich background, paintings were hung in frames of equal colour and

opulence. Following Netherlandish prototypes, a portrait of Christian IV’s young second wife

Kirsten Munk (c. 1615; Oslo, Kstindustmus., see 1988 exh. cat., no. 112) is set in a simple ogee

frame, but of a startlingly vivid marbled tortoiseshell. An equally astonishing mirror frame in the

style of a Mannerist tabernacle, with cresting, pedimented niche, scrolled apron and lateral brackets,

was made in ebony, possibly by Greuss, and covered with runs of silver fretwork, snowflake motifs,

winged cherubs and sculpted figures (all probably from Augsburg, see 1988 exh. cat., no. 725).

These works are richer, more ‘colourful’ and slightly outré in effect compared to Mannerist works

from Germany and the Low Countries. They are influenced both by the wealth of the

commissioning patron and by the opulence of their intended background. The flamboyance both of

these frames and larger interior settings can be compared with those of medieval and Mannerist

Spain; but the cause is probably a reaction to the long, black Nordic winters, as against the

influence from the Moors in Spain. The use of polychrome decoration was as widespread in

Scandinavia as in Spain: in the late 16th century and the 17th, for example, provincial frames were

decorated with naively painted embellishments of stylized florets and leaves (examples can be seen

in the Department of Modern Danish History, National Museum, Lyngby, near Copenhagen).

In the 1630s and 1640s, as the prosperity and eminence of Denmark declined, Sweden gained

power, wealth and diplomatic prestige, and Queen Christina of Sweden (reg 1632–54) led a brilliant

court. Foreign artists and architects were called to Sweden, and works of art were even more rapidly

acquired when Prague was looted by the Swedes in 1648; it should be noted, however, that in the

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16th and 17th centuries most paintings at Gripsholm Castle were hung unframed. By the second

half of the 17th century such patrons and collectors as Carl Gustaf Wrangel had emerged. At his

palace (c. 1650–70) at Skokloster he used German and Italian craftsmen; the German sculptor

Markus Hebel carved a number of huge wooden chimney-pieces, mainly in a Flemish Mannerist

style. They have open pediments, gilt, coloured and silvered high-relief trophies, coronets as crests

and grotesque strapwork/Auricular cartouches of arms depending from these and covering the upper

parts of the inset paintings. The paintings, from the Metamorphoses, have therefore much to

contend with in their frames; the background areas are painted black, marbled in various colours

and trimmed—especially along the carved sight edges of the paintings—with gilt mouldings.

Skokloster is a microcosm of the same exotic, highly coloured and over-ornamented world that

emerged under Christian IV of Denmark and shows that Sweden too could absorb influences and

styles from Germany, France and elsewhere and subsume them under the native tendency to

ornament and accrete. Apart from the chimney-pieces, the 17th-century frames from Skokloster are

mostly restrained copies of Dutch stained-wood or ebonized/parcel gilt examples, providing a rare

place of rest for the eye among the general busyness. Only the Baroque mirror frames, many

Spanish and dating from 1700 onwards, accord with the visual tumult. An instance of this horror

vacui in a native carved altarpiece of the time is Abel Schroder’s magnificently detailed oak retable

(1661) for Holmens Church . The ‘frame’ includes Solomonic columns, inner Auricular borders and

dense background scrolling ornament reminiscent of the pre-Christian zoomorphic style. It is an

extraordinary example of religious art in a Lutheran country and once more demonstrates a strange

parallel with Spanish Baroque and Mannerist carvings.

4. Baroque.

Thirteen years after the Holmens retable was completed, Burchardt Precht of Bremen settled in

Stockholm. He was a skilled wood-carver, who also brought to Sweden the technique of decorating

frames with metal foil (e.g. c. 1700; Stockholm, Skokloster Slott). He set up a complete factory of

mirrors and frames, supplying the aristocracy as well as the royal household with carved late

Baroque styles. By 1700 he had created a virtual monopoly in his craft, especially in the production

of glass frames for mirrors. These had panels of scrolling foliage in metal leaf or tinfoil and were

then glazed or lacquered a transparent red. The finely detailed leafy flourishes were repeated on a

coarser scale in the carved wooden crests of the frames. Precht also produced superbly carved

picture frames, such as that for an oval portrait of Karl XI (Helsinki, Sinebrychoff A. Col.) by

David Klôcker Ehrenstrahl . An almost identical portrait with a very similar frame may also be by

Ehrenstrahl or may be an assistant’s copy; both frames have been attributed to Burchardt Precht and

his workshop and may be after a design by Nicodemus Tessin (ii). Tessin had spent time in Rome,

England and France, and influences especially from France and Italy are apparent in his work. This

frame probably dates from after 1680, when he returned to live in Sweden, and is in the idiom of a

full-blown, Baroque trophy frame. The complex ogee section of the main structure, and the prickly,

parsley-like, cross-cut acanthus leaves that enrich it, are close to original Louis XIII patterns. The

leaves are very finely carved, creating a tension of detail and texture with the rather large

representation of the Swedish crown and the mask of Hercules’s Nemean lion.

Many variants of Louis XIII profiles are found in Swedish frames—rectangular and oval. They

feature main ogee or half-torus mouldings, carved with acanthus or bay leaves and supported by

multiple small enrichments of leaves, beading, ribbon-and-stave, rais-de-coeur and hazzling. There

are also Anglo-French variants of Louis XIII frames, with plain ogee mouldings and acanthus

clasps, and Swedish copies of Dutch or English ‘Lutma’ frames, with their shallow carving of fruit,

flowers and cherubs. Further Dutch influence appears in ripple frames—although these may be

gilded rather than ebonized—showing the eclectic tendencies of Swedish craftsmen. Immigrant

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workers fostered this eclecticism: Huguenot carvers settled in Sweden, particularly, after the 1685

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Such men as Tessin were international in their manipulation of styles. Tessin likened the Royal

Palace in Stockholm to a small château of Versailles, but its Baroque interiors show Italian and

even Dutch influences. In the lavish Karl XI Gallery, the shaped ceiling paintings are framed in

Louis XIII torus mouldings, cut into flowers and foliage; the walls are articulated by pilasters

combining strapwork and arabesques; and the frieze and ceiling beams are supported by a mixture

of large and small modillions. To achieve all this, a workshop of carvers and gilders was established

from c. 1732, including the sculptor Jacques Adrien Masreliez (1717–1806) from 1748.

5. Rococo.

The Rococo style was introduced into Scandinavia in the 1730s. Norway was susceptible to the

colour, form and line of Rococo; the vernacular rosemaling (rose painting) technique, with its

similar use of colours, floral designs and flourishes, had spread throughout the country, and the

highly decorated interiors of French Rococo fitted into the existing tradition. France was allied with

Sweden and subsidized Denmark, so that there was a continual commerce between all three

countries; Christian VI of Denmark (reg 1730–46) began to build the palace of Christiansborg in

Copenhagen, using both the popular Austrian Baroque style and the modern Rococo; and the

Swedish architect Carl Hårleman, who was in Paris in 1732 and saw the flowering of the style, used

his experience to reinvent Swedish architecture.

Hårleman returned to Sweden partly to help Tessin with the Royal Palace, but his own first large

work was probably the palace of Svartsjô for Frederick of Sweden (reg 1720–51) in 1732. It was

already in the full Rococo style and even went beyond its French sources by combining Rococo

interiors with complementary exterior façades. Hårleman also worked at Drottningholm, producing

a series of watercolour elevations for the various interiors (Paris, Inst. Tessin), which include

Rococo overdoor frames, mirrors, picture frames and moulding sections. These are in the lightest

and most delicate version of the style and are generally symmetrical. In the chapel in

Drottningholm, which was built in the classical idiom of Tessin, Hårleman designed a frame for G.

E. Schroder’s altarpiece of the Last Supper that combines the dynamic movement of the Baroque

with the curving asymmetry of the Rococo. It consists of a very simple linear ogee moulding with

dark sculpted clouds swagged across it, and figures of angels at the sides and top giving a spiral

emphasis. The soft cloud shapes were repeated on the ceiling of the chapel, where this time

Hårleman could impose more Rococo detail on the classical structure. They are used to frame and

link the ceiling paintings, their soft forms echoing the marble banner above the eastern arch, the

background of the altarpiece and the vibrant lines of the pulpit. They give a Germanic flavour to the

chapel interior, set as they are against the white-and-gold diapered ceiling. Hårleman, however, was

still primarily linked to a French perception of style: to help his craftsmen, lengths of French

mouldings were imported to Sweden.

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Scandinavian Rococo frames: (a) Swedish frame with shell corner

cartouches…

By the 1760s the Rococo style was thoroughly established in Scandinavia. Frames were made in a

slender compromise between the French and German Rococo styles, with pronounced corners and

frontons breaking from or applied to the narrow mouldings (see fig.). Frontons were more popular

in Scandinavia than in France. The frame (76a) around the portrait of Fru Werner (Stockholm,

Drottningholm Slott) is the most conventionally French in style. As on the similar frames

surrounding the pastel portraits of Count Tessin and his wife (Stockholm, Nmus.), the corner

cartouches are quite well integrated with the body of the frame. In the Danish example (b),

however, the huge asymmetric rocailles break suddenly from the rather severe torus mouldings in

the dramatic fashion of a German Rococo frame. The effect on the portrait inside is not particularly

flattering or enhancing as, although the shapes of the rocailles mirror the folds of drapery, fall of the

hair, decoration of the dress etc, they are too large, too sculptural and too assertively close to the

painted figure to do anything but overwhelm it. This is a case where the carver’s virtuosity has

produced a striking frame, but one that is detrimental to the work inside it.

The frame of Prince Gustav Aged 5 (1751; Stockholm, Drottningholm Slott) shows a more

constructive use of the fronton, which is echoed by symmetrical shell and rocaille corners. Far

closer in feeling to a French Rococo frame (save for the unusual profile with its sanded hollow and

bound fasces moulding), this is a ceremonial setting for the full-length portrait of the Prince. The

large and elaborate corners are controlled, first by a use of rigid symmetry, second by the width and

plainness of the main structure and third by the relative proportions of the huge frame to the tiny

figure of Gustav. The corners are used in the traditional Baroque manner, to set up diagonal lines of

focus that converge on the head and hands of the figure; they also create an asymmetric play of

lines with Gustav’s head, a globe beside him and the sunburst above, each of which mirrors the

shape of the carved corners. Such a complex set of relationships is certainly French in origin and

may have been the creation of a Huguenot carver working with the finished painting. The fronton

demonstrates the quality of the carving, with its rocaille cartouche, the three crowns of the Swedish

arms and the fragile sculpted coronet above. On a much smaller scale, the frame (see fig., c) of

Portrait of a Lady (c. 1770; Helsinki, Sinebrychoff A. Col.) shows similar compositional skill; the

rounded acanthus corners above rocailles and C-scrolls are delicate and restrained, so that, although

they are as close to the painting as in the Horner portrait (see fig., b), they do not overwhelm the

sitter. Instead, the correspondences between carved scrolls and drapery is fully integrated, and the

diagonal lines between the corners hold and emphasize the face. The feeling here is of a Venetian

Rococo frame, with its slender burnished panels, while the rounded sight corners with carved

volutes trespassing on the picture surface are German rather than French.

Some highly successful Scandinavian Rococo frames were produced by French craftsmen for a set

of 11 hunting pictures by Jean-Baptiste Oudry. These were commissioned by Tessin c. 1740 as a

special installation (complete with overdoors etc) for the Royal Palace of Stockholm (in situ). They

have the same nominal structure as that for the frame of Prince Gustav Aged Five (1751,

Stockholm, Drottningholm Slottsteat. & Teatmus.): a straight-sided Régence type of frame, with

corner cartouches and a fronton. The cartouches are based on irregular clam shells and contain the

Swedish emblem of the Polar Star. The overdoors are lighter and more fanciful, the lateral rails

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wound with spiralling vines and the central crest wildly scrolling. The latter betrays some German

influence, but the main hunting scene, with its chain-and-egg sight edge and asymmetric corners

growing organically from the outer moulding, is definitely French. Bills in the palace archives

confirm that these frames were carved in Sweden by French craftsmen; and it is interesting to see

how the pure forms of the Rococo of Nicolas Pineau or Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier were adapted by

the influences of place, time and other nations’ variants of the same style.

Hårleman’s influence on the Oudry installation would of course have been important; so perhaps

would that of Jean Eric Rehn, who worked with Hårleman on the Royal Palace. He also designed a

library (early 1760s) at Drottningholm in a mixture of Rococo and classical ornament, which

included panelling, overdoor and overmantel mirror frames in the same delicate Rococo favoured

by Hårleman. This co-existed with the flamboyant Germanic Rococo style of many frames at

Drottningholm, and also with those in a heavy Louis XV style. Gripsholm Castle is also an

important location for Rococo frames: many of these are in the straight-sided corner and fronton

style favoured in Sweden, but the workmanship indicates that French carvers and gilders, or native

craftsmen trained in France or by immigrant Huguenots, were involved (e.g. the frames of Adolf

Frederick and Louisa Ulrica; Mariefred, Gripsholm Slott, workshop of Antoine Pesne). The second

example shows a beautifully integrated design, with modest curved asymmetric flowery corners,

plain, straight lateral rails and a symmetrical base cartouche balancing the crowned fronton. The

rocaille corners and flower trails marry perfectly with the lace sleeves and inserts of the Queen’s

dress, while the straight rails reflect the internal architecture of the painting, with classical pilasters.

A later painting of the Queen (also by Pesne) at Drottningholm, shows a much more typically

Swedish interpretation of a ceremonial Rococo frame, where the huge rocaille corners jut into an

eared silhouette, the fronton joins the top corners in a kind of Rococo ‘pediment’ and the rails are

enriched with bold chain and stopped-flute gadrooning.

6. Neo-classical.

The transition to the Neo-classical style was perhaps already evident in Rehn’s library at

Drottningholm. Finland, like Sweden (to which it was annexed), came under this French-influenced

stylistic shift; but Denmark, which still ruled Norway, was influenced by German art. In Sweden,

Gustav III patronized all types of art (see Gustavian style) and encouraged the links with France: he

employed Louis-Jean Desprez and Rehn to create interiors for him. The White Drawing-room at

Gripsholm, for example, was articulated by a series of round-arched window embrasures beneath a

frieze of gilt modillions and bay-leaf swags (the cordes à puit of the French Neo-classical period).

The effect is of a continuous triumphal arch, on the uprights of which are hung full-length portraits

of reigning European monarchs. The frames are Neo-classical; their plain double torus rails and

crowned frontons have evolved from the Rococo fronton frames in an assured and restrained

evocation of classicism.

Both Drottningholm and the Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, are filled with examples of

Neo-classical furniture and mirror frames, which demonstrate the stylistic closeness of Sweden and

France at this time. They also show a refinement of workmanship that is probably French: the

corner paterae, bay leaves and enriched guilloches were recut in the gesso, giving a precision and

sharpness of outline that is authentically Parisian, and there is gilding in red and yellow gold leaf.

Swedish Neo-classicism is generally pure, but not heavy like early French gout grec; individual

interpretations occurred, however, such as a giant piastre moulding on frames and panelling, which

is only seen in miniature on French Louis XVI frames, and a fret or Greek key pattern, which is

idiosyncratic and found only on Gustavian frames .

Louis Adrien Masreliez (1748–1810), son of Jacques Adrien Masreliez, travelled extensively in

France, Italy and Germany and imported the style arabesque to the Swedish court. From 1784 he

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was decorator to the King and the Swedish nobility and introduced his sophisticated brand of Neo-

classicism. His watercolour designs for Gustav’s pavilion at the castle of Haga have broad bands of

ornament defining mural panels, articulated with medallions, and combining a range of classical

architectural motifs to produce an impression of great richness and clarity. He designed furniture

and interiors that marry, in a style analogous to the work of Robert Adam, decorated panelling,

carpets, built-in and free-standing furniture, and inset frames, which are intended to bind certain set-

piece paintings to the rooms containing them. Examples can be seen in Gustav’s bedroom at Haga,

where Masreliez was commissioned to incorporate Alexander Roslin’s painting of Sully at the Feet

of Henry IV (in situ) into the decoration; and in Prince Karl’s Audience Chamber (1792) in the

Royal Palace, Stockholm. In the latter, the whole room is a ‘frame’ for a series of pictures showing

Swedish historical battles. The Roslin frame is in a chaste, fluted Neo-classical style subservient to

the drama of the painting; but it is also ‘framed’ by the wall panels of gold on white, which use

strong vertebrate scrolling ornaments between multiple bands of husks and beading. The latter are

echoed by the carved husks and beading of the Neo-classical chairs and canape.

Apart from these inset frames, the typical Gustavian pattern is the rectangular fronton frame. These

vary in type, from the extremely chaste, beaded versions found on portraits by Gustaf Lundberg and

Angelica Kauffman in the Royal Palace and the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, where a more purely

French influence is apparent, to the more individual, native treatments, including a wide range of

embellishment to the rectangular structure. Gustavian fret ornament is evident on the frame in

figure 78 in an enriched version, with florets decorating alternate inlets of the pattern, and forms a

suitable setting for the portrait. The related portraits of Gustav III and Queen Sofia Magdalen by

Jacob Bjôrk carry the lyrically decorative floral tone a stage further, replacing the staid Neo-

classical bay-leaf pendants with trails of roses. The combination of this with the Neo-classical

fronton form is bizarre but successful. An equally idiosyncratic version of the fronton style also

frames Per Krafft’s portrait of the musician and poet Carl Michael Bellman (Mariefred, Gripsholm

Slott). This features a prominent ribbon-and-stave moulding and an arrangement of multiple

enrichments rather like the classic ‘Maratta’ frame. The fronton takes the form of an attributive

trophy, with mask, lyre and vines; the top of the trophy has a carved ribbon hanging and decorative

paterae ‘nail’. The sight edge of rais-de-coeur is carved with great refinement, as is the enriched

guilloche around the lyre. Further examples of this enriched guilloche form the main ornament on

full-length Neo-classical fronton frames on portraits of Louis XV of France by van Loo and

Catherine the Great of Russia (Stockholm, Kun. Slott). These are similar to state portraits at the

château of Versailles, and the frames may well have been made in France to complete the gift from

Louis XVI of both works.

In Denmark the striking Rococo frames (see fig., b) in the Germanic fashion did not lead, as in

Sweden, into a comparable great wave of Neo-classical artefacts. By the 1780s Denmark was at the

height of one of its more prosperous periods, and patronage revived slightly. There were, however,

no Neo-classical frames analogous to the individual, quirky type of the Swedish Gustavian style;

Neo-classical frames in Denmark seem to have demanded nothing more original than the bound

fasces moulding, which looks forward to the reeded artist’s frames of later 19th-century Europe.

Wilhelm Haffner’s engraving of the Family of the Prime Minister Hoegh Guldberg (1782; Hillerød,

Njaellandsk Flkmus.; see Praz, 1964, no. 135) shows the drawing-room of an illustrious and

probably rich Danish man in the late 18th century; the furniture retains Rococo curves for comfort,

but the setting—the medallion overdoors, the Classical statues and the symmetrical arrangement of

pictures—is a product of Neo-classicism. The pictures have very simple fronton frames, with plain

rectangular or oval contours, and decoration at the top of bay-leaf swags and a plain cartouche, or a

coronet and foliage. The most notable aspect of this austere interior is the close grouping of the

paintings on a single stretch of wall. This was to become a feature of 19th-century interiors,

particularly in Denmark, when cramped symmetrical arrangements, often of miniature or very small

pictures, would form a single decorative element. In this respect, the content of the painting

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becomes far less important than its size, shape and type of frame. Neo-classicism proper was

introduced to Denmark in the late 18th century, mainly through the work of Nicolai Abraham

Abildgaard, who in the mid-1790s designed rooms for Christian VII (reg 1766–1808) in a style

varying from refined to extreme Neo-classicism; these included furniture.

7. Biedermeier and revival styles.

Scandinavian Biedermeier, revival and early 19th-century artists’ frames: (a)

Danish…

During the 1790s the German Romantic artists Caspar David Friedrich and Philip Otto Runge

arrived in Copenhagen. The type of frame they favoured was several stages removed from the strict

Neo-classical style to the Empire or the Biedermeier type (see fig.); and so Abildgaard’s influence

did not generate a whole wave of Neo-classical framing in the idiom of the Swedish Gustavian

style. The frames (79a and b) for the portraits of The Merchant Joseph Raphael (1824) and

Professor J. F. Schoun (1836; both Copenhagen, Hirschsprungske Saml.) are both variants of the

hollow frame with classical enrichment, which was an international style in the early 19th century.

A heavy egg-and-dart, beading and rais-de-coeur of (b) became the predominant pattern in

Denmark; it derives from an Italian source but probably arrived in Scandinavia via German

versions. It is extremely versatile, suitable for landscapes, portraits and still-lifes, although this

particular example is perhaps overly heavy and wide for its painting. It is ‘gilded’ in metal leaf;

virtually all Danish frames of the period use base metal rather than gold leaf—or, occasionally,

lacquered silver. This is probably due to the impoverishment of Denmark and the loss of its colonial

gold mines in the Napoleonic Wars; as in the Middle Ages, paint or an inferior metal replaced

gilding. Another hollow classical frame (c), a Norwegian version of the French Empire/Restoration

frame, is decorated in the corners and along the small inner flat with applied composition ornament.

Similar motifs were also used on Norwegian frames in the Rococo Revival style. A Swedish frame

(d) in the Rococo style is a slightly eccentric version of the original style, with scrolling foliage and

flowers and a classical ormolu sight moulding. This pattern was applied en masse to the suite of

portraits of heads of state in Drottningholm Slott, with individually made frontons.

Generally, however, the frames seen in ordinary homes of the 19th century were straight-sided

hollow Empire/Biedermeier designs. Such types fitted into the low-ceilinged, informal Biedermeier

room (see Thornton, 1984, no. 343), where a number of paintings in Empire frames, ranging from

very large to very small, would be sandwiched between a decorative cornice and an elaborate

carpet. In 19th-century Scandinavian interiors, paintings were often placed uncomfortably close to

the ceiling, disrupting the internal balance even though careful ways of hanging (e.g. with ribbons,

bows, sleeves hiding chains etc) were employed; they were also liable to the bunching already

described. The interior in Peter Christian Thamsen Skovgaard’s Around the Tea Table at Vejby

(1843; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst.; Praz, 1964, no. 333) is a bare-boarded, low-ceilinged living-

room containing a bed, table and cupboard. On the walls are two groups of pictures, hung very close

together in precise, symmetrical patterns. The frames are plain, rectangular or oval, and the

paintings are indistinguishable, completely subordinated to the patterns made by their frames on the

wall.

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There was, however, an increasing reaction amongst artists against classicizing and Revival frames,

and at an earlier point than in most European countries. But Denmark, because of its peripheral

location, was influenced by the great centres of art, through visiting artists, while there is no

evidence that they were in turn influenced by what they saw; although during the first 40 years of

the 19th century, experiments were made with frames by Danish artists, these designs went

unnoticed outside Scandinavia and had little impact within. This period includes most of the

‘Golden Age’ of Danish painting, characterized by its concern with light, colour and love of the

country itself, qualities that were mirrored in the decorative arts by the use of bright colours and

surface ornament, and pride in traditional skills such as wood-carving. These factors mingled most

notably in the work of Christen Købke. He was a friend of the decorative painter Georg C. Hilker,

and together they produced several frames for Købke’s pictures that are innovative, attractive and

yet still in the main tradition of Scandinavian ornamental painting. The frame (see fig., e) on

Købke’s portrait of Hilker (c. 1837; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst) decorated by Hilker either to his

own design or to that of Købke, has a painted gold border set between bands of black, with inner

and outer gilt fillets. The border is embellished with a stylized run of elongated tulip-like flowers,

set on an S-scrolled base and worked in a silver or greyish blue. It manages at once to reflect the

Neo-classical style of the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen while rejecting the stock Empire moulding

that was the descendant of the Neo-classical frame. It also follows on from the decorative borders

seen in many Scandinavian interiors of the late 18th century and the early 19th on wall panels,

ceramic stoves and friezes (see Thornton, 1984, nos 225, 230, 265, 306), which differ from other

European painted borders in their stylized and slightly geometrical appearance. Købke and Hilker

produced other frames together, notably the black and brown ornamental example for a View of a

Street in Copenhagen: Morning Light (Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst); and Købke also painted

coloured borders on paintings that would otherwise have hung unframed (e.g. the Garden Steps at

the Artist’s Atelier (c. 1841–5; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst). Constantin Hansen also painted

borders on works that were not intended to be framed (e.g. Kronborg Castle, 1834; Copenhagen,

Stat. Mus. Kst). This austere (and economic) approach to the frame fits with the bareness of

Scandinavian interiors at this time. The comfort of the Biedermeier style was found mainly at the

top of the social scale; and while relatively poor homes boasted collections of pictures hung in

rather plain Empire frames, obviously the painted border was an acceptable alternative in keeping

with the simple interior.

The middle classes rose with the growth in population of Norway, Denmark and Sweden, and they

enthusiastically adopted the 19th-century revivals that were underway in Britain and France. The

Rococo Revival was very important: the Swedish Rococo Revival style of the 1840s was a

mainstream decorative trend throughout Scandinavia by the 1860s. The Amalienborg Slot of

Christian IX (reg 1863–1906) in Copenhagen was decorated in the 1860s in the Danish version of

the Rococo style; a contemporary drawing of the Blue Salon (see Thornton, 1984, fig.) shows gilt

stucco palm and rocaille coving, Rococo Revival chairs and the original hanging of pictures. These

still seem mainly to be in linear Empire frames, only one or two having corner decoration

suggested. They are hung, however, in a typically Nordic arrangement: very symmetrically, in a

formal pattern, and very close together. Two further illustrations (see Thornton, 1984, figs 409–10)

show definite Rococo-style frames in a Swedish artist’s house.

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Late 19th-century Scandinavian frames: (a) Norwegian Neo-classical Revival

frame with…

A couple of examples (see fig.) illustrate the idiosyncratic and ornamental form this revival could

take. Both have fundamentally linear, classical structures, but the earlier example (b) has an upper

swept Rococo moulding, which melts into a rounded rocaille corner with naturalistic lilies and

roses, the sinuous lines of which anticipate the Art Nouveau style. The other (a) is a hollow Empire

profile with an important top moulding; the corners of this are embellished with realistic

sunflowers, roses, convolvulus etc, all in the delicate idiom of a carved Rococo frame on a painted

decoration by François Boucher. The style is very similar to frames by Ingres, apparently designed

by the artist in the 1850s and 1860s; and to John Everett Millais’s Ophelia (1851–2; London, Tate),

which has a standard frame and corners of applied flowers extremely close to those featured in (a).

The flowers give a charm to the basic pine and composition carcass of the frame and suit the

subjects of the period. A grandiose version of the style had also developed, as in the Hall of State,

Drottningholm, for which Oscar I (reg 1844–59) ordered a new scheme of decoration in the 1840s

beneath the original Baroque painted ceiling. This included diapered panels and overdoors and a

suite of huge Rococo fronton frames (see fig., d) for a series of full-length portraits of contemporary

monarchs; these gave rise to an outbreak of ceremonial portraits and frames that attempted to invest

19th- and 20th-century kings with the power and mystique of an absolute monarch (e.g. Oscar

Bjôrk’s Oscar II, 1892, Stockholm, Drottningholm Slott). Both these ceremonial frames and the

more charming, idiosyncratic flowered patterns reinforced the hold of revival Louis XIV and XV as

fashionable styles. Salon paintings in all the Scandinavian countries began to wear the brassy

composition forms of these frames like a uniform; such works, from the 1850s to the 1890s, can be

found in the national art galleries of the four chief Nordic countries. The relative ornateness of this

type of frame encouraged a corresponding richness of ornament on the still-popular Empire type so

that, from the 1870s to the 1890s, the profiles of linear hollow frames became a complex series of

steps, fillets, astragals and cavettos, each of which is encrusted with a run of busy composition

ornament. One Finnish frame (Helsinki, Sinebrychoff A. Col.) even has a small burnished hollow,

only the corners of which are sanded.

Complex forms from Italian Baroque prototypes followed these eclectic French patterns in the

1880s, and even examples of the Spanish Herrera style (see §VIII, 4) were revived. From these

were taken more simplified and attractive types that bear the mark of the artist. The frame for Ernst

Josephson’s The Cheat (see fig., c)has a carved bay-leaf torus, with blurred contours and a calm

stolidity very different from the busy ornament of some Salon frames. It shows the influence of the

English Arts and Crafts Movement and of the heavy Breton and primitive shapes that characterize

Paul Gauguin’s work in the 1880s. In a more sharply designed frame, however, it was a respectably

conventional classical model, which was later used to reframe Munch’s Spring (1889; Oslo, N.G.).

This was first exhibited (1892) in a white-painted, plain moulding frame with a slight reverse rebate

(see Rosenblum, fig.). Many of Munch’s works were originally in simple white frames—flattened

toruses, shallow hollows or slightly projecting ogee mouldings. Hung on dark gallery walls, these

white frames emphasize the luminescent settings of Munch’s early works and blend with the spare

and modern interiors or the open northern landscapes depicted. They may well have been directly

inspired by Seurat’s white-painted frames (see §III, 12 above); Munch had visited Paris in 1885 and

1889 and may well have seen Seurat’s paintings in their frames. Comparing Spring in the present

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gilt frame (above) with its own white frame, it is evident that Munch’s choice is preferable. The

gold frame is deadening and cannot illuminate a painting already saturated in light; its spiky pattern

conflicts with the free brushwork and its classical references cannot expand on the inherent

symbolism of the subject.

The most frequently used frame (80e) for Munch’s work in the Nasjonalgalleri, Oslo, also appears

on Christian Krohg’s Sick Girl (1880–81) and Eilif Peterssen’s portrait of Locken (1885) in the

same museum. It is a chunky, simply cut, classical architectural pattern, suitable to most subjects

and relatively straightforward to produce. The enriched gadrooning, with its roughly cut-out shapes,

has an emphatic perspectival effect on any subject, giving depth and focal strength. It is particularly

striking on Munch’s Ashes (c. 1894) and the Sick Child (1885–6). In The Scream the violent

diagonal recession and wild undulations of sea and sky gain nothing from the Mannerist rhythms of

the frame, and one of Munch’s flattened torus frames in black or dark blue might have been more

suitable.

Another variation (see fig., d) on the simple torus frame, popular in the 1880s throughout

Scandinavia as a compromise between the artist’s design and the Rococo Revival or Neo-classical

pattern, is that surrounding Karl Lochen’s The Actor B. K. (1886; Oslo, N.G.). The coarse, stylized

cut has again something of the feel of an Arts and Crafts model. The portrait is loosely painted in

tones of black, silver and gold; and it is unfortunate that, once again, the avoidance of real gold leaf

has occasioned a clash between the subtle golden tones of the background and the unmodulated

brassy glow of the frame.

8. Late 19th and 20th centuries.

Scandinavian Art Nouveau and artists’ frames: (a) Danish artist-designed

frame…

During the 1880s and 1890s, Scandinavian artists were beginning to make their mark in

international circles. Many Swedish painters, such as Ernst Josephson, Anders Zorn and Carl

Larsson, worked in Paris and were influenced by Impressionism; and the Danes created their own

equivalent to the artist community at Pont-Aven in the fishing village of Skagen, where Michael

Ancher and Anna Ancher, P. S. Krøyer and the Norwegian Krogh painted en plein air. In 1890 Jens

Ferdinand Willumsen met Gauguin at Pont-Aven and under his influence experimented with wood-

carving and various other crafts. He was also introduced to Symbolism and Synthetism, and one of

the fruits of this was the extraordinary secular altarpiece, Jotunheim (1892–3; Frederikssund,

Willumsens Mus.). The frame of polished carved wood, with stylized lateral columns, its plinths

and capitals reduced to basic geometric forms, is more notable than the mountainscape in the

painting. The lower edge of the ‘entablature’ projects down across the picture surface in a series of

peaks, like the mountain-tops; these also reappear above the entablature in a painted metal

silhouette mimicking the top range in the painting. On each side, the upper and lower rails jut out to

support two pierced, enamelled copper panels decorated with symbolic personifications. The whole

work, over 1 m high and 2.75 m across, is a strange, ornamental filigree of pattern, which manages

to unite a high degree of abstraction with an esoteric allegory. It has something in common with the

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work of Jan Toorop (see §V, 6 above). Nothing like this colourful, cut-out, almost medievally

decorative treatment of a frame seems to have been attempted before. A rather more restrained

Willumsen frame (see fig.) surrounds a painting showing the northern sun hanging over another

desolate mountainscape. The frame, with its simple, two-tiered format, carved projecting E-shapes

along the upper level and decorative, hand-gouged chequered effect, is self-consciously handmade

in the Arts and Crafts style. It was possibly produced as well as designed by Willumsen and its

hand-carved roughness is more satisfying than the iron-like perfection of the revival frames.

Another Willumsen frame, on his After the Storm (1905; Oslo, N.G.), is carved in the hollow with

Art Nouveau poppies and broken lilies in ebonized and parcel-gilt shallow relief.

In contrast to Willumsen’s icy suns and desolate landscapes is a tranquil, misty Nocturne (1899;

Copenhagen, Hirschsprungske Saml.) by Julius Paulsen. The frame is similarly far from

Willumsen’s Arts and Crafts simplicity; it uses the new materials of the industrial age to create a

contemporary style: a simple, machined and very smoothly ‘gilded’ hollow frame, to which two

runs of composition ornament were applied (see fig., b). The outer moulding was designed to

reproduce the softened forms of aged or bluntly cut wood-carving, while the amorphous flower, pod

and cloudlike shapes echo the rounded lines of the painting. Like Willumsen’s frame, this shows a

concern for unity of abstract form and appropriateness of mood, both of which are achieved by this

composition frame. An analogous use of composition ornament to express a new style and

complement the painting is evident in the frame (see fig., c) for Anders Zorn’s Jacques Thiel (1890;

Stockholm, Thielska Gal.). It is not possible to say whether artist, owner or gallery was responsible

for this pattern, which shows a stylized, Art Nouveau version of a leaf edge, versatile and

appropriate to a range of subjects; but the marriage of portrait and frame is satisfyingly close in

terms of resonance of form and tone. The use of composition for these Art Nouveau patterns in the

1890s shows how far from the conventional Empire frame choice had moved, and how stylistic

innovations had been subsumed by the technological. Like Holman Hunt in England, who learnt

from his carved wooden frame designs how to use composition constructively, the earlier one-off

frames helped to revolutionize the designs used on mass-produced frames.

Scandinavian Art Nouveau and artists’ frames: (a) Danish artist’s frame…

The Dane P. S. Krøyer was another artist-designer who, along with Willumsen, helped to achieve

this. Examples of his work show the range of his decorative skill. His travels exposed him to a

whole range of influences—the Impressionists and their plein-air techniques; the restricted colour

harmonies of both Velázquez and Whistler; and the vast spectrum of artist-designed frames that

were on display in London. One of his earlier frames (see fig., d) is a broad, flat plate, ‘gilded’ on

the wood, to which a wreath of composition shells has been applied around the sight. It may be of

the same date as the painting or slightly later. It shares characteristics with early Pre-Raphaelite

frames, such as Millais’s flat plate frames with their olive-leaf, lily or ivy decoration, and is also

similar to Arthur Hughes’s flat, ivy-wreathed frames. The shells are attributes of the fishermen in

the painting, providing an appropriate, if over-assertive, ornament. Krøyer’s later frames are more

successful, and he used runs of attributive shell ornament more subtly. A shamrock motif was

favoured, for example painted in tones of brown on the flat of a conventional cassetta (see fig., a).

The stylized upright repeat pattern of the trefoil has affinities with the abstracted floral motifs of,

for example, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and C. F. A. Voysey; it is also related to the stencil

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patterns used by Carl Larsson in his country house and later publicized in A Home (1899), his book

of watercolours (originals in Stockholm, Nmus.). It is a cheap and effective way of producing a

unique frame, and the hand-crafted aspects of the work are reinforced. Possibly Krøyer was aping

Whistler’s hand-painted signature frames, possibly just indulging the Danish tradition of painting

every surface. Unfortunately, however, he did not use the very decorative result as Whistler or

Maurice Denis would have used it: the effect of this type of ornament is inherently flattening; it is

the reverse of a gadrooned moulding, which leads the eye into the painting and emphasizes depth

and perspective. Krøyer’s shamrocks need to be matched with a decorative, abstracted image in a

shallow space, like Rossetti’s or Denis’s ornamented figures. The interior scene of (a) is too

illusionistic to bear such a frame, and the effect is claustrophobic and busy. Krøyer’s Summer

Evening at the Beach, Skagen (1899; Copenhagen, Hirschsprungske Saml.), however, has an

extremely successful plain-gilt cassetta frame (b) with inclined central flat and raised ogee and

torus mouldings. It has curved sections at intervals along the top outer torus moulding and the inner

ogee, giving a rhythmic, undulating line to both and providing a more complex, faceted surface to

catch and reflect light. The idea and something of the effect recall the wave-and-ripple mouldings of

17th-century Dutch frames and also the linear geometric ornaments produced by Ford Madox

Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Albert Moore and Whistler. The blond gilding echoes the cool gold

of the sinking sun, the twilit sand and the clothes of the two figures, and the undulations of the

moulding repeat the lines of the waves on the shore.

In the 1890s and in the early 20th century Swedish artists were also drawn to distinctive modern

frames with no academic associations—often in the linear mould of Krøyer’s design (see fig., b).

Many of the leading Swedish figures spent time in Paris, where they would have been exposed to

the paintings and frames of the Impressionists and of Whistler. This is probably important for the

genesis of the reeded frame in Sweden in the late 1880s and 1890s. Hollow reeded frames were

used on works by Eugène Jansson: for example that on the City at Sunset (1897; Stockholm,

Thielska Gal.; see fig., c) bears a great similarity to the reeded carcass of a Rossetti frame, but this

may be coincidental. This was generally a fertile period for frame design in Scandinavia, and

indirect influence from France may well have triggered many ideas fortuitously close to the sources

of the Impressionists’ ideas. Versions of Degas’s reeded cushion frame appear, for example, on

pictures by Louis Sparre and Gerhard Munthe. The solid bands of close linear mouldings (see fig., c

and d) are extremely simple and very effective. Although decorative, they do tend to enhance the

illusionary space of a painting, since the effect of straight lines joined on four sides by mitred

corners is of a perspectival tunnel leading inwards. The result is very suitable for Jansson’s ‘blue’

landscapes.

An unusual profile of half torus and quarter cavetto is outlined by a series of fillets and astragals,

with three fillets as a central feature (see fig., e). This mixture of small round and square mouldings

is again reminiscent of frames by Brown and Rossetti and also of Albert Moore’s earlier designs. It

provides a strong setting with interesting light effects for Oscar Bjôrck’s portrait, a silhouette

against a golden sunset sky, imitating both the chiaroscuro and the golden tones of the painting. The

profile of the frame (see fig., f) on a portrait by Carl Larsson has sloughed off all applied mouldings

save for a restrained series of steps at the sight. The main section is a cushion with a stepped cavetto

sight; this provides a bold, plain, barlike setting for the portrait. It has affinities with both Bjôrck’s

frame and the flattened torus mouldings used by Munch. The columnar effect suits the classically

conceived, full-length figure of Signe Thiel, whose static pose and fluted skirt suggest a kore; it also

echoes the background of multiple vertical lines of the door, commode and wallpaper. This type of

frame was one of the most satisfactory designs of the late 19th century and provided the basis for

numerous subtle variations during the 20th. It is an international pattern and adapts to almost every

genre of painting.

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Larsson’s works often contain internal evidence of domestic framing and hanging; the watercolour

A Home: Cosy Corner from his book A Home shows his sitting-room, with white painted Gustavian

furniture, a painted ceramic stove and a wall embellished with painted outline panels. On this wall

is an original gilt fronton Gustavian mirror and a close-set group of two large, white-mounted prints

in minimal gilt mouldings, two tiny, black-framed oval miniatures and another print in a close blue

frame (the last three are hung from red ribbons). Between mirror and prints is a decorative painted

panel beneath the window, edged in a border like the rest of the panelling, with a classical urn

above trailing pendent ribbons. The combination of all these reflects the contemporary mixture of

modern, antique, traditional and artist-designed frames, together with such typically Scandinavian

techniques as ornamental painting and such customs as the close hanging of pictures (see 1986 exh.

cat., no. 52a–d and 52h). Larsson’s painting of his wife’s bedroom contains one picture, a tiny

flower painting in a wide gilt plate frame, totally unornamented and with rails the breadth of the

picture. This type of frame, like the torus moulding on his portrait of Signe Thiel (see fig., f), was

widespread throughout Europe and provided an economic way of isolating a painting from its

surroundings: instead of decoration, width was used. The finish was also economical, with gold leaf

often applied directly to the wood in the style of the Pre-Raphaelites. Krøyer used this type of frame

with one or two rows of applied ornament (e.g. with an outer run of palmettes and shells on

Arcanglone, 1890; Copenhagen, Hirschsprungske Saml.). Zorn used separated square ‘stud’ or

nailhead mouldings on his frame of an Algerian Woman (1887; Stockholm, Prins Eugens

Waldemarsudde); he was one of the most travelled of Scandinavian artists and may well have been

influenced in England by the many contemporary styles of frame being produced.

Scandinavian Symbolist frames: (a) left wing (detail) of artist-designed, inscribed…

The Scandinavian artist to make greatest use of the Art Nouveau idiom was Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

He had studied in Paris and spent a lot of time there during the 1880s. He was skilled at wood- and

stone-carving, metalwork and painting, and in designing stained glass, architecture, furniture,

graphic works and book illustrations. He also created cycles of frescoes, and for all his paintings

designed decorative borders, wooden frames and ornamental mounts or inner frames. He may have

produced the wooden frames himself. One of his earliest and most striking works is a secular

triptych ‘altarpiece’ frame (see fig.); this is for the second version of the so-called Aino Triptych

(1891; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.), which depicts three stages of a Finnish myth or folk tale

from the Kalevala, a collection of such tales made earlier in the 19th century. Gallen-Kallela had

spent his honeymoon in Karelia, in the east of Finland, in search of the roots and settings of his

national mythology; when he designed this second frame for the Aino story, the carved ornaments

and symbols he used were those he saw as being ‘Karelian’, or purely Finnish, while the structure

gave to a traditional myth the numinous mystery and power of a medieval retable. It is an extremely

strong and effective frame, with its blocky rectangular forms and shallowly carved or gouged-out

motifs. Two panels in the broad central mullions hold descriptions of the story, a device used by

Holman Hunt, and (in the form of a poem attached to the frame) by Rossetti and Whistler.

In 1893 Gallen-Kallela painted the Great Black Woodpecker (Wilderness) (1891; Helsinki, priv.

col.), set in a Karelian landscape; his technique was changing to a more decorative and textured

style, and, like a tapestry, to which the picture was compared, the artist supplied it with an

ornamental border (b), further flattening and stylizing the scene. This border is made of a

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geometrically simplified running fir-branch pattern, sprinkled with white conelike motifs, which

eventually became almost emblematic of Finland. Interwoven with the branches, various animals

pause and peer. The whole margin is given the stylization common to Symbolism and Art Nouveau

at the end of the 19th century in a technique that is unmistakably of the period; the placing of the

animals against the cruciform pine needles is, however, related to the densely painted borders of

medieval illuminated manuscripts or, even further back, to Scandinavian zoomorphic carvings. The

Waterfall at Mäntykoski (1892–4; Helsinki, priv. col.) is in the same half-Realist, half-

decorative/Symbolist style as the Great Black Woodpecker. Still tapestry-like in its textured

brushwork and slightly flattened space, the painting has been given a coloured frame (c), decorated

like a textile design by C. F. A. Voysey. The mystical force and music of the waterfall is expressed

by five golden lines drawn from top to bottom of the picture, joining the two rails of the frame and

making the entire subject into a decorative oblong harp. The frame itself is blue and is decorated

with repeated leaf- or petal-like tassels in the style of Maurice Denis’s painted flower frames, but

through the agency of these ‘golden wires’ it becomes the wooden case of the harp, glossing the

subject of the picture and supplying the Symbolist aspect that is otherwise merely suggested.

Scandinavian 20th-century frames: (a) Finnish artist-designed aedicular frame

with tapering…

In 1916 Gallen-Kallela painted his Self-portrait for the Uffizi Gallery (Tarvaspää, Gallen-Kallela

Mus.). His head and shoulders are like a classical bust, and the artist has enriched them in another

retable-like or aedicular frame (see fig.). With its greatly simplifed trabeate structure, tapered

pilasters and anonymous order, it is like the monolithic entrance to an Egyptian tomb. Its memorial

aspect is emphasized by the white paint and ebonized finish, and it is reminiscent of, and possibly

influenced by, the aedicular frames used by Franz von Stuck (see §VI, 7 above). A large collection

of Gallen-Kallela’s drawings, including designs for frames, are held in the Gallen-Kallela Museum

in Tarvaspää; they show his progression towards the classical restraint of his last frames. There are

sketches of mouldings, corners of frames and numbers of profiles or sections, which surpass even

Holman Hunt’s sketches for frames in their thoroughness and accuracy.

A late example of a historicizing design (b) was made in 1923 by Harald Slott-Møller for his

portrait of Sigrid Undset (Oslo, priv. col.), the leading contemporary Norwegian author. In a letter

to William Nygaard, Slott-Møller made it clear that he saw the design of the frame, with its

revivalist zoomorphic and knot ornaments, as being in the same style as the portrait and as

necessary to emphasize its character and composition. Similar pastiches of Viking ornament had

been used in Britain on late 19th-century scenes taken from Scandinavian history, but they fell out

of fashion at the beginning of the 20th century. In Scandinavia, however, fashion and liking were

tied to nationalism and the continuing struggle for independence. In this context, ancient indices of

power and freedom became loaded with significance; hence the two bands of carved ornament on

Slott-Møller’s otherwise plain frame.

The Norwegian Gerhard Munthe was similarly infected with passion for his country’s traditional

styles; he studied the 18th-century art of rosemaling and produced numerous brightly tinted

watercolours with integral painted borders based on the motifs and colours of old Norwegian art

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(Oslo, N.G.; see 1986 exh. cat., no. 63a–e). Otherwise 20th-century Scandinavian frames were

much like those in the rest of Europe: very simple shapes such as flat plate frames, ogee, hollow,

chamfered and flat cassetta frames. Finishes were also straightforward: dull gold, stained wood,

coloured or white paint. Only rarely did an interesting example emerge, for example on Per

Stenius’s Composition (1951), a black plate frame overpainted with ochre squiggles.

Bibliography

A. Lindblom: La Peinture gothique en Suède et en Norvège (Stockholm, 1916)

R. Hauglid and L. Grodecki: Norway: Paintings from the Stave Churches (New York, 1955)

M. Praz: An Illustrated History of Interior Decoration from Pompeii to Art Nouveau (London,

1964)

S. Sitwell: Great Palaces (London, 1964)

L. E. Plahter and U. Plahter: ‘The Technique of a Group of Norwegian Gothic Oil Paintings’,

Conservation of Paintings and the Graphic Arts: Lisbon, 1972, pp. 131–8

V. Poulsen: Danish Painting and Sculpture (Copenhagen, 1976)

R. Rosenblum, ed.: Edvard Munch: Symbols and Images (Washington, DC, 1978)

L. Rangstrôm, K. Skeri and E. Westin: Skokloster: The Castle and Collections (Balsta, 1980)

U. Plahter: ‘Methods of Scientific Investigations and Art Historical Interpretations’, Safeguarding

of Mediaeval Altarpieces and Woodcarvings in Churches and Museums, ed. A. Andersson and P.

Tångeborg (Stockholm, 1981), pp. 105–15

P. Thornton: Authentic Decor: The Domestic Interior, 1620–1920 (London, 1984)

Danish Painting: The Golden Age (exh. cat., London, N.G., 1984)

J. Weibull, C. F. Palmstierna and B. Tarras-Wahlberg: The Monarchy in Sweden (Stockholm, 1986)

Dreams of a Summer Night: Scandinavian Painting at the Turn of the Century (exh. cat., London,

Hayward Gal., 1986)

Speglar på Skokloster (Stockholm, 1987)

M. Malmanger: One Hundred Years of Norwegian Painting (Oslo, 1988)

K. Varnedoe: Northern Light (New Haven and London, 1988)

Agnes og Harald Slott-Møller (exh. cat., Copenhagen, Kstforen., 1988)

Christian IV and Europe (exh. cat., ed. S. Heiberg; Hillerød, Frederiksborg Slot, 1988)

U. G. Johnsson: Gripsholm (Stockholm, 1989)

140

P. Suhonen: Designed by Gallen-Kallela (Tarvaspää, 1989)

G. Alm, ed.: Pictures from Drottningholm (Stockholm, 1990)

Highlights in the National Gallery Collections (Oslo, 1990)

Stockholms Slott (Stockholm, 1991)

Walls, Walls: Give him Walls! (exh. cat., Tarvaspää, Gallen-Kallela Mus., 1991)

U. Plahter: ‘Norwegian Altar Frontals: A Mediaeval Panel Construction Suitable for

Dendrochronology?’, Dendrochronology and the Investigation of Buildings: Proceedings of an

International Seminar at the Academy of Science and Letters: Oslo, 1992, pp. 62–70

G. Alm: Carl Hårleman och den Svenska rokokon (Lund, 1993)

P. Cannon-Brookes: ‘Picture Framing: A Swedish Baroque Frame in the Design of Nicodemus

Tessin the Younger’, Int. J. Mus. Mgmt & Cur., xiii (1994), pp. 106–7

Le Soleil et l’étoile du nord: La France et la Suède au XVIIIème siècle (exh. cat., ed. P. Grate;

Paris, Grand Pal., 1994)

For further bibliography see §I above.

Paul Mitchell, Lynn Roberts

Copyright © Oxford University Press 2007 — 2015.

141

Frame, §VIII: Spain

article url: http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T029196pg8

Frame, §VIII: Spain

VIII. Spain.

1. Medieval.

Spain was conquered by the Muslims in AD 711; by the 10th century it had an Islamic majority (the

north remaining Christian), and only in the 13th century did the Christians reverse the position,

fully reconquering the country by 1492. The effect on the applied arts was particularly great, and for

a long time borders of all sorts often displayed geometrical or Moresque elements, separate from the

generally shared ornamental vocabulary of the rest of Europe.

(i) Early altar frontals.

The earliest framed panel paintings are identical in style and structure to those from the rest of

Europe. They were at first altar frontals with the traditional arrangement of a central figure in a

mandorla, flanked by two tiered panels of saints etc, each division marked by a decorative border.

(For an example, late 11th–12th century, with zigzag scroll and flower decoration on flats, see Post,

i, fig. .) While these first altarpieces were being produced, Byzantine and Carolingian ivories were

imported in great numbers, and northern European influences came from goods entering the ports of

Navarre, Castile and Asturias.

Spain was thus at a confluence of stylistic currents, including those of Islam and, from the 11th

century, those brought by the Burgundian Cluniac orders and by Lombard artists. French ties

became especially important: during the 12th century France was sovereign in Catalonia, while the

House of Barcelona ruled Provence, and the pilgrim route from Gascony to Santiago de Compostela

developed into a conduit of mutual influence. French or Rhenish altar frontals of enamel on silver

and gold were imported by the Cluniac monasteries and copied in paint and gilt or silvered stucco

by poorer foundations. These were given running Moresque decorations on their borders, including

abstract ornaments and heraldic beast medallions, as in the frontals of S Climente de Taüll and

Ginestarre de Cardñs (both Barcelona, Mus. A. Catalunya) and of S Pere de Ripoll (Vic, Mus.

Episc.). They also had Italianate motifs of bosses and rosettes, and scrolled decorations paralleling

French manuscript illuminations. The frontals and their successors—the rear altar-rail supporting a

Crucifix, which became first a predella to the Cross, and then a small retable behind it—were

brilliantly coloured, like the enamels they mimicked. Such polychromy remained an important

feature of both fine and applied art, seen for example in painted furniture, mosaics, statues and

imported fabrics.

The same love of opulence resulted in the use of gilded, diapered grounds for panel painting in

Spain well into the 15th century, when realistic backgrounds had long replaced them in the rest of

Europe. This, together with the great size and intricacy of late medieval altarpieces, added

enormously to their cost; perhaps because of it, retables of the 15th and 16th centuries especially,

unlike other European altarpieces, have panel grounds or areas of the frame painted chrome yellow

instead of gilt, particularly on shutters or the backs of free-standing examples. On frontals of the

12th and 13th centuries there are painted bands imitating precious stones as a similar economy. The

centre/corner roundels that decorate the wide, flat frames are concave, rather than convex like those

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of 13th-century Italian frontals and retables, although they reproduce the cabochon jewels of the

enamelled altarpieces (see Bazin, 1929, p. 47). Examples of both bands and roundels can be seen on

the frontal of St Andrew from Sagñs (late 12th century; Vic, Mus. Episc.) and the Altar of Encamp

(13th century; Barcelona, Mus. A. Catalunya). The latter is a true altar, with two lateral panels

forming a box-shape with the frontal. It is illustrative of the enormous quantity of Spanish religious

art that examples like this have survived, as they do nowhere else in Europe, except perhaps in

Scandinavia.

(ii) Gothic retables.

(a) Establishment of the form.

Though Spain continually trailed by a generation or so the stylistic evolution of the rest of Europe,

Gothic architectural forms gradually appeared, at first in carved furniture decorations, with the

adoption of arcading, clustered colonnettes, gables and lacey pierced geometrical designs that

married Gothic tracery to abstract Islamic forms. Frames, like architecture, were slow to change,

retaining a Romanesque style modified by Moorish elements. A late 13th-century frontal

(Barcelona, Mus. A. Catalunya) shows the Romanesque three-part configuration with a central

Christ in a mandorla, the flat border still combining four Moorish geometrical, heraldic and abstract

floral motifs. It was not until the early 14th century that ogee-arched tops (e.g. the Aragonese St

Peter Martyr) and barbed quatrefoil medallions (e.g. St Domingo; both Barcelona, Mus. A.

Catalunya) appeared on the same tripartite retables. Similarly, the peaked-gabled, pentagonal

altarpiece of early 13th-century Florence and Siena did not appear in Spain until the 14th century,

as in St Christopher (Castilian school; Madrid, Prado), where the flat frame is still painted with

Arabic lions and castles (for Leñn and Castile), and the inner divisions are scrolled in white on blue

in Moorish style.

Even the established Gothic style was—especially outside Catalonia—not only late compared with

its Italian and French equivalents, but also inseparably intermingled with Islamic motifs. The

Reliquary of Piedra (1390; Madrid, Real Acad. Hist.) is a striking example of fully fledged Mudéjar

ornament (or Muslim Gothic art produced under Christian rule): a shallow cupboard of triptych

form, with low-relief carved borders beneath a deep cornice, it has eight-pointed Moresque stars

and interlaced lozenges around painted panels in trefoil arches (comparable to the Westminster

Retable; see fig., a). In the cornice portraits of Christ, the Apostles and saints are framed by intricate

Saracenic cusped arches, and the whole is picked out in gold and colour with bands of arabesques.

Chests and other pieces of furniture are lavish with similar motifs, including pierced interlacing in

the form of polygons, stylized daisies and abstract shapes of interlocking curves, which would be

picked up and used in the fretwork canopies and tracery infills of the larger Gothic retables.

The gabled silhouette associated with Cimabue and Duccio probably arrived in Spain, if belatedly,

through commercial and political connections with Tuscany. Florence had regular shipping lines to

Mallorca, Barcelona and Valencia by the late 13th century, and as Barcelona grew as rich and

influential as Bruges or Venice, so it adopted a form of the democratic Florentine political structure.

Artistic and ornamental influences were intensified by such ties. The art of Barcelona was affected

in the political aspects of production and patronage by the introduction of this alien democratic

system. During the 14th century sculptors and woodworkers were simultaneously blended and

divided into the guilds of carvers and cabinetmakers according to what they produced; rules of

practice were enforced, as in the rest of Europe, and the hierarchical progression from apprentice

through journeyman to master was set down. With the introduction of Florentine democracy, the

middle classes moved rapidly to positions of power, and the newly reconstructed carvers’ guild of

Barcelona found their fellow guilds to be some of their richest and most influential patrons.

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Enormous quantities of retables were commissioned for the chapels of the guildsmen’s adoptive

churches, a custom that was widespread in Europe but nowhere to the extent of the rich mercantile

towns of Spain. The wealth of these bodies of artisans, as of the Church, whose power was backed

by the Crown, provided a purse deep enough to finance the Spanish taste for frames of unbelievable

flamboyance. Examples of altar frames commissioned by guilds (in both cases by the Guild of

Cobblers for the chapel of St Mark, Barcelona Cathedral) surround the retable of St Mark (1437;

Manresa, S Marìa), attributed to Bernat Martorell, and a fragment of Jaume Huguet’s Retable of the

Shoemakers’ Guild (see Post, vii, fig.). These are also early types of the so-called trophy frame: the

former has shoes painted in the pinnacles of the dividing pilasters, echoing the shoes woven into the

saint’s chasuble in the central panel of the altarpiece; the latter retains a gilt and stuccoed frame

panel on each side of the surviving painting, interesting not only for the shoes painted in lozenges in

the centres but also for the integration shown by the mid-15th century of Mudéjar motifs (Islamic

bauble-shaped medallions with Gothic cusps). This is a long way from the Castilian St Christopher

retable of the previous century (see above), where the Florentine silhouette was decorated with

inappropriate and undigested Moorish emblems.

Italian connections began to supersede those with France in the 14th and 15th centuries—the Crown

of Aragon ruled Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and Naples and traded as frequently with Genoa as with

Florence. The south-east corner of Spain grew extremely prosperous and was influenced artistically

especially by Florence and Siena. Therefore, when Gothic frames finally ousted Romanesque, it

was often in the Italian form seen on medieval Tuscan or Emilian altarpieces. A simple 14th-

century gabled closing triptych in Tortosa Cathedral has leaflike crockets in the Italianate manner,

while the altarpiece of St Mark Manresa (1346; Manresa, S Marìa) by Arnau Bassa is an impressive

tripartite polyptych, with painted figured pilasters ending in high pinnacles between its gables. The

styles of these two altarpieces bring together, in the compass of a few years, half a century’s

evolution of Italian altar frames and show the eclecticism of choice possible in a country whose

fashions continually trailed behind their neighbours’. Dilatoriness, and consequent imitation rather

than innovation, do not mean that Spanish work lacked individuality. Spanish frames are almost

always instantly recognizable as such, even where they copy. The Bassa Altarpiece, for instance, its

body that of a typical Italian polyptych of the 1320s to 1340s, already has the square crockets on its

gables and pinnacles and the wide blossom or flamelike finials characteristic of Spanish retables. In

the second half of the 14th century, when Italian altarpieces were developing into cross-sections of

High Gothic cathedrals (with predella or ‘crypt’, nave, aisles and upper tiers or ‘clerestory’), the

Spanish versions acquired their most idiosyncratic feature. As large and many-panelled as Italian

retables, with arched and gabled outlines, crockets, pinnacles and finials like the most elaborate

examples of International Gothic, they were now enclosed by carved, painted or stuccoed

backboards and surrounded at the top and sides by a wide canted outer frame called a guardapolvo

or dust guard. This combination protects the delicate filigree and varied silhouette of the upper

retable; it also replaces the huge lateral buttresses needed to support the larger Italian polyptychs.

On account of the continued authority of the Catholic Church in Spain, upholding the sanctity of

religious houses, preventing as far as possible the pillage of war and forbidding the sale of church

treasures, and also because of the scale of patronage in Spain, many more of these retables,

complete with both inner and outer frames, remain in situ than in other countries. Even where they

have entered museums, the main structure with predella and guardapolvo nearly always remains

intact, and only the ancillary elements are lost—the two lateral painted doors on either side of the

altar, beneath the predella, and the altar frontal that ‘joins’ these two doors visually and stands

forward of the plane of the retable itself. From the mid-14th century, however, antependia began to

be replaced on the altar by panels of leather or embroidery.

A comparatively early example of the main structure is the Retable of Sigena (Barcelona, Mus. A.

Catalunya), attributed to Jaime Serra and Pedro Serra, a characteristic example of the form from

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Catalonia, which is rich in such altarpieces. There are five vertical divisions, with a large central

panel of the Virgin beneath the crowning image of (as almost always) a Crucifixion; the latter is

often shaped, as here, in a stepped gable. (The top lateral panels are arched.) The divisions are

separated vertically by plain wooden pilasters and horizontally on the side tiers by gilded

geometrically patterned bands into which the pictures occasionally intrude. The predella has cusped

segmental arches; the main arches and gables have enriched square crockets and square acanthus

finials, and the pinnacles are slender with tiny crockets. Both guardapolvos and backboard are

carved with stylized roses echoing those painted in the Virgin’s hand, and the guardapolvos extend

downward at the sides only to the moulding above the predella and are cut away there in a

characteristic shouldered arch.

(b) Development.

The Spanish love of opulence and ornament soon began to influence the retable, once the form

outlined above was established. Other altarpieces by Pedro Serra (e.g. retables of the Virgin and

Child with Angels, 1394, Manresa, S Marìa, and of the Virgin and All Saints, monastery of Sant

Cugat del Vallès) are elaborated by large three-sided columns painted with niched figures, and by a

guardapolvo with gilded stucco leaves and coats of arms. In other examples enriched arcaded

tracery fills the spandrels between the top of an arched panel and the bottom of the compartment

above, and fantastic cusping fringes the inside of such arches, as in the Valencian triptych of

Bonifacio Ferrer (after 1396; Valencia, Mus. B.A.), attributed to Lorenzo Zaragoza. The backboard

may be covered in diapered stucco, painted arabesques or both, and the junctions of panels are

concealed by ropelike plaits and twists, as in the retable of St Michael (1416–17; Girona, Mus. A.)

by Lluìs Borrassà.

Many foreign styles supplied this tendency to borrow and accumulate decorations. John I of Aragon

(reg 1387–95) and his wife Yolande employed French and Flemish artists, initiating the relationship

of Spanish and northern European art and reinforcing the inclination towards International Gothic;

John II of Castile (reg 1406–54) collected works by Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck.

These works stimulated the production of small panels in the naturalistic enamelled style of

Flanders; the way they were assembled, however, is very different from the relatively sober scale of

the north. In the 15th century the Spanish built them into immense towering structures, based on

Sienese polyptychs with their many small panels, but vastly exceeding them in number and overall

size. A retable of this period could be 9 m or more in height, rising up the apse of a church to the

spring of the dome and curved around the inner wall of the east end—a reredos rather than an

altarpiece.

This led to the development of three main types of retable. One was a grander, richer version of the

Gothic polyptych frame with its outer guardapolvos, but still an altarpiece in dimension and scale.

An example is the large altarpiece of St George (c. 1410–20; London, V&A) by the Master of the

Centenar de la Pluma, with numerous narrative scenes arranged in sixteen lateral and three central

panels which tell the story of the saint’s life. These are formed into a ‘Gothic church’ structure,

supported by pinnacled columns containing painted niched figures, while the horizontal dividing

bands are carved with quatrefoil roundels echoing furniture decoration of the late 14th century to

the early 15th. The elaborate guardapolvo is also decorated with figures of the Apostles and a

central image of the Holy Spirit, and with geometrical Moorish-influenced ornaments. The second

type of retable was the reredos, where painted panels of identical size were set into a network of

Gothic mouldings (and later, Baroque or Rococo ones) with little hierarchical gradation or centring

of design, and the resultant honeycomb applied like wainscoting to the church wall. The third was a

mixture of the two, ranging in size between altarpiece and reredos, but with sculpture replacing

either completely or in part the painted panels.

145

Sculpture was important both inside and outside Spanish buildings and played a large part in the

elaboration of surfaces, as can be seen, for example, from the riot of carved detail on the voussoirs

of Romanesque portals. Lavishly sculpted altarpieces are, of course, also common in medieval

Germany, but the carved retables found in Spain are as distinctive as the painted versions. The style

of the carving was, however, often more up-to-date than that of contemporary painting and

ornament. From the 15th century sculpted retables became more and more numerous and were

frequently commissioned as offerings by the newly prosperous guilds or members of the middle

class. Examples include the retable of St Peter and the Virgin sculpted by Pere Oller for Vic

Cathedral and the vast alabaster retable of St Tecla (1426–36 and later) by Pere Johan (Pedro Juan

de Valogona; d 1436) for Tarragona Cathedral. In the second, tiers of Flamboyant Gothic tracery

dwarf even the life-size saints and Virgin and crush the shallow relief narrative scenes with their

pygmy figures. Here the frame has completely taken over, to become not the cross-section of a

church that frames the images in Italian altarpieces but the analogue of a cathedral façade, to which

the carved scenes and figures are adjuncts. Also as on a Gothic cathedral, the carving is coloured

and gilded, integrating even further the ‘frame’ and its contents.

The opulence of these works glorifies the rich guilds and city brotherhoods who commissioned

them and who specified details of colour and gilding as well as layout on both sculpted and painted

retables. In consequence, the work took so long to complete that contracts often name the inheritor

of a commission in case of death, as happened with the retable of St Tecla: Pere Johan’s assistant

Guilermo de la Monta finished sculpting the retable after his master’s death. This increasing

elaboration and length of labour finally resulted in a reorganization of all the crafts involved. Until

the 15th century partnerships of artists had taken it in turns to work on the framework or the

painting of alternate altarpieces, their generalized training (including silversmithing) giving them

the ability to carve ornament, gild, design and paint. However, during the first half of the 15th

century three groups (of flesh painters, ‘stuff painters’ and gilders) were established by royal

decree, while the manufacture of retable structures was broken down into architectural and figural

elements. This meant that differentiated classes of framemakers, specializing in carving, gilding or

decorating, at last began to emerge, and partnerships of specialist wood-carvers and painters are

recorded, as in Italy from a much earlier period. For example, the altarpiece of St Bernardino (after

1455; Cagliari, Pin. N.) was carved by Raffaele Tomás (fl 1455–6) and painted, probably

exclusively, by Juan Figuera.

With artists specializing in one type of work, there was an incentive to collaborate with different

specialists and so progress more quickly on a single retable. There are frequent examples of mixed

sculpted and pictorial retables where an artist, frame-carver, gilder and sculptor would all have been

involved. The commonest type is the so-called remate sculpture, where an ornamental Gothic

canopy shelters a free-standing carved figure or group within the central section of a triptych, the

shutters of which are decorated inside with tracery frames and painted scenes. Here the sculpture

regains its importance, and the whole triptych structure is reduced again to a frame or backcloth.

Examples include Nicolás Francés’s triptych of the Life of the Virgin (after 1435; Tordesillas,

Church of the Poor Clares) and his Triptych of Belchite (1439; Saragossa, parish church of

Belchite), which has lost its central sculpture of the Virgin.

There is a northern European influence in these altarpieces, and it is notable how many artists were

then travelling to and from Spain. Jan van Eyck came in 1429; the Bishop of Burgos imported Hans

von Kôln as his architect; Burgundian sculptors, along with Flemish and German, worked in Spain

under the aegis of Philip the Good, 3rd Duke of Burgundy; Lluìs Dalmau, court painter to Alfonso

V of Aragon, was sent to Bruges in 1431; and such artists as Nicolás Francés and Jorge Inglés

betray their origins in their names. Small devotional triptychs were produced in plain northern

European moulding frames; and in both the framing structure and the International Gothic detail of

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the sculptured or remate Spanish altarpieces, Rhenish, Flemish and Burgundian styles and

techniques can be seen.

The second type of retable mentioned above—the screen or reredos that covers the whole eastern

end of the chancel—is more Italianate in its form and derivation. An example from 1445, the

altarpiece of Christ and the Virgin (Salamanca, Old Cathedral), is actually by a Florentine, Dello

Delli, known in Spain as Nicolás Fiorentino. This has 55 compartments, arranged in five tiers

around the apse, of which only the central top panel breaks the overall identity by rising slightly

higher. The symmetry has been marred by two bottom panels added by Fernando Gallego in 1500;

otherwise each lower round-arched compartment has its own rectangular frame, while the top tier is

crowned with a series of crocketed gables and pinnacles. Delli also frescoed the apsidal dome with

a Last Judgement, edged with a decorative border imitating relief mouldings; while set into the

bottom of the reredos, cutting the carved predella strip with its roundels of painted heads, is a niche

holding a sculpted Virgin and Child. The coherence of this vast scheme, covering the whole interior

of the apse, again makes it difficult to specify what is the frame: two parts of the whole lie outside

the conventional wooden structure containing the painted panels, and three of the qualities that help

to define a modern frame—that it is protective, discrete and technically movable—have no

application here.

Apart from such imports as the Italian Delli, artistic influence in Castile was generally Flemish. In

Catalonia, however, a native school was by then established and beginning to diffuse its style

through western Spain. One of the most notable Catalan painters was Huguet, who left a number of

important, mainly complete, retables; there are also surviving documents connected with his work

that mention the frames. For instance, the Abbot of Ripoll contracted Huguet in 1455 to paint a

predella, front and back, for a retable of the Virgin. The contract states that the back of the carved

frames (obra de talla) shall be painted yellow in order to make the grisaille pictures stand out: this

is an unusual reference to the use of yellow (noted above), which was also not as common in

Catalonia as it was in Castile and Andalusia. The front of the predella was to be gilded, presumably

because it was more frequently seen, and the backgrounds of the paintings tally in each case with

the frames—yellow on the back and gold in front. In 1464 John II of Aragon (reg 1458–79)

released Huguet and two wood-carvers, Durán and Prat, from military service, so that they could

produce the Retablo del Condestable (1464–5; Barcelona, Real Capilla de S Agueda). This work,

named for Don Pedro, Constable of Portugal, still retains the doors each side of the predella that

enclose the altar, but it has lost the guardapolvos completely and for a long period was without the

carved decoration of its wide, flat frame. The latter is painted red, and its twining chains of carved

green foliage and gilded dragons have been restored. There is no internal ‘church’ silhouette or use

of shaped panels, only the filigree canopy bands added above the upper tier and the tiny cusped

fringing of each rectangular ‘frame’ remaining from the earlier Flamboyant Gothic phase. Elaborate

carvings continued to be produced, but this altarpiece shows the first small movements away from

Gothic.

2. Renaissance.

During the 15th century the influence of the Italian Renaissance began to percolate through Spain.

The Italian quadro all’antica—the rectangular panel, with a Renaissance cassetta or an aedicular

frame—was bound to affect the forms of Spanish paintings and their frames. As with other styles

entering Spain, its influence was late and partial, but in the Profession of St Vincent Ferrer (after

1458; Paris, Mus. A. Déc.), from the school of Jacomart, a representation can be seen in the

background of a retable showing SS Peter, Paul and Dominic. The scene is still not a naturalistic

sacra conversazione as in Italy; but the use of an oblong panel in a single frame is significant, as is

the outer gilt billet moulding on the black guardapolvo.

147

Spain remained eclectic in the use of styles: late 15th-century furniture in transition from the

medieval to the Renaissance is decorated with arabesques, Gothic grotesques and Greco-Roman

ornament, and figure sculpture veered more and more towards the style of the Renaissance; but such

important painters as Bartolomé Bermejo used Gothic settings as late as the 1470s. As work on

altarpieces had been divided among specialist craftsmen, it was also possible to find, in the late 15th

century and well into the 16th, a Renaissance image, painted or sculpted, set in a Gothic

architectural frame. Damián Forment’s stone retables of the 1510s to 1530s show this disjunction of

styles, as does Pedro Berruguete’s painted retable of St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1500; Ávila, S Tomás).

Berruguete’s retable fills the east end of the church with several large scenes rather than the 55

small ones of Delli, and the painted compositions and overall format are definitely Renaissance

rather than Gothic. However, their rich friezes of carved foliate tracery, although arranged between

colonnettes in an approximation of a classical aedicule, are unashamedly Gothic, while a canopy in

the form of a great spired cathedral crowns the central panel of St Thomas.

The Flamboyant Gothic vocabulary took almost as long to die out among painters as carvers and

was probably prolonged by its popularity with patrons. Queen Isabella of Castile and Leñn

possessed more than fifty Flemish works and only two of the Italian Renaissance. When Spain

achieved stability, unity and increased wealth in the 1490s under Ferdinand and Isabella, new riches

from its American trade were used to build not in the Renaissance style but in the Northern Gothic.

Juan Guas (d c. 1495) designed a presbytery for S Juan de los Reyes (1476–1503), Toledo, that

epitomizes the Flamboyant style, modified by Moorish motifs. His drawing for it (pen and ink on

parchment, 1.94×0.96 m; Madrid, Prado) includes a conventional tiered Gothic painted retable

(never executed) with an inscribed guardapolvo; it is one of the few extant designs for Spanish

altarpieces and could have been produced more than a century earlier. The same is true of the Great

Retable of Toledo Cathedral, designed by a Burgundian and completed in 1505 by an army of

craftsmen. Still in the Flamboyant style, this is Spain’s largest retable, proclaiming Toledo’s new

position as the centre of Spanish art. In the early 16th century there was a gradual increase in the

use of classical ornament and form, and as Toledo and the rest of Castile took over the artistic

dominance of Aragon and Catalonia, the Renaissance replaced the Gothic. Initially there was a

mixture of styles, as in the high altar retable (1499–1506) of Ávila Cathedral by Berruguete, Juan de

Borgoða and Santa Cruz (d before 1508), in which each panel is framed by classical pilasters and

topped by a Gothic canopy. The pilasters are carved with candelabra and foliate garlands, while the

canopies feature cusped arches filled with delicate traceries in Mudéjar fashion.

Apart from the grandiose confections of retables and reredoses, there were other types of frame

also. However, patronage in Spain was either more pious than elsewhere or found the baroque

dramas of religious art more exciting than portraiture or history painting. Hence, though some

portraiture of course existed, the main type of picture besides the great public altarpiece was the

small devotional painting. The frames of these often took a northern European form (like the

paintings themselves), with a simple moulding of scotias, astragals and fillets, sometimes with a

rainsill at the bottom edge, as in Pedro Dìaz de Oviedo’s triptych of the Nativity (Madrid, Mus.

Lazaro Galdiano). Northern influence also produced the same stained, veneered or painted black

cassetta frames found in England, France and the Low Countries during the 15th and 16th

centuries, and these were decorated with gilded pastiglia or sgraffito ornament derived from Italian

models. Again, they show the diffusion of Renaissance motifs, which were spread in various ways,

for example through Spanish nobles living in Italy, who transmitted back news of stylistic changes.

Details can thus be found—such as the decoration of black frames—that may be traced to an Italian

source; similarly, there are examples of whole decorative schemes, although rare in Spain, that

originated in Renaissance Italy. These use the frame, sometimes in stucco, sometimes painted in

trompe l’oeil, as one element of the whole, as in the chapter room and its antechamber in Toledo

Cathedral. These were painted by the Burgundian Juan de Borgoða in 1509–11 for the prominent

patron Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo. The antechamber uses

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trompe l’oeil architectural cornices, pilasters and niches in Renaissance style to mediate between an

artesonado (a Mudéjar coffered ceiling), a painted garden and an ornamental door surround

decorated with Moorish motifs. The chapter room itself includes several types of frame: illusionistic

columns containing a large Last Judgement and scenes from the Life of the Virgin; painted pilasters

and rails around a frieze depicting past archbishops; and gilt mouldings set into the wall to frame a

group of prelates below. The design combines a gallery and didactic religious programme and is a

rare instance of this type of scheme and also of the use of pure Renaissance ornament for frames.

Both can be explained by the origins of the artist and by the faster adaptation to a new stylistic

vocabulary in painting than in woodworking.

On account of the strong hold of late Flemish Gothic, architecture was also slower than painting to

adjust to Renaissance proportion and decoration. One development of this staggered transition from

style to style in different media is the Plateresque style of architecture, which uses a dense floral,

foliate or candelabrum pattern on every panel, column, frieze or pilaster of a classical aedicula.

Altarpieces in the Plateresque style were soon being produced, such as the retable of an Abbot with

SS Cosmas and Damian (16th century, Aragonese; Florida, John and Johanna Bass priv. col.). This

has a segmental pediment with a head of Christ, decorated baluster columns and plinths and rather

uncertain vertical and horizontal divisions that are neither classical pilasters nor Gothic canopies.

Later in the 16th century sophisticated examples of the Plateresque can be seen, such as the frame

on Pedro Machuca’s retable of St Pedro del Osma (1546; Jaén Cathedral). Though still in the form

of a towering screenlike reredos, the classical replaces the Gothic. Each of the nine panels is painted

as a quadro all’antica and mounted in one cell of a flat ornamental border with moulding edges,

based on the Italian cassetta. The friezes are carved with foliage and flowers like those on the

façade of the University of Salamanca, and each corner and junction is mounted with a roundel

holding a painted half-figure. The cresting consists of a tondo of St Veronica in the same friezelike

border, supported by pierced grotesque scrolling designed to fill the round-arched niche behind the

altar. The few large panels, against the many small ones of a Gothic retable, enable the whole to be

read more easily; the arrangement is more lucid and the frame rich but less obtrusive.

3. Mannerist.

Mannerism flourished in the reign of Charles I, who in 1519 became the Holy Roman Emperor as

Charles V. Italian political ties and artistic influence increased markedly during this period; already

King of Naples and Sicily, Charles became King of Lombardy and was also crowned in Bologna in

1529, replacing the French hegemony in Italy by a Spanish one. Alonso Berruguete, who had

brought Michelangelo’s Mannerism to Spain, was made Pintor del Rey in 1518, and in 1526

Charles commissioned a Renaissance-style palace in the Alhambra, Granada, from Machuca. This

proximity to Italy meant that Spain was quicker to absorb changes in style. Mannerism, like the

Plateresque and Flamboyant Gothic, was more in accord with the Spanish love of drama and

decoration than Renaissance ideals of proportion, restraint and balance. Mannerism was, therefore,

almost immediately adopted in Spain, while examples of pure Renaissance form and ornament are

comparatively rare.

Pedro Fernández and Gabriel Pou painted panels (1519–21) for the retable of St Helena (Girona

Cathedral), which are set in a frame so massive and ornamental that it is more like a metalwork

reliquary than an altarpiece. Its elements are in High Renaissance style—the wide frieze and

framing pilasters, with their raised gilt decoration of winged figures, urns and candelabra—as is its

form, with trabeate structure and segmental pediment. However, familiarity with the Gothic

guardapolvos caused the designer to add projecting canted sections to the entablature, predella and

pilasters, supporting the jutting ends of the entablature on baluster columns of impressive and

ornate complexity. The lateral canted panels are painted with aediculae containing figures and

supported by atlantids, and the pediment is sheltered by a segmental coffered ceiling. The forward

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ends of the frieze hold a Platonic sun and moon, balanced on the predella by Mannerist cartouches.

The internal divisions of the retable are marked horizontally by wide bands of scrolling foliage and

urns in the Plateresque style and vertically by slender balustered colonnettes. This vertical emphasis

is Mannerist, as is the dramatic perspectival recession above the pediment. The density of ornament

is almost more Gothic than Mannerist, however, and the whole frame shows how form and

decoration were continually remade by Spanish craftsmen in their wish to glorify God (and the

patron) through the enrichment of every surface. The paintings are dramatic and faintly

Leonardesque, particularly the central large panel. Anything less positive would have been lost in

the welter of surrounding decoration, yet the way the picture is forced to conquer the setting rather

than gain support from it is peculiar to Spain, where, with the strong Moorish tradition, the idea of

the frame merely enhancing the image was never as current as elsewhere.

A more refined Mannerism is demonstrated by the aedicular frame of Machuca’s Descent from the

Cross (c. 1547; Madrid, Prado). This has free-standing baluster columns, a deep pedestal with a

hippogriff cartouche and a frieze of warring putti. The ground is coloured blue-black with the high-

relief figures, masks and grotesques picked out in gold. There are none of the hooked volutes,

raking flutes, clasps and peltlike forms that characterize Italian Mannerist frames, but the

exaggerated vertical thrust of the columns, their ornate decoration and the powerful contrast of

ground and gilt motif take this frame beyond both the purity of the High Renaissance and the

coarser Mannerism of the St Helena retable. The painting, like that of the latter, is strong and

dramatic, with an X-shaped composition, theatrical lighting and the elongations and distortions of

Mannerism. The frame contains the image without subduing it, looking forward to the more

Europeanized designs of the later 16th century and the 17th, and to a greater integration of picture

and frame.

During the first half of the 16th century, Spanish commercial prosperity continued to increase. The

colonies expanded to include Mexico, Peru and Chile, sending home gold and raw materials while

providing a new market for manufactured goods. The wealth of the Church and the mercantile

classes grew in proportion, as did the number and richness of the altarpieces they commissioned,

epitomized by the Catalonian St Helena retable. In Castile, retables continued to be wholly or partly

sculpted, as in the Middle Ages; painted works were for the less wealthy patron. An example of a

part-sculpted, part-painted altarpiece is in the parish church of Fuentelaencina, Guadalajara. Begun

in 1557, it is a transformation of the Gothic remate into a classical structure, magnifying it to the

size of a reredos and filling the great arched niche behind the altar. Similar in design to the carved

altarpiece of Burgos Cathedral, it lacks the latter’s strict use of the orders and hierarchy of

pediments. It is, in fact, a late Plateresque structure, built as a grid of entablatures and tall aediculae

holding carved figures. These surround the central sculpted scenes and the lateral tiers of painted

panels. Every section of the carved framework is crammed with ornament, from friezes to fretted,

turned columns, and the central panels seethe with activity between decorated spandrels and

pilasters. The top is crowned with a Crucifixion and two niches below a triangular pediment, and

this is supported by tondi held in coral-like accretions of carving. At the extreme edges the vertical

rails of a guardapolvo show, even at this late date. The team of six that executed it is recorded, the

panels being painted by three artists. The framework is by Nicolas de Vegara the elder and Bautista

Vasquez the elder, who also, along with Martin de Vandoma (b 1510/15), produced the sculptures.

The framemakers thus in some sense defined the work; they produced the sculptures, the most

valued element, and they fitted the whole to its site in the church. How much they influenced the

design and its details is unclear, however; contracts often included a programmatic sketch setting

out the client’s wishes, so that the general shape and the sequence of the scenes could be followed.

Probably the decoration was left to the carvers’ discretion—the earlier incidence of Renaissance

paintings in Gothic frames is otherwise hard to explain—but, again, those carvers would

presumably have been chosen for the style as well as the competence of their work.

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Italy dominated religious painting and carving, Spanish artists flocking there to study; but there was

further Flemish influence too, through such immigrant painters as Antonis Mor, Peeter Kempeneer

and others. Philip II, acceding in 1556, bought 15th- and 16th-century Flemish pictures and was left

others by his aunt, Maria of Hungary. He also collected high-quality Italian works by Correggio,

Raphael and Titian and employed followers of Pontormo and Andrea del Sarto to decorate the walls

and altars of the Escorial. These two strains of influence appear in a charming, small altarpiece, the

Tendilla Retable (c. 1555; Cincinnati, OH, A. Mus.). The paintings are both Flemish and Italianate,

set in a carved and gilt-wood closing triptych with a semicircular broken pediment and predella.

The ornament is rich but restrained, with delicate grotesques and candelabra; each panel is fringed

at the top with pierced grotesque tracery, mimicking the canopies of a Gothic reredos. The predella

frieze has an enriched floral chain, and the pediment a spiral ribbon holding fruit clusters and

cherubs’ heads. There are also two putti acroteria with armorial bearings, balancing a fruit-and-urn

finial. Opinion is divided as to the altarpiece’s origin: it may have been a northern import with

tracery added to adapt it to Spanish taste, or it may be the product of one of the Flemish workshops

established in Spain in the 16th century, such as that of the Beaugrant family. The inner shutter

frames are plain, in the Flemish style; the floral chain is Italian, as are the Renaissance grotesques,

while the proportion, chunky curved pediment and traceries are Spanish. Perhaps because of its

small size, the frame, despite the variations of scale in the paintings, seems more window-like than

on a towering reredos; this is especially true of the internal shutters, where the paintings of Adam

and Eve and the Sacrifice of Isaac continue beyond the main panels, under their top rails and into

the small upper segments, which close the broken pediment. Abraham’s angel, particularly, seems

to be fluttering behind a window bar. The Tendilla Retable, restrained in comparison with earlier

altars, is nevertheless still richly decorated. Its tentative dating is symbolically one year before the

accession of Philip II, who presided over Spain’s Golden Age and also introduced the Spartan

Herrera style.

4. Herrera style.

Wealth poured into Spain from her colonies, and in celebration Philip II planned the Palace of the

Escorial (1563–84), designed in a sober Italianate style by Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de

Herrera. Herrera expressed Philip’s austere outlook, realizing the King’s demands for ‘simplicity of

form, severity in the whole, nobility without arrogance, majesty without ostentation’. The chapel

was at the centre of the palace, and the nucleus of that centre was the giant retable, also designed by

Herrera (see Sumario y breve declaración de los diseños y estampas de la fábrica de San Lorenço el

Real del Escurial (Madrid, 1589); engravings by Pedro Perret from the design). Here at last Spain

belatedly found its own Renaissance style; paradoxically, in a land so attached to opulent

decoration, it was one of an extremely pared-down classicism. The retable, over 26 m high, has four

tiers, which apply the orders in strict sequence: Doric at the base, rising through Ionic and

Corinthian to Composite on the top pedimented aedicula housing the Crucifixion. There is little

other external decoration, save for the Doric frieze of metopes and triglyphs and the sculptures.

Besides the internal group of the Crucifixion and the niched figures at the bottom, the frame has two

figures with obelisks (the only Mannerist detail) supporting the Corinthian order and two more

supporting the Composite order. It is a monument to Roman clarity and ‘simplicity of form’;

majesty is supplied by the materials: green jasper, red marble and gilding. It was executed by

Jacopo da Trezzo I and Juan Bautista Comane (fl c. 1579–81), and the 15 gilt-bronze figures are by

Pompeo Leoni. The combination of painting and sculpture in the retable relates it to Gothic remate

altarpieces and gives it its Spanish character; its otherwise untypical austerity was to be influential

in the 17th century.

The Escorial Chapel also features wall paintings set in architectural gadrooned mouldings; in the

Library, which is richly painted and decorated, architectural entablatures and borders of Greek fret

are used, echoing the classical severity of the furniture. The Library paintings also display important

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elements of the Herrera style as it was adopted by goldsmiths and other craftsmen: oblong framed

panels and slender straps separated by cabochons or bosses. For goldsmiths and furniture-makers

this style was important but specialized; for framemakers it had a much wider and longer-lasting

significance. Moulding frames of this type proliferated throughout the 17th century; they combine

Moorish ornaments and other geometrical motifs with the Herrera style and are characteristically

Spanish. Instead of the swooping hooks and volutes of Italian Mannerism, the primary motifs

include astragals (straight gadrooning or knulls) clasped round an outer torus, dentils, chain-and-egg

mouldings, raked gadrooning, raised squares or lozenges like gems, chains of alternating short or

stretched cabochons, dogtooth, frets and an extension of the astragal and torus that uses voluted

clasps across a moulding (looking rather like a necklace of cotton reels). Some of these forms are

Mozarabic, deriving from Islamic-influenced church architecture (e.g. a cotton-reel moulding and

three types of dogtooth can be found above the portal of the Romanesque church of Lérida).

Spanish Herrera frames, 17th century: (a) with clasps and ‘gemstone’…

A compendium of these ornaments appears on the frame (see fig.) of Johann Liss’s Satyr and the

Peasants (Washington, DC, N.G.A.). This has a hollow decorated with a fretlike pattern of flutes

and fillets, undercutting an ovolo with a mirror-image fret, paired knulls and hooked cotton-reel

clasps. In the flat below are raised cabochons, lozenges and oblongs outlined in black and red, set

between dentils and another ovolo with clasps. Seen from a distance these motifs intermesh in a

flickering pattern of uprights and crossbars, where multiple ornaments are restrained in a rigidly

geometrical network. Other sources for the various motifs may be medieval book covers and early

altars enamelled and set with gems. The cabochons and single knulls or astragals may be mixed

with delicate gilt decoration, similar to the grounds of Herrera metalwork, as in the parcel-gilt black

frame now on Velázquez’s Juan Calabazas (c. 1644; Cleveland, OH, Mus. A.). Here the frame has

found its ideal painting, setting off Velázquez’s palette of cool greys and the geometrical patterns of

stool and wall. On another type of frame the gilt-on-black decoration is reduced to centre and corner

key shapes on a narrow black flat (b). The flat is sunk between two bird’s-beak mouldings, boldly

carved with paired knulls and square ‘gems’, broad goffered knulls and bead-and-bobbin trims. The

latter and the ‘gems’ are picked out alternately in red and blue and show how the long tradition of

polychromy asserted itself in tandem with an elaboration of the Herrera style. An eared form (c) of

this Herrera frame exists; presumably the influence here is Palladian, although the effect is

Mannerist, in keeping with the picture. The relatively slender rails, exaggerated by the chunky

mouldings and the projecting corners, reinforce the vertical composition and El Greco’s attenuated

figures. Eared corners were also used as an element of the Plateresque style (e.g. the pair of carved

doors from Seville, c. 1600–1700; Spanish Room, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Mus. of F.A.). A

further adaptation shows the separated knulls raised on faceted islands and arranged as raked

gadrooning to give a strongly cabled effect that leads inwards to the painting. The frames now on

Scarsellino’s Scene of Martyrdom (Houston, TX, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Found.) and Mantegna’s

Crucifixion (Paris, Louvre) both have this dramatic outer gadrooning, above a flat set in rows of

dentils.

These types of frame persisted throughout the 17th century, bridging the transition from Mannerism

to Baroque. An example is the production of a Baroque corner or centre-and-corner emphasis

through the application of a water-leaf or stiff-leaf motif. This ornament (both Gothic and

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Palladian) is doubled into a stretched, flower-like shape, and in appearance and use is somewhat

like the Baroque half-flower of Bolognese frames (see §II, 5 above). It appears on the cabled frame

now on Cosimo Rosselli’s Virgin and Child (New York, Met.), which is reminiscent of the wall

frames in the Escorial Library, and on the chunkily carved gadroon and dentil frames around Jacopo

Tintoretto’s Portrait of a Young Man (Detroit, MI, Inst. A.) and the portrait of Lady Lee (second

half of the 16th century; New York, Met.), after Hans Holbein the younger. The last has a flat

decorated with an engraved scale pattern (88d) and demonstrates how the accretion of ornament

could transform the austere Herrera style into a flamboyant richness.

Another genre of frame that appeared in Spain during the 17th century and that harmonized with the

severity of original Herrera patterns had a very different source. This is the family of stained or

ebonized ‘ripple’ frames, directly related to the 17th-century Dutch type (see §V, 3(iii) above). Ties

with the Netherlands were still close, although Holland was rebelling against the Spanish rule; ties

with Catholic Flanders remained much stronger and formed a conduit for the interchange of artistic

developments. In Protestant Holland the black frame was adopted as a bourgeois domestic fashion,

in sympathy with cool, small-scale, well-lit interiors. In Spain, paradoxically, it became a royal

style, associated with the grand unornamented scale of the Escorial, the ‘majesty without

ostentation’ expressed by such court painters as Velázquez; it also suited the monastic art of the

Counter-Reformation, produced by such men as Francisco Ribalta and Jusepe de Ribera. The

inventory of the 1st Marqués de Leganés’s pictures in 1630, when he owned a mere 17 (he died in

1655, owning more than 1300), records the frames of several: a portrait of Philip IV (c. 1628–9) by

Rubens ‘with an ebony frame carved in a wave-pattern’; a Virgin and Child with SS Isabel and John

by Raphael, 1.7 m high, ‘with a massive ebony frame with mouldings’; a very small portrait of

Erasmus ‘with an ebony setting’; a Virgin and Child by Titian ‘with its ebony frame’; and the

Virgin and Child (Madrid, Prado) by Rubens with a flower garland by Jan Breughel the elder, also

‘with its ebony frame’. A later inventory notes two Riberas in black frames (see Volk, 1980).

Examples of Spanish ebonized frames can be found on Tintoretto’s portrait of Sebastiano Venier,

Rubens’s portrait of Albert VII of Austria and its pendant Isabella Eugenia (both Vienna, Ksthist.

Mus.), and Gillis van Coninxloo’s Landscape with Woods (New York, Met.). The first is an

adaptation of the parcel-gilt, black reverse rebate cassetta: the flat decorated with a coarse broken

zigzag and the inner gilt moulding with broken ripple pattern. The Rubens portrait frames have

more complex decoration and are altogether more sophisticated but also have a reverse rebate,

projecting the image forward. This was presumably not a construction familiar to Spanish joiners,

as the earlier Tintoretto frame uses it—like the surface pattern—somewhat awkwardly. The Vienna

pair are more developed: they are decorated with repeated ripple patterns in the Dutch style,

together with a wide band of gridlike points. They may well be in their original frames; the

Tintoretto, however, must have been reframed. The male portraits are now especially well set off:

both three-quarter figures, one clad in richly sober black and gold with white lace, the other in dark

armour picked out in gold, they have an admirable foil in the black and gilt of the borders and the

subtle flicker of light on the raised patterns. Van Coninxsloo’s landscape sketch is now in an

unsuitable parcel-gilt ebonized frame with multiple ripple ornaments. Such a frame, scintillating

with broken light over its entire surface and with even the usually plain central torus decorated with

a gilded leaf-and-daisy pattern, shows the assimilation and elaboration of the style by

Spanish/Moorish craftsmen. Originally it would have housed a copper panel painted, possibly by a

Dutch or Flemish artist, with a mythological or religious scene, miniaturized and brilliantly

coloured. Such broad frames with concentric linear patterns emphasize the perspectival recession of

a scene, while the black veneer acts like a proscenium arch, heightening effects of light and colour.

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5. Baroque.

(i) Variety of types.

Other Spanish frames of the 17th century seem to marry the chunky gilded carving of elaborated

Herrera designs and the black and gold of a Dutch ebonized frame. With these is blended a third

feature: the rolling forms of acanthus foliage, derived from early Baroque leaf frames and

transmitted through the strong Spanish presence in Italy. In this respect, Ribera’s St Mary the

Egyptian (1651; Naples, Mus. Civ. Gaetano Filangieri) is interesting for its frame, which is possibly

original. Here, Spanish, northern European and Italian influences are merged in the wide, lacy

border of stained wood, ornamented across its width with bold classical mouldings and an acanthus

band, and edged with a pierced egg-and-dart trim. It combines the Spanish lust for decoration with

the sobriety of the contemporary mood, expressed in the naturalism, contemplativeness and

tenebrism of Ribera’s painting. Less complex products of these mixed influences are the early

Baroque painted frames with slight reverse rebate and vigorous gilt leaf mouldings, which became

common during the 17th century. Ribera’s powerful Baroque style soon influenced his homeland, in

spite of his residence in Naples; he was patronized by the Spanish viceroys there, and many of his

works soon entered the royal collections. Naturalism such as his went hand-in-hand with a use of

organic forms of ornament, and the craftsmen who had subverted the Herrera style into a lavish

mélange of abstract motifs happily adopted the sculptural shapes of foliage, flowers and figures.

Spanish frames, 17th century: (a) architrave frame with gilded, stylized…

These expressive leaf-trimmed frames (see fig.) embody one of the most ubiquitous and

recognizable of Spanish styles, which influenced and was influenced by Neapolitan and Bolognese

styles of the 17th century. Simple examples can be seen on Giovan Battista Recco’s Still-life with

Hare (Munich, Alte Pin.), the anonymous Portrait of a Woman (Cincinnati, OH, A. Mus.; no.

1915.159) and (a), from Murillo’s Children Playing Dice (c. 1665–75; Munich, Alte Pin.). Similar

in profile and the use of parcel-gilt black, they employ a variety of Baroque leaf mouldings, from

the rolled acanthus or petal torus of the Murillo and Recco to the saw-edged leaf of the Cincinnati

painting. These are combined with back-edge trims of leaf ogee, ribbon or bay leaf. More exotic

variations use polychromy and additional mouldings, as in the frame (b) on Zurbarán’s Crucifixion

(1627; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.), where the inner torus with its cross-cut acanthus moulding has been

expanded at the expense of the flat, gaining in substance and opulence by being picked out in black

and gold against a red ground. The flat remains black but is decorated by delicately scrolling centre

and corner panels; the back trim is red and gold. Such a frame is, visually and symbolically, a

powerful setting for the Caravaggist painting of the Crucifixion that it now holds. It also suggests

the early Baroque interior where it would have hung, and where an increasing use of plastic form,

chiaroscuro and colour began to draw painting and architecture closer together to create the unified,

illusionary, dramatic effect of the later 17th century. One more example of this type looks back to

the Dutch frame: between the gilt leaf mouldings, the flat is painted with panels of trompe l’oeil

tortoiseshell on a black ground, mimicking the actual inlaid ebony and shell frames of 17th-century

Spain and the Netherlands. Grimm shows (pl. 134) a related use of painted shell panels.

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The simple black flat/reverse rebate with gilt leaf mouldings also forms the base of a centre/corner

frame in full Baroque style. Here the focal ornaments are strong, gilded, foliate scrolls or key

shapes applied to the dark flat (which may also be marbled or painted like tortoiseshell). This type

lasted into the 18th century, and examples can be seen on Goya’s Portrait of a Prelate (Louisville,

KY, Speed A. Mus.) and Murillo’s Virgin of the Annunciation (1670–80; Houston, TX, Mus. F.A.)

and Young Fruitseller (c. 1670; Munich, Alte Pin.). The last has a prominent ogee moulding in faux

shell replacing the inner-leaf torus; the central rosettes and corner leaf scrolls (see fig., c) encroach

on this ogee from their ground of red marble set with black marble roundels. The richness of the

‘materials’ together with the gilded edgings and carved, painted ornaments are counterbalanced by

the subtle tones of red, cream and black, while the vigorous three-dimensional centres and corners

set up a pattern of lines converging on the spiritualized face and delicate hands of the Virgin. Both

the painting and frame exemplify Spanish Baroque.

Similar leaf mouldings around a central panel, with or without centres and corners, can also appear

with a hollow profile, the flat being replaced by a painted scotia. Examples of this can be seen on

Francesco Salviati’s Incredulity of St Thomas (c. 1547; Paris, Louvre), Still-life with Pears (School

of Zurbarán; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.), Antonio del Castillo’s Penitent St Peter (c. 1635–40; Kansas

City, MO, Nelson–Atkins Mus. A.) and Velázquez’s Don Pedro de Barbarana (Fort Worth, TX,

Kimbell A. Mus.). Again, an eared-corner version of this exists, as seen on El Greco’s Trinitarian

Monk (Kansas City, MO, Nelson–Atkins Mus. A.). As the artist is relatively minor, the Penitent St

Peter has almost certainly remained undisturbed in its original frame (see fig., d), which is superb

and elaborate, with wide edging ogee mouldings of rolled leaves, black marbled scotia and deeply

cut floral and foliate centres and corners. Light, shade and plasticity are emphasized in this design

by the broad central hollow, echoing the monumental form and dramatic lighting of the saint. The

gilt leaf mouldings provide a shimmer of movement around the still image, and the centres and

corners provoke an imaginary grid emphasizing the compositional lines. In the case of the

Velázquez, the dramatic marbled panels—inner black scotia and outer red flat—may have been

repainted at some time, although the scheme is probably original, echoing the black and red of the

don’s costume. The gold centre and corner panels are flattened double flourishes, picked out with

red hatched in gilt and black with gold stippling. The effect is grander than with the Castillo frame,

richness of colour and detail substituting for lush carved borders and demonstrating the natural

empathy of Spanish craftsmen for sculptural ornament, polychromy and decoration on decoration,

even—perhaps especially—within the austerity of Philip IV’s court.

The frame now on the Salviati has a similar Baroque richness; it is a hollow centre and corner

frame, with a red-painted scotia that may be original. This is an example of the fortuitously happy

liaisons between pictures and frames of different periods and countries that do emerge from the

disastrously common lust to reframe. Salviati’s Mannerist colours, contorted poses and diagonal

lines are all served well by the analogous elements of the later frame. Less successfully, the Still-life

with Pears is now in a marbled hollow frame with deeply carved projecting centres and corners.

The sculptural weight of these heavy, voluted ornaments with their cosse de pois (peapod) centres is

reminiscent of ‘Sansovino’ frames (see §II, 4(i) above) and would overwhelm the refined

naturalism of the painted fruit and flowers were it not for their radiant lighting. The frame is carved

at the corners with cherubs’ heads, suggesting that the original painting was religious.

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Spanish frames, 17th century : (a) Baroque frame carved with…

The flat or reverse rebate structure can be gilded overall instead of painted, with centres and corners

and/or with decorated flats. A 17th-century frame like that now on Alessandro Magnasco’s Christ

Attended by Angels (18th century), with an enriched egg trim at the sight edge and a flat carved with

a foliate strapwork chain, is essentially Spanish in its bold approach, curling leaf ends, beads and

cabochons. However, 17th-century frames such as that on Goya’s Annunciation (Boston, MA, Mus.

F.A.), again carved throughout, show links with earlier Bolognese frames, both in their chunky

technique and in their use of similar half-flower motifs. Where the frame is carved over the entire

rail, this richness can be used to emphasize the status of the subject of a portrait, just as in the earlier

retables where it enhanced the celestial qualities of the pictures, or to underline the importance of a

work or its owner, as in the example (see fig.) on Velázquez’s Sibyl with Tabula Rasa (c. 1644–8;

Dallas, TX, S. Methodist U., Meadows Mus. & Gal.).

There are Spanish versions of the Italian Baroque frame; these have more of a conventional

entablature form and can be directly related to contemporary or earlier Italian types. For example,

the frame (b) on Niccolò Rondinelli’s Virgin and Child with an Angel Playing a Lute (Atlanta, GA,

High Mus. A.) has a raised sculptural inner moulding with scrolled leaf or petal forms, enriched on

a wide flat, where they are linked by scrolling foliage. Such patterns can be found on Italian leaf

frames and seem close to the lobed and voluted ornaments of Leopoldo de’ Medici’s frames in the

Palazzo Pitti, Florence (see §II, 4(ii) above). A version of the cassetta form also appears and is

continuously carved, with corners and centres, either gilded, or with painted flat and applied gold

ornaments. An example of a corner-and-centre frame surrounds El Greco’s portrait of Jacomo Bosie

(c. 1600–10; Fort Worth, TX, Kimbell A. Mus.). The profile is again Italian, but the crinkled, dense

form of the centre/corner ornaments on the flat is Spanish. A cassetta with gilt centres and corners

and a painted flat can be found on El Greco’s portrait of Fray Hortensio de Paravicino (c. 1610;

Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). The frame is probably slightly later than the painting (and is perhaps a

modern reframing). It is an ornate setting for the ascetic theologian, and the ordered Baroque

decorations do not respect the Mannerist composition; however, it is a splendid frame, showing the

adaptation of the cassetta to indigenous style. The outer torus moulding has open crosscut bell-

flowers between paired C-scrolls of flattened, clasplike form centred with cabochons, and these,

like the prominent foliate scrolls applied to the black flat, are Spanish in style.

While these various types of modern, oblong frame—adaptable to portraits, still-lifes and history

paintings as well as to religious works—were developing through the 16th and 17th centuries, there

was still, surprisingly, a large demand for huge retable frames. In the rest of Europe the popularity

of great polyptychs had died out by the end of the 16th century; they were replaced during the

Baroque period by single panels mounted behind the altar, occasional triptychs and wall paintings

that formed part of some integrated decorative scheme. In Spain, however, tiered retables were

produced in quantity until the mid-17th century, although less frequently thereafter.

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(ii) Development.

In the 17th century Spain collapsed economically and as a world power, but this was the era of the

Counter-Reformation: the Catholic Church was still immensely wealthy and used its wealth to

propagandize its cause through art and architecture. The Crown was also rich, and, as wars

impoverished Spanish industry and commerce, patronage moved from the guilds and bourgeois

classes back to Court and Church. Craftsmen became dependent on these two sources of work,

though they were more circumscribed than before by the clients’ demands; and these craftsmen

were now likely to be either native Spaniards or migrant Europeans, since in 1570 the Moors were

expelled from Andalusia and in 1609 from the rest of Spain. This was done in the name of Counter-

Reformation religious unity, but crafts and industries were consequently starved of skilled workers,

and Spain grew even poorer.

An embryonic Baroque altarpiece is Ribalta’s Retable of Santiago (1603; Algemesì, church of S

Jaime Apostol). This preserves the screenlike structure of 15th- and 16th-century retables, filling

the vaulted eastern end of the choir with a painted, sculpted polyptych five tiers deep and five

across. The form is of a Renaissance or Mannerist altarpiece, elaborated with Solomonic columns (a

particularly Baroque feature, anticipating by 20 years Bernini’s baldacchino (1623–34) for St

Peter’s, Rome), horizontally divided panels, lantern-like acroteria and a Dutch gable-like crest. The

whole creation, with the massive central sculpture of St James, dominates both the church and its

own painted panels. Much of this evangelizing art was exported to the Spanish colonies, where

there were native Americans to convert and Protestant settlers to exorcize. Latin American frames

are even more exotically ornate; the early 17th-century Retable of Metztitlán (Hidalgo, Mexico,

church of the monastery of the Holy Kings; see de la Maza) is encrusted with ornament like a

barnacled ship. It has swan’s-neck pediments, Islamic stalactite drops and columns spiralled with

vines. It is midway, in period and in its horror vacui, between 16th-century Plateresque and the

Churrigueresque late Baroque of the early 18th century (see below).

Meanwhile in Spain itself, the growth of a purer Baroque style was helped by the accession (1621)

of the great patron and collector, Philip IV. He installed Velázquez as Pintor de Cámara,

commissioned tapestries and pictures from Rubens, sent Velázquez to Italy and employed the

Neapolitan viceroys and Roman ambassadors to track down the finest pictures for the new Buen

Retiro Palace (from 1630). He also instituted a royal workshop, which continued to produce

furniture, including picture frames, into the 19th century. The first royal cabinetmaker was G.

Campo. Against this background Zurbarán began his career, in the mid-17th century becoming

painter to Philip IV. In 1638–9 he painted a retable for the Cartuja of Jerez de la Frontera

(fragments; Grenoble, Mus. Peint. & Sculp.; New York, Met.; Cadiz, Mus. Pint.; for reconstruction

see 1990 exh. cat., p. 46). This followed the earlier work of such artists as Berruguete in having

several large-scale paintings arranged in three tiers of three. It was also, like Ribalta’s altarpiece, an

example of what remate had become—there was no longer any pretence of emulating the Gothic

canopies that had named the genre, but the mixture of painting and sculpture that it now signified

was still current, with carved figures of saints and a Crucifixion beneath a segmental pediment. The

lowest saints were probably set against paired Solomonic columns, and there may have been

triangular Baroque screens between the Crucifixion and the penultimate entablature.

In 1638–9 Zurbarán was commissioned to paint eight large (3.0×2.1 m) pictures devoted to 15th-

century monks of the Hieronymite Order for the sacristy of the monastery at Guadalupe (in situ),

and these were finished by August 1639 and sent unframed from Seville (see Cherry, 1985). They

formed part of an opulent new interior, were set high on the walls between enriched Plateresque

pilasters and decorative panels, and were framed, either under the direction of the architect or the

influential Prior Diego de Montalvo, in striking examples of the elaborated Herrera style. They have

an outer torus of ‘cotton-reel’ mouldings, crossed near the ends of each rail by pairs of giant hooked

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clasps, which appear to take a trompe l’oeil S-form and emerge from under an inner cotton-reel

torus with the hook upwards, encroaching on the picture surface. Cartouches explaining the subjects

are hung in smaller matching borders beneath each painting. These bold, peculiarly Spanish

geometrical ornaments are reflected in the surrounding architectural mouldings that cover the walls

and ceiling. Gemlike lozenges and cabochons are set in the cornice, and there are squared chains,

segmented ovolos, metopes and triglyphs and huge chunky egg-and-dart mouldings, together with a

large Vitruvian scroll. This ornamental extravaganza continues into the chapel of S Jerñnimo

beyond, for which Zurbarán painted an altarpiece and episodes from the Life of St Jerome. They

hang in the same Herrera-type frames as those in the sacristy, and two of these frames have been set

into the retable aedicula.

Typical of Counter-Reformation art in Spain, this theatrical use of varied ornamentation includes an

insistence on native or Hispano-Moresque styles, as though they were identified with the purity of

the Catholic tradition in the peninsula. It is far from an expression of the real political and economic

state of the country, however. From 1635 to 1659 Spain was at war with France, and in 1639

Catalonia revolted and joined with France. During the 1640s, both Portugal and Naples rebelled;

within Spain there was social unrest, an economy that government meddling had all but

extinguished and, finally, plague. Patronage and connoisseurship, nevertheless, flourished against

this grim background. Philip IV bought in quantity from Rubens’s posthumous studio sale and from

the collection of Charles I of England; he commissioned work from Claude and sent Velázquez to

buy works by Jacopo Tintoretto and Veronese in Italy. The 7th Marqués del Carpio became chief

minister, and his palace and art collection were one of the sights of Madrid. 16th-century Italian

paintings—especially Venetian—were the most prized, but contemporary Baroque influence came

through the acquisition of works by Guido Reni, Orazio Gentileschi and van Dyck, as well as

Rubens.

A beneficiary of this hunger for art was the painter Francisco Rizi, who executed major decorative

schemes for the Court and altarpieces for the Church. In 1655 he painted the Martyrdom of St Peter

(Madrid, Fuente el Saz parish church), which has the naturalism, dramatic lighting, colour and

action exemplified by such artists as Rubens. Its framework is solid and grand, reflecting the style

of the paintings; it echoes their sense of movement by having the two lateral sections canted

forwards, forming a tripartite bay, within which the two lower painted side panels are set back flush

with the main surface. This imitates the illusion of dynamic movement found in architectural

façades and the spatial complexity of Baroque wall paintings. Fluted Corinthian columns support

the canted sections, and every moulding of the classical skeleton is enriched. Scrolling strapwork

cartouches cross the entablature of the main Crucifixion of St Peter, crest the segmental pediment

and form acroteria, set on large flattened volutes. Friezes and spandrels are set with roselike

scrolled leaves (a common ornament on 17th-century Spanish moulding frames), and swags of

carved fruit hang from the capitals of the upper tiers. The whole mass of carving is coloured and

gilded, emphasizing the effects of light and movement. A year later Velázquez painted Las Meninas

(1656; Madrid, Prado); the same Baroque illusionism describes complex effects of space and light

within the painting, but colour and violent action are replaced by limited tones and subtle

relationships. Around the depicted room, paintings hang in plain black northern European frames,

which reflect the sombre austerity of the Court and harmonize with Velázquez’s neutral tones. In

this work, majesty is expressed in dignity of bearing rather than cloth of gold, and the King and

Queen reflected in the glass are also framed in a wide black border.

These oppositions of opulence and restraint make up Spanish Baroque. It is a style of painting and

ornament rather than of architecture; the applied arts built on the basis of Mannerism, and

Mannerist elements surfaced increasingly throughout the 17th century. Even on the façade (1667) of

Granada Cathedral, with its Romanesque body and Herrera lines, small Mannerist flourishes

appeared. Italian artists in Spain strengthened the High Baroque tradition: decorative schemes by,

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for example, Agostino Mitelli and Angelo Michele Colonna realized Mitelli’s dynamic and soaring

designs (he was also one of the precursors of the Auricular style). They probably influenced Rizi,

whose illusionistic ceiling (1668) for S Antonio de los Portugueses, Madrid, painted with Juan

Carreðo de Miranda, has the same elongated niches shooting vertically away, the same scrolling

pediments and the same foliate friezes that Mitelli used. Rich though Mitelli’s ornament is,

however, Rizi and Carreðo surpassed it, adding segmental arches between swan’s-neck pediments,

replacing Ionic with spirally fluted Solomonic columns and breaking the inner ‘frame’ of the ceiling

by lavish, slightly Auricular cartouches. A similar hint of the Auricular can be seen in Rizi’s

extraordinary illusionistic fresco (1678) for the chapel of the Miracle, convent of Descalzas Reales,

Madrid. Here, a door opens on to another, imagined chapel, and above the painted door is a

representation of the Annunciation, ‘framed’ in melting strapwork mixed with flowers and masks,

such as would be seen in works by 18th-century followers of José Benito de Churriguera.

Increasingly busy decoration, multiplying Flemish Mannerist details on a Baroque structure and

anticipating the Churrigueresque style (see below), is associated with the altarpieces of Claudio

Coello. Coello knew Carreðo and like him painted decorative schemes. Those in Toledo Cathedral

repeat the native and large-scale classical ornaments that appear in the sacristy of the monastery of

Guadalupe. Similarly, the retable (1668) by Coello, in the Benedictine church of S Plácido, Madrid,

has a classically-inspired frame with such Baroque enrichments as fluted Composite columns, a

frieze of roselike curling leaves, carved and painted masks facing three sides of supporting pillars,

and quasi-Auricular cartouches. A sketch (Munich, Kleine Gal.) for or from this work, with integral

painted frame, shows an even more voluptuous arrangement. Here, the round arch of the actual

retable is given greater depth, hinting at a horseshoe Moorish arch, and is supported on Solomonic

columns twined with vines. This may be a later replica, as the same motifs are reproduced in the

work that brought together Coello and Churriguera: the retable of S Esteban, Salamanca (1692–3).

Churriguera’s three sons and such followers as Narciso Tomé, Francisco Hurtado Izquierdo and

Pedro de Ribera took up his ornate Baroque vocabulary and elaborated it with Mannerist motifs into

a fantasy of flowing multiple mouldings, estìpite pilasters (broken into geometric panels and

cartouches with several capitals) and ornaments taken from the picture frames he made (see

Churrigueresque). The resultant restless mass, picked out with gilding, was spread over every

surface of an altarpiece and every wall of a church. When exported to the colonies, even more

enrichment was added to impress native South Americans with the magnificence of their

conquerors. The retable of S Esteban shows the first flourishes of the style. The frame, c. 30 m high,

is a manifesto of Spanish High Baroque. The cornice, halfway up the frame, follows the receding

and projecting planes of the three-niche plan in an echo of the Granada Cathedral façade, the

rhythmic movement being supported below by eight Solomonic columns, paired one behind the

other and twined with ornament like those in Coello’s sketch. The centre of the cornice is broken by

a Baroque shell, which protrudes into Coello’s painting of the martyr above and is reflected in an

immense crest, supported on a gigantic voluted clasp. Foliate roses, urns, margents and drooping

bunches of carved and gilt flowers, angels and double estìpite capitals are among the other

enrichments. The frames of Spanish retables always tended to dominate the paintings, the strong

colouring and emotional power of which perhaps developed in reaction to this. In this altarpiece the

frame has triumphed, and the painting, pushed into the minor arch at the top, is completely

overwhelmed—huge though it is—by the carving around and beneath it. The central niche is

occupied by a great custodia; shaped like a Baroque domed cathedral, with colonnettes echoing the

forest of Solomonic columns around it, it is also more insistent than Coello’s painting of the

Martyrdom of St Stephen.

Hurtado Izquierdo’s altarpiece (1710s–20s) for the chapel of S José, Seville, takes this fantasy of

carving to its extreme. Here there is no frame (or it is all frame); the architectural surround has

dissolved into the frenetic ornamentation of every surface, giving no space for the eye to rest. Free-

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standing sculptures, all different in scale, ropes of putti, inexplicable moulded brackets and

cartouches, and estìpite columns with multiple capitals fill the whole wall behind the altar with

continuous, restless motion. This effect is increased by the Baroque use of lighting as a sculptural

tool, so that artificially strengthened shadows lend a theatrical brilliance to the highlighted niches of

the Virgin and Christ. Dramatic gestures and wind-torn robes give a further dynamism, and the

sense of movement is heightened by a seemingly impossibly early appearance (given Hurtado

Izquierdo’s death in 1725) of Rococo in Spain. Asymmetric shells and rocaille cartouches jostle

with serpentine strapwork, frame half-length sculpted saints, halo cherubs’ heads and panel Christ’s

niche like a French boudoir.

France became an influence again in Spain when the Habsburg line died out on Charles II’s death in

1700, and after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13), the Bourbon Philip V became the

King of Spain. There was a greater emphasis on French artists: Philip’s collection included work by

Watteau, and he commissioned paintings from Michel-Ange Houasse and Jean Ranc. Spain’s Italian

possessions passed to the Holy Roman Empire, but Philip’s second queen was Elisabeth Farnese of

Parma, and the King employed such Italian artists as Andrea Procaccini and Francesco Solimena, so

there was still stylistic contact with Italy. In the 1720s, however, ornamental art in Spain seemed

little affected by these influences. Tomé’s screen or Transparente (1720–32), backing on to the high

altar of Toledo Cathedral, is characteristic of the period. Once more there is no means of separating

frame and content as the architectural structure is so intimately related to the tiers of sculpted

scenes. The Mannerist elements are similar to those of the S José Altarpiece—not estìpite pilasters,

but torn, trompe l’oeil leather sheaths on the lowest columns, curving entablatures and a strong

vertical emphasis.

6. Rococo.

By the time French ornamental influence took effect, it seemed to be out of date already: once more

Spain was lagging behind the decorative currents of the east and north, unaffected by the aberration

of Hurtado Izquierdo’s early Rococo. In 1727 the 9th Conde de Aranda (d 1742) built a factory in

Alcora producing faience to designs by Jacques Callot, who had died nearly a century before, and

Jean Berain I, who had died in 1711. These designs confirmed the Baroque rut in which Spain was

firmly set until the mid-18th century, merely varying it by Callot’s inclinations to a pre-Auricular

style and Berain’s to a pre-Rococo. True Rococo ornament was introduced into Spain via the Real

Academia de San Fernando, established by Ferdinand VI in 1752. Its director was Corrado

Giaquinto of Naples, who helped Matteo Gasparini (d 1774) and José Canops with the decoration of

the Palacio Real of Madrid. The dressing-room of Charles III (after 1760) is in the extravagant

asymmetrical Rococo manner developed decades earlier in France. All the elements of the full-

blooded style are there: chinoiserie niches in the cove, carved and gilded looking-glasses, floral

curlicued borders on the wall hangings and polychrome scrolling branches on the ceiling. Relatively

few such interiors were produced in Spain, possibly because of the long duration of Baroque there,

as in Italy (with the exception of Venice). Rococo motifs appeared more frequently in the minor

arts. The Conde de Aranda’s factory began to produce earthenware plaques with integral moulded

frames; these had high profiles, rocaille centre/corner cartouches and crests.

Rococo furniture was also produced in quantity, perhaps to rectify the lack of Rococo architecture;

at first it was coarse and schematic, distinguishable from Baroque carving only by its asymmetry.

Charles III halted the trade in French luxury furniture, and Crown and Court were forced to rely on

native craftsmen—often not specialists as in Paris, but joiners and carvers of all work, who could

produce anything from a retable to a girandole. They decorated everything in the same mixture of

gilding and polychromy, and a sofa might display the same cartouches as an altarpiece. Similar

motifs appeared on mirror frames (known as cornucopias because of their lavish fruit, flower and

voluted ornaments) and especially on beds. These 18th-century beds illustrate the versatility of

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Spanish wood-carvers and bridge the gap between furniture and picture frames. They developed in

the district around Girona and are furnished with huge decorative headboards that are really pictures

with asymmetric Rococo frames. Made in one piece, and often free-standing from the bed or hung

on the wall behind it, they are usually painted with religious scenes, angels, cherubs etc, or with

family crests, and are surrounded with integral carved, sometimes gilded, borders of C- and S-

scrolls, rinceaux, floral swags and rocailles, all in a vigorous but coarse native style. Examples can

be seen in casas Ventñs and Solà, Olot, and in the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid.

Spanish Rococo and Neo-classical frames, c. 1750–1820: (a) bolection

frame…

Picture frames in the same style were produced, but for important paintings frames of a rather more

French cast were used, either executed in Spain by French-influenced craftsmen or imported (as far

as the King’s restrictions allowed). On Luìs Meléndez’s Still-life: The Afternoon Meal (New York,

Met.) is a straight-sided ogee frame (see fig.) with sculpted Rococo corners and shallow-relief

details. This is an example of Spanish craftsmen emulating an imported French style and

endeavouring to assimilate it to the Baroque profile and ornaments they understood. Hence, an

18th-century work has a distinctly 17th-century air, the rocaille S-scrolls sitting oddly with the

corner leaf clasps. From a distance, however, the Baroque form triumphs, and the solid profile and

corner/centre focal points complement the curving lines and diagonal composition of Meléndez’s

picture. In contrast, the frame of François-Hubert Drouais’s Dauphin Louis, Son of Louis XV

(Madrid, Prado) is fully Rococo. It is comparatively restrained, with shells, flowers and a touch of

asymmetry; there are even some early Neo-classical details. Its purity gives it a non-Spanish

appearance: it is unlike the rustic vigour of the Rococo bedheads or the interior in Luis Paret’s

Charles III Lunching before his Court (c. 1770; Madrid, Prado), where the room is hung with

tapestries enclosed in floral borders like polychrome carvings and where the asymmetrical mirror

frame possesses a distinctly native character.

Charles III provided a background for the two versions of Rococo—sophisticated French and naive

Spanish—as he moved his country from great impoverishment and stagnation to a period of

prosperity, such that Spain could support the complexity of full-blown Rococo. Two levels of

craftsmen dealt with the dual styles. Firstly, designers and cabinetmakers such as the architects

Ventura Rodrìguez and José Lñpez (c. 1725–95), who ruled the royal workshops in the late 1760s

and worked with the carver Tomás Castro, could reproduce French Louis XV frames or, equally,

the Neo-classical frames and furniture that also appeared in the 1760s. Secondly, there were their

lesser cousins, the craftsmen-joiners, who dealt competently with all types of artefact and gave each

style a Hispanic flavour. (Native techniques were not abandoned even at the highest level, however:

the royal workshops still employed a skilled polychromer.)

In the colonies, Rococo does not seem to have had a very strong impact; Churrigueresque Baroque

had too great a hold. Works such as the retable of Our Lady of Guadalupe (late 18th century;

Mexico City Cathedral; see de la Maza) show again how Rococo elements have been grafted on to

the basic Baroque–Mannerist style. Shaped painted panels—ovals and eared ovals, with an ogee-

topped panel above—are set in a round-arched structure and edged with light mouldings. There is

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no asymmetry, and Baroque volutes and a heavy central entablature compete with light floral

scrolls.

7. Neo-classical and early 19th century.

Neo-classicism was adopted more quickly than Rococo in Spain; this was due partly to the historic

influence of the classical Herrera style and partly to reaction against the long-enduring Baroque

manner, which had lasted in Spain for more than a century and a half if Mannerism, the

Churrigueresque and the Rococo are included. It was also due partly to the enthusiasm for the

classical of the brothers Diego de Villanueva and Juan de Villanueva, who promulgated, both

theoretically and practically, an alternative to the reign of the theatrical curve and volute. An early

Neo-classical building is the Casita del Prìncipe near Madrid, designed by Juan de Villanueva in

1784 for the future Charles IV. Juan’s brother Diego had written on the revival of classicism in

Spain, following interest in the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii, and the first experimental

designs by the French Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain. Between Diego’s theories and Juan’s practice,

however, the eternal Spanish craving for colour and decoration infected the classical ideals of

spareness and clarity, and the interiors of the building are richly ornamented in Louis XVI style.

Yet, although the cornices, dado rails, door-frames etc are pattern books of multiple architectural

mouldings picked out in gold, the picture frames are quite plain. Mainly hollow or ogee in profile,

they are either completely unornamented or touched with restrained geometrical decoration,

possibly the simplest yet in the history of Spanish frames. They are evidently designed to mediate

between the Baroque paintings they house and the floral silk wall hangings, resuming in this role

the classic supportive function of a frame, which had been little apparent in Spain until now.

From around the same time comes another simple Neo-classical design (see fig., d), which is also a

gallery or ‘livery’ frame. A flat gilt border, it has three deep flutes along each rail and knobbed

roundels mounted on squares at each corner (a 16th-century Italian motif). It was used in the last

quarter of the 18th century to frame 45 still-lifes (most in Madrid, Prado) by Meléndez, which were

assembled in a unified scheme to decorate the apartments of Charles IV’s son Ferdinand in the

palace at Aranjuez, near Madrid. The chunkiness and blown-up treatment of the ornament is

typically Spanish; the oversized guilloche filling the whole flat on the frame of Anton Raphael

Meng’s Maria Luisa of Parma (Madrid, Prado) is similar.

Another Neo-classical gallery frame (see fig., b) can be found on important paintings in the Prado

(on those inventoried in the Madrid Alcázar in 1666, and those in Isabel de Farnesio’s collection in

1746), which were probably reframed between c. 1760 and c. 1790 on the orders of Charles III.

This was to fit them to the new interiors of the Palacio Real, Madrid, which Charles’s father had

begun in 1738 and which was decorated in his own reign with both Neo-classical and Rococo

rooms. These frames bridge the two styles, being in the transitional French taste of the late Rococo,

when symmetry and classical ornament were reintroduced. They have an outer bird’s-beak

moulding, spiralled with acanthus leaves, a small ribbon moulding, plain hollow and an astragal

bound with crossed ribbons. They can be found on Murillo’s Holy Family, Nicolas de Largillierre’s

portrait of Maria Anna Victoria de Bourbón (1724), Veronese’s Venus and Adonis (1582) and

Titian’s Knight with a Clock (all Madrid, Prado). The effect of the two larger mouldings, with

enrichments between plain reposes, is of a restrained spiralling geometry, underlined by the twisted

ribbon, and of a slight shimmer of light. Obviously suitable to all genres of painting, it is perhaps

not quite weighty enough for the larger works; in fact, it has an unusual delicacy for a Spanish

frame. Richer designs followed later, employing a range of classical ornament, such as the cross-

fluted hollow frame (see fig., c), which manages to echo the Herrera style in its illusionistic tongued

protrusion of fillets and double row of overlapping dentils. Pompeo Batoni’s William Hamilton

(?1770s; Madrid, Prado) also has a frame with a Hispanic air; double fillets down each rail hold

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runs of carved bay leaves, crossing at the corners to form cassettes holding paterae; further

decorations include a prominent, enriched egg-and-dart trim and a bead-and-bobbin trim.

Charles IV ruled over this Neo-classical period in Spain; he was a collector (of Flemish and Italian

Renaissance works as well as of paintings by Ribera); he also built the Pavilion of the Real Casa del

Labrador, Aranjuez, for which Isidro González-Velázquez (c. 1765–after 1829) designed house,

furniture and accessories, including frames, all in early 19th-century Neo-classical taste. Charles

was a weak ruler and, having joined a coalition against France after Louis XVI’s execution, in 1795

he was forced to ally with France. There was a reaction against French fashions and influence at this

time, and the ‘neutrality’ of Neo-classicism aided its stylistic hold in Spain. In 1808 Charles was

forced to give the crown to Napoleon’s brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who began to suppress the

religious orders and to sequestrate their goods. Fortunately, Spain was liberated in 1814 before the

process had gone too far; one result might have been the splitting up of thousands of Spanish

retables still in situ in churches and monasteries, the panels being sent to decorate the Louvre and

the frames and settings being irretrievably lost, as has happened in Italy and France.

After the restoration of the monarchy (1814), the prevalent style during Ferdinand VII’s reign

(1814–33) had much in common with the French Empire style, in spite of the war with France and

earlier reaction against its influence. Empire furniture was made in quantity in central and south-

eastern Spain. Mirror frames were generally in the Empire taste, but picture frames tended to repeat

18th-century designs and were either Neo-classical or Baroque. This imitation increased through the

19th century, and under Isabella II (reg 1833–68) frames were a mixture of past Spanish styles and

of anonymous 19th-century French stock patterns. Towards the end of Isabella’s reign the country’s

prosperity began to increase again, and in 1876 Spain was made a constitutional monarchy under

Alfonso XII (reg 1874–85). With greater wealth and political stability, the decrease in its artistic

aloofness accelerated, and outside influences took more rapid root than ever before. William Morris

was a model: the Proustian Room in the Villa Ocejo, Comillas, decorated for a visit of Alfonso in

1882, imitates Morris’s wall coverings and friezes, although the frames are, characteristically, not

yet part of this Arts and Crafts style, being Baroque, Neo-classical or replica 18th-century French.

8. Late 19th and 20th centuries.

By the 1880s, as in England and France, wealthy industrial barons wished to confirm their own rise

by investing in contemporary works of art. This coincided with the modernismo movement in

Spain, which lasted from the 1880s to the 1910s, and which had much in common with Art

Nouveau. It involved the use of new industrial processes in architecture and the applied arts, and the

revival of a national style in a contemporary idiom. It swiftly took hold, encouraged by the new

money waiting to support it, and by its expression through such designers as Antoni Gaudì. He was

influenced by the Gothic vocabulary of Viollet-le-Duc and by the nationalistic spirit in his native

Catalonia, where the medieval style of its prosperous days was also a defiant gesture to the

classicism associated with Spain’s oppression by France. Gothic was also more in tune than

classicism with the Spanish love of colour and decoration. Islamic motifs and Rococo chinoiseries

were sources for Gaudì’s work, as was the current interest in organic forms of ornament; he

developed the whiplash curve introduced by English designers, proclaiming the curved line as

God’s, the straight as Man’s. He was also concerned to produce a ‘complete’ work, like the unified

schemes of the Baroque period, where every item of an interior (furniture, floors, walls and frames)

would reflect the same taste.

The modernismo movement lasted slightly longer in Spain than Art Nouveau in the rest of Europe,

where it was already fading after its climax at the Exposition Universelle of 1900. One of Picasso’s

earliest works is a decorated picture frame (Barcelona, Mus. Picasso) and, influenced by the

modernismo idea of the ‘complete work’, he also designed an interior scheme. The frame takes the

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form of a stripped Classical aedicula, with vestigial entablature and plinth; the top frieze is deeper

than the other rails, and the whole is painted with symbolic motifs of a mother and child, fish,

amphorae, flowers and an Olympian face. It follows in the line of artist-designed and decorated

frames that were produced in quantity in Germany, Austria and England during the last decades of

the 19th century, often in this pared-down classical style, and coincides with a term in Picasso’s

work in which he had still not broken from the Symbolism of the period. Picasso reworked this

romanticized classical style and subject-matter in a series of decorative panels with integral

‘frames’ for the villa of La Mimoserie, Biarritz (1918; priv. col.). Here monumentality replaced

Symbolism in representations of L’Abondance, La Ronde etc, and the ‘frames’ follow this, with

scalloped borders around a deep plain margin or around a ‘fillet’ set with tiny roundels. Similar

fillets bind the ‘frames’ to the room itself and its features, repeating the roundel motif along the

skirting, around the windows and between the sections of panelling. The ‘framed’ images are set

against a starry ground, which is echoed in negative shades on the ceiling. This concept of the

‘complete’ interior, although unfurnished, must have been influenced by Gaudì.

Picasso experimented with different types of frame, painted and applied, and also included frames

and fragments of moulding within his pictures. Many of his canvases include integral painted

borders, as in the black illusionist shaded frame painted around an abstract from the artist’s own

collection (see Picasso’s Picassos: An Exhibition from the Musée Picasso, exh. cat., ed. D. Bozo, T.

Hilton and R. Penrose; London, Hayward Gal., 1981). Oval Cubist works of 1912 (e.g. the collage

Still-life with Chair-caning; Paris, Mus. Picasso) were given actual frames of rope; Turner had

framed marine paintings appropriately in ship’s cable, but here the rope seems rather an aspect of

the technique of collage. Some paintings of 1914 examine the idea of the frame within a frame and

include faux frames—either painted imitation mouldings or applied borders, as in the scrolling leaf-

and-berry wallpaper frieze on Pipe and Sheet of Music (Houston, TX, Mus. F.A.). Here Picasso’s

signature is set on a ‘label’ on the centre bottom ‘rail’, parodying museum labels as the frieze

mimics a carved Neo-classical frame. Other works of the same year include segments of

architectural frame mouldings as background, surround or simply part of a still-life, while several

collages are mounted within shallow boxes that ‘frame’ them or within an actual frame. Joan Mirñ

also used found frames, most notably in Portrait (1950; New York, Mr and Mrs Pierre Matisse priv.

col.), using a 19th-century picture the frame of which reminded him of Gaudì’s work as well as his

own, and which he re-created as his own.

Juan Gris used frames within his paintings; like Picasso, he incorporated them as part of a still-life,

while many of his portraits have reddish-brown integral borders that sometimes swell into the area

of the actual picture. Again, Mirñ did this later on, and Picasso’s late graphic works carry their own

representations of three-dimensional carved wooden frames . Such devices test the idea of what the

work is and also circumvent the need for the real, movable frame at a time when frames were losing

much of their ornamental and crafted quality and becoming mass-produced functional elements of

protection. They also provide, fortuitously, for the period later in the 20th century when curators

unframed many modern works in order for the public to see them ‘as the artist saw them’. Whether

the artist would have countenanced this elimination of immediate context and necessary transition is

rarely discussed, but where he has provided his own border—even as a joke or a parody—the role

of the frame is clearly underlined and its acceptance by the maker of the image highlighted.

Bibliography

R. R. Tatlock and others: Spanish Art (London, 1927)

G. Bazin: ‘L’Art espagnol au Musée des arts décoratifs’, Gaz. B.-A. (1929), pp. 46–53

C. R. Post: A History of Spanish Painting, 14 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1930)

164

F. de la Maza: ‘Mexican Colonial Retablos’, Gaz. B.-A., 6th ser., xxv (1944), pp. 175–86

J. Folchi i Torres, ed.: L’art catala, 2 vols (Barcelona, 1957)

J. Claret Rubire and Marquis of Lozoya: Muebles de estilo español des de el gotico hasta el siglo

XIX (Barcelona, 1962)

L. Feduchi: El mueble español (Barcelona, 1969)

F. J. Sánchez Cantñn: The Prado (London, 1971)

R. Mulcahy: ‘The High Altarpiece of the Basilica of San Lorenzo de El Escorial’, Burl. Mag., cxxii

(1980), pp. 188–92

W. Rubin, ed.: Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective (New York and London, 1980)

M. C. Volk: ‘New Light on a 17th-century Collector: The Marquis of Leganes’, A. Bull., lxii

(1980), pp. 56–68

J. Claret Rubire: Encyclopaedia of Spanish Period Furniture Designs (New York, 1984)

P. Cherry: ‘The Contract for Francisco de Zurbarán’s Paintings of Hieronymite Works for the

Sacristy of the Monastery of Guadalupe’, Burl. Mag., cxxvii (1985), pp. 374–81

E. Tufts: Luìs Meléndez: 18th-century Master of the Spanish Still-life (Columbia, MO, 1985)

F. Davis: ‘Not All Rapture’, Country Life, clxxxii (19 May 1988), pp. 208–9

A. E. Pérez Sánchez and others: The Prado (London, 1988)

A. Mitchell and A. Garrido: Spain: Interiors, Gardens, Architecture, Landscape (London, 1990)

G. Worsley: ‘La Casita del Principe, El Prado’, Country Life, clxxxiv (20 Dec 1990), pp. 56–61

Polyptyques: Le Tableau multiple du moyen âge au vingtième siècle (exh. cat., ed. C. Clément;

Paris, Louvre, 1990)

J. Brown: The Golden Age of Painting in Spain (New Haven and London, 1991)

For further bibliography see §I above.

Paul Mitchell, Lynn Roberts

Copyright © Oxford University Press 2007 — 2015.

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Frame, §IX: USA

article url: http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T029196pg9

Frame, §IX: USA

IX. USA.

A distinguishing attribute of American picture frames is the extreme diversity of styles. Primarily

influenced by European designs (like other American decorative arts), American frames are a

curious hybrid of many English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and German styles. In spite of this

cross-cultural barrage of influences from a variety of immigrant craftsmen, there has gradually

emerged a basic characteristic of simplicity and strength of design. The reduction of complex

ornamentation has been a common theme throughout the constantly changing styles of American

frames. This process of simplification also appears in the altering of the profiles or shapes of the

mouldings. Such an approach was possibly due to the American craftsman’s desire to design a new

order. It could also have been caused by the lack of strict trade guilds, which allowed for a greater

latitude in patternmaking and a freedom that may have encouraged creativity. Shortage of

traditional moulding profiles and gilding materials may also have furthered this tendency towards

rustic approaches to framing. In rural areas, frames were often finished with common house paint.

In some cases frames were marbled or grained to create a more refined appearance. The Decorative

Arts Photographic Library at Winterthur, DE, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, in

Winston-Salem, NC, and the International Institute for Frame Study (founded in the 1990s) in

Washington, DC, are three major repositories of information on American framemakers and dealers

of picture frames.

1. Before 1776.

Although frames created by 18th-century craftsmen in such metropolitan areas as Boston, New

York and Philadelphia echo more closely the sentiments of English taste, those produced in rural

areas were more idiosyncratic and naive. Many framemakers in Colonial America had been

appprenticed in England or else used English pattern books for inspiration. Thomas Chippendale’s

Gentleman and Cabinet-maker’s Director (London, 1754) was an influential and widely distributed

manual of the decorative arts. Although in the major cities there were a few framemakers, picture

frames were usually imported or made by a local craftsman out of window or door trim. The usual

method of fabrication for these early frames was to hand-gouge the wood with a variety of curved,

shaped, moulding planes. Methods of joinery are often an important clue in establishing a

provenance for a frame. For example, the lap-joint or mortice-and-tenon construction method

usually indicates a sophisticated European training. On the other hand, the simple 45% miter cut,

joined with glue and nails, is more typically found in American-made frames. The splined corner,

an elaborate technique often employed on large, highly embellished, carved European frames, made

use of a compression joint. A piece of hardwood, tapered and chamfered, is inlaid into the back of

the frame perpendicular to the mitered corner.

American framemakers in mid-18th-century Boston were considered to be inferior to and more

expensive than their English counterparts. For example, the Boston selectmen were considering the

purchase of a frame for a portrait of Peter Faneuil (Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.) by John Smibert. They

stated that ‘it could be got in London cheaper and better than with us.’ In comparing the Rococo

frames on two portraits by John Singleton Copley there is a marked difference between the frame

on the painting of Mrs John Scollay (1763; New York, Kennedy Gals) and the frame on Mr Isaac

Smith (1769; New Haven, CT, Yale U. A.G.). The profile on the earlier portrait is quite simple and

166

consists of two flat boards that have been joined at an angle and later carved with typical foliate

designs and piercing. The profile on the later portrait is an elaborately shaped deep scoop with a

gadrooned sight edge. In addition to the dynamic carving of foliage and floral patterns, there is a

separately carved and pierced shell at the top centre indicating a more sophisticated approach than

the earlier, more rustic frame. Although there is no conclusive evidence as to who made either of

these frames, it might be surmised that the simpler, more provincial frame on Mrs Scollay was made

by a local craftsman influenced by Chippendale’s Director rather than a highly trained London

framemaker who was bound by a strict adherence to style and form. The analysis of wood type does

not yield absolute proof, however, as north-east American white pine was exported to London

during the 18th century. 95. American Rococo frame on John Singleton Copley’s Mrs John Scollay,

889×686 mm, 1763 (New York, Kennedy Galleries Inc.) 96. American Rococo frame on John

Singleton Copley’s Mr Isaac Smith, 1.27×1.02 m, 1769 (New Haven, CT, Yale University Art

Gallery)

2. 1776 and after.

After the Revolution, Americans were inclined to produce frames on a large scale in their own

manufacturing facilities rather than to import them. Taste in frame styles leant towards the Neo-

classical patterns that were adopted via French influence. The simple restrained elegance of the

Louis XVI style profile was easily adapted to the austere Yankee mentality.

Charles Willson Peale’s painting of Henrietta Margaret Hill (1790; Winston-Salem, NC, Mus.

Early S. Dec. A.) illustrates the use of the Classical ornamentation of egg-and-dart, lamb’s tongue

and twisted ribbonwork carved into a flat shallow profile. Peale, the first museologist in America,

was adamant about frame styles chosen for clients, as evidenced by a letter he wrote in 1807 stating,

‘A good picture deserves a good frame and a bad picture may sometimes preserve its place longer

by having a handsome frame.’ The Neo-classical taste continued into the first quarter of the 19th

century, later evolving into the French Empire style of wide, deep-scooped mouldings ornamented

with anthemion motifs in the corners. These were fabricated with low-relief composition or gesso

putty.

Again, as in the previous century, the American penchant for design was one of simplification and

reduction. In the 1830s, through the elimination of ornamentation, mouldings that were strong and

simple yet elegant were created. In rural areas frames were made using raised cornerblocks, and

sometimes floral and foliate designs were stencilled on to the painted surface . The most typical

finish was to paint the frame black, although there were many regional variations that have yet to be

catalogued and documented. During the 1850s, as mass production increased, individual expression

and innovative frame designs were not typically pursued. Factories were producing larger amounts

of heavily ornamented moulding, previously unavailable to the average consumer. Important

centres of manufacturing fluctuated between such larger cities as Boston, New York, Philadelphia

and as far south as Baltimore. Although Baltimore was by now considered to be one of the largest

furniture manufacturing centres, in 1850 there were over 130 framemaking concerns in New York

alone. Accelerated production created a stagnation in original designs, and the repetition of

composition patterns was standard in the industry. Hand-carved frames were rare. Once a pattern

was created, extrusion machines, embossing wheels and similar mass-production techniques were

employed to make moulding by the length for national distribution. 97. American raised

cornerblock frame, 502×444 mm, 1830 (Washington, DC, Gold Leaf Studios)

Some innovations in design appeared in the 1870s. For example, a stencilling technique using glue

and sand to create a textured effect similar to the patterning on a giraffe was used until the 1880s.

Orientalist, Moorish, Gothic Revival and finally Renaissance Revival styles were popular during the

last quarter of the 19th century. Most of these frames were constructed with composition, which

167

allowed for a greater number to be produced. James McNeill Whistler, active mainly in England,

was among the first Americans to react to the Victorian penchant for superfluous ornamentation; his

frame designs were to prove particularly influential (see §IV, 10 above). As a popular reaction to

such ornamentation, frames were often made from a simple gilded plank of oak made from quarter-

sawn wood. This style of frame became popular during the last quarter of the 19th century.

Thomas Eakins often used this format to frame his work (e.g. Professor Henry A. Rowland;

Andover, MA, Phillips Acad., Addison Gal.). For some of his portraits, he carved into the wood a

design that related to the subject. On small works, he used a simple pine plank with no gilding. His

use of this style of frame was caused by the ever-increasing influence of the Arts and Crafts

Movement, which took hold in the USA at the end of the 19th century. Although the austerity of

this approach was contrary to the opulence of the preceding generation, the simplicity appealed to

the American sentiment.

Not all artists, however, used this simple type of frame. Many were inspired by the Renaissance

Revival that was adopted by the architect Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White. His sphere of

influence was widespread; he received many important commissions and was involved in the

selection of paintings and their frames for several of his clients. He was friendly with many of the

leading artists of the day and often designed frames for them. Abbott Handerson Thayer, for

example, used White’s designs for his paintings, as they were particularly well suited to his style of

idealistic realism. Thayer painted women as angels to complement White’s tabernacle frames.

These frames were sometimes made by a leading framemaking company, Newcomb-Macklin Co.,

which had a showroom in New York and a factory in Chicago. Their patternbooks show the wide

diversity of styles available to artists and collectors alike . 98. American frame designs from a

pattern book by Stanford White, published posthumously for Newcomb-Macklin Co., New York

and Chicago, c. 1922

Arthur F. Mathews, a Californian artist and designer, made hand-carved, polychromed frames for

his paintings. Many of the floral patterns carved into the frames were inspired from such indigenous

flora as orange blossoms and leaves. These images were also painted into the background of the

painting, creating a harmonious and integrated combination of painting and frame. The tabernacle-

style frames that he made were also polychromed and accented with an embellishment of gold leaf.

These frames, often including such symbolic images as the swan, encompassed allegorical paintings

and in some cases helped to convey subtle messages about the meaning of the painting. For his

paintings in the Tonalist style, he created frames with subtle variations to accent the muted, sombre

tones.

In Boston, another Tonalist painter, Herman Dudley Murphy (1867–1945), started a framemaking

concern called the Carrig-Rohane Shop, which had a wider sphere of influence than Mathews’s

work. Charles Prendergast (1869–1948) and Walfred Thulin (1878–1949) collaborated with

Murphy to revolutionize framemaking in the USA. They made frames that were interpretations of

European designs: hand-carved, carefully gilded and toned to harmonize with the paintings. Each

frame was signed and dated on the verso. In New Hope, PA, during the first quarter of the 20th

century, Fredrick Harer (1880–1948) designed and carved frames in the Carrig-Rohane manner. His

apprentice, Bernard Badura (1896–1986), carried on the tradition of hand-carving and gilding, with

each frame carefully wrought and chromatically keyed into the painting. The designs were

distinctive and innovative, often made from hand-shaped wood. They reflected the new influences

of Art Deco and other Modernist architecture.

Many artists were involved with the creation of frames for their own paintings. John Marin,

handcrafted his frames with simple carving and painted the surfaces with varied colours to match

the sentiment of his paintings. Marin used the frame as a device to integrate the flat surfaces of his

168

abstract canvases with the frame, causing the view to see the frame and painting as one complete

entity. Marin was exhibited and promoted by American photographer and art art dealer Alfred

Stieglitz in his 291 Gallery, along with other Modernist artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Athur B.

Davies and Lyonel Feininger. All of these artists were obsessed with the simplified presentation of

their art work. Most of their streamlined patterns were made by framer/artist George F. Of. This

second generation New York framemaker was responsible for making and designing many of the

frames used by this circle of influential artists. With the advent of the Armory Show of 1914, a new

era of design developed that was more restrained and austere, with the reduction of frames to a

single strip of wood. The formal elements of the frames were carefully considered in relation ot the

paintings. Proportion , scale, texture, colour and tone were all evaluated in context with the new

Modernist aesthetic.

Henry Heydenryk (1905–94) was born in the Netherlands into a family of established framemakers,

but he moved to the USA in the early 1930s to set up his own company and soon developed a

reputation as one of the country’s leading frame specialists. He popularized the rustic ‘wormy

chestnut’ look in the 1940s and 1950s using mouldings that were angular and styled after the

sweeping and streamlined look of contemporary Minimalist architecture. He also patented a self-

lighting picture frame called the ‘Heyden-Ray’; specially designed light bulbs were inserted into the

deepened rabbet of the frame, illuminating evenly the surface of the canvas. Heydenryk’s studio

received many specialized commissions from artists, as well as making reproductions of classical

designs. In 1960 Robert Kulicke (b 1924), an artist and designer, created the welded-corner metal

frame for MOMA, New York. In 1964 he developed the Plexi-box frame and in 1967 he produced

the first metal section frame for international distribution. Such abstract Expressionist artists as

Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell were among the first to use Kulicke’s

designs. The need for a new order of frame was more evident as these painters became the ‘modern

masters’. The thin strip of metal or plastic became the classic profile associated with their work, and

Kulicke was the only frame designer who responded to their needs.

Bibliography

H. Heydenryk: The Art and History of Frames (New York, 1963)

H. Heydenryk: The Right Frame (New York, 1964)

The Art of Charles Prendergast (exh. cat. by R. Wattenmaker, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers U. A.

Mus.; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.; 1968)

R. Maryanski: Antique Picture Frame Guide (Niles, IL, 1973)

H. Jones: Mathews: Masterpieces of the California Decorative Style (Santa Barbara and Salt Lake

City, 1980)

Herman Dudley Murphy (exh. cat. by W. Coles, New York, Graham Gal., 1982)

W. Adair: The Frame in America, 1700–1900: A Survey of Fabrication Techniques and Styles

(Washington, DC, 1983)

A. Katlan: American Artist’s Materials Suppliers Directory (Madison, CT, 1987)

The Art of the Frame: An Exhibition Focusing on American Frames of the Arts and Crafts

Movement, 1870–1920 (exh. cat. by S. Smeaton, New York, Eli Wilner Gal., 1988)

169

W. Adair: ‘Picture Framing, ii: Two Exhibitions of American Picture Frames’, Int. J. Mus. Mgmt &

Cur., ix (1990), pp. 318–22

S. Mills: ‘The Framemaker’s Art in Early San Francisco’, A. CA (Nov 1990), pp. 54–9

S. Burns: Forgotten Marriage: The Painted Tin Type and the Decorative Frame (New York, 1991)

S. Maklansky: ‘Forgotten Marriage: The Painted Tintype and the Decorative Frame, 1860–1910: A

Lost Chapter in American Portraiture’, A. Q. [Detroit], xvii/1 (Jan–March, 1995), p. 8

For further bibliography see §I.

William B. Adair

Copyright © Oxford University Press 2007 — 2015.