The Frame Blog

The four square paintings which compose the 1570s Allegories of Love in the National Gallery are both strikingly beautiful in Veronese’s characteristically lucent colouring and expressive style, and slightly opaque in their meaning. They passed through some of the greatest European collections of the 16^th to 19^th centuries before arriving in Trafalgar Square, and their original frames were left a long way behind in their travels.

Philip van den Bossche (after; fl.1604-15), Johannes Wechter (engraved by; fl. c.1550-post 1606), Aegidius Sadeler (published by: d.1629), View of the City of Prague, 1606, copper engraving, etching, detail of Prague Castle, Metropolitan Museum, New York

They come to light first in the collection of Rudolf II, King of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperor from the age of 24, and patron extraordinary of all sorts of arts and sciences, who set up his court in Prague in 1583 [1]. Here, they may have been inset into a ceiling of Prague Castle, or into more than one ceiling, or possibly into the cove beneath a ceiling, which would make greater sense of their very low viewpoint. More than thirty years after Rudolf’s death, some of his collection was looted by the Swedish army, which seems to have attacked Prague in 1648 with the main purpose of securing the treasure trove of art which had been assembled there. Veronese’s Allegories passed into the possession of Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-89), where they were inventoried three times – in Stockholm, in Antwerp during the period when she was abdicating, and in Rome, where she finally settled in the Palazzo Riario, and where they were displayed with seven more Veroneses and thirteen Titans, in the Sala dei Quadri [2].

In 1721, a hundred and twenty-three paintings from Christina’s collection were engulfed by another collector on the monumental scale, Philippe, duc d’Orléans, and installed in Paris, in the Palais-Royal, where the Allegories of Love spent much of the 18^th century along with works including another of the National Gallery’s collection – Sebastiano del Piombo’s The raising of Lazarus.

Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672-1742), elevation of the façade (above)  and plan of the salon à  l’Italienne (below), Palais-Royal, Musée Carnavalet

The four Veroneses were installed as overdoors in the salon à l’Italienne, which was constructed and decorated by Gilles-Marie Oppenord, the walls hung with crimson damask [3]. After a later duc d’Orléans, Philippe Égalité, was guillotined during the French Revolution, the whole collection was sold, and the French and Italian paintings were brought to London and acquired in 1798 by the Bridgewater syndicate. The banker, John-Julius Angerstein, bought Sebastiano’s Raising of Lazarus from them, which, with thirty-seven other paintings in his collection, became after his death in 1823 the nucleus of the National Gallery.

Frederick Mackenzie (1787-1854), The National Gallery when at Mr J.J. Angerstein’s house, Pall Mall, watercolour, 1824-34. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Because the collection remained at Angerstein’s house until a proper public gallery could be built, and because whilst it was there a view of the interior was painted by Frederick Mackenzie, a record of some of the frames which may have characterized the Orléans collection remains, including the Baroque French frames on the Sebastiano, and on paintings by Cuyp (A hilly landscape with figures), Titian (Bacchus & Ariadne), Correggio (Ecce Homo) and Claude (Seaport with the embarkation of St Ursula), amongst others. Given how carefully the hang of the Salon à l’Italienne was evidently designed, the Allegories of Love were almost certainly displayed in the same type of carved giltwood Régence frames.

However, many of the paintings bought by the Bridgewater syndicate, and which were exhibited in galleries on Pall Mall and the Strand from late 1798 to mid-1799, were apparently on show without frames – although the syndicate had paid £1,800 for expenses, including framing [4]. In 1800 all four of the Veroneses were bought by the 4^th Earl of Darnley, and hung in the picture gallery at Cobham Hall in Kent until 1890-91, when they were sold to the National Gallery by the 6^th Earl. No images of them inside Cobham seem to exist, so there is no record of how they were framed in England from the time that they were acquired by the Bridgewater syndicate until four frames were made for them in 1895 – almost certainly by the National Gallery’s framemaker, Reginald Dolman & Son, although there is no archival record of this.

Advert for Dolman & Son in The year’s art, 1892

The titular Reginald Dolman (1820-81) had been appointed to this rôle in 1880, and his business continued to work for the Gallery until his sons retired and it closed in 1919 [5]. In 1892 it took out an advert at the back of The year’s art which noted that,

‘Dolman & Sons’s make … Reproductions from Old Models in Carving or Composition… Frame Makers to the National Gallery’

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), The Virgin of the Rocks, c.1491/92-99 & 1506-08, o/panel, 186.5 x 120 cm., in previous frame by Dolman & Son (giltwood with compo ornament and polychromy); National Gallery, NG 1093 

Dolman’s was responsible, amongst other things, for a group of three reproduction Renaissance altarpiece frames made after 1880 for Leonardo, The Virgin of the rocks, Raphael, The Ansidei Altarpiece and Lorenzo Costa et al., The Strozzi Altarpiece (the last two are still in their 19^th century frames): all of them based on the main door frame of the church of San Giobbe in Venice. This historicizing approach to framing, looking to contemporary models which originated in the right country (if not necessarily the right region), was an innovation in the museum world, and influenced, for example, Wilhelm von Bode’s practice in the State Museums of Berlin.

Veronese (1528-88),  Four allegories of Love: Unfaithfulness, c.1575, o/c, 189.9 x 189.9 cm., in 1895 frame by Dolman’s, National Gallery, NG 1318

The four frames which Dolman’s produced for Veronese’s Allegories of Love show the same use of historical sources as their Renaissance-style frames – this time in a design strongly influenced by the 16^th century Venetian Mannerist ‘Sansovino’ frame.

Sansovino frames: 1575-1600, carved giltwood, originally parcel-gilt & painted black, 81 x 63.2 cm., V & A 77 2 1865; 1550-1600, carved giltwood, 125 x 103 cm., V & A, 765 2 1865; 1550-1600, carved giltwood, painted,141.5 x 246 cm., V & A, 682 1883

By 1895, there were various examples of these in London – for example, in the V & A – which could have been used to some extent as models, whilst the cast court of the V & A was evidently also used by artists, and presumably by framemakers as well, as a source of authentic antique ornament. Other available sources include Vasari’s drawings of altarpiece frames, and leaves from his Libro de’ disegni mounted with drawings by older artists which he had ‘framed’ in trompe l’oeil drawn frames, many of which passed through the 19^th century London auction houses, and appeared in the collections of the British Museum as well as in the V & A.

Giovanni Bellini, The Madonna & Child with Doge Barbarigo, 1482, in a later Sansovino frame, San Pietro Martire, Murano, Venice

Portrait of Philippe V de Hanau-Lichtenberg (1541-99), engraving, no date, no location

There may also have been (black-&-white) photographs or drawings available of framed works such as Bellini’s Madonna & Child with Doge Barbarigo, where the Sansovino design was slightly simplified; whilst during the 19th century there were more and more prints in circulation (a well-used route for diffusing styles and ornaments), which employed integral frames to display, for instance, engraved portraits.

Tintoretto (1518-94), Portrait of a naval commander, c. 1555/56, o/c, 115 x 99 cm., Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The original carved Sansovino frame had been used for framing secular portraits as well as altarpieces; mainly in a rectilinear form which was identical on all four rails. A powerful combination of this design with a portrait by Tintoretto can be seen in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna [6].

Tintoretto, Portrait of a naval commander, Veronese, Four allegories of Love: Unfaithfulness, c.1575; details of top left corners

The Dolman frames are related to this latter form of 16^th century Sansovino pattern in their flaring outset corners, their angled scrolls and fluted hollows, and their centred sides. However, these elements are reduced in size relative to the dimensions of the paintings, and flank a central scotia holding inauthentic ropes of bunched leaves and fruits cast in compo. Perhaps these are intended to reflect the landscape settings or to indicate the fruits of virtuous love, but they dilute the grandeur which is inherent in a Sansovino frame, especially when a run of dentil moulding and another of acanthus leaves are added at the sight edge.

Veronese (1528-88), top left: Bevilacqua Lazise Altarpiece (1548>), Castelvecchio Museum, Verona; top right: Baptism of Christ (c.1580), Palazzo Pitti; Holy Family with SS Barbara and John the Baptist (c. 1565), Gallerie degli Uffizi

Given that these earnestly historicizing but distractingly fussy and mongrel designs were not the best solution for such an important and beautiful group of paintings, finding a better option became a problem in itself. Like other masters, Veronese’s allure for collectors and museums means that his work has been consistently reframed from an early point (like the Allegories themselves), leaving few models surviving in their original frames. The paintings above illustrate this process only too well – the Bevilacqua Lazise Altarpiece, shunted out of its architectural home in San Fermo Maggiore, Verona (from which only some columns and family imprese remain in the cloisters) was given a sculptural giltwood work of art to rehouse it, described as ‘not original and of unknown origin’ [7]. The Baptism of Christ was reframed in or after 1667 by the sculptor Jacopo Foggini (c.1610s-84) from a design by the painter Il Volterrano (1611-90) [8]; and the Holy Family with SS Barbara and John the Baptist, once acquired by Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici and his brother in 1654 and brought to Florence, was given an Auricular Medici frame in characteristic ‘Pitti style’, with cherubs carrying the instruments of Christ’s Passion [9].

Veronese (1528-88), frescos in the Sala dell’ Olimpo (facing east), 1560-61, Villa Barbaro, Maser, Veneto

Veronese (1528-88), altarpiece with the Madonna in glory, St Sebastian and other saints, 1559-65, o/c, 420 x 230 cm., San Sebastiano, Venice

The few original frames which survive include Veronese’s own painted trompe l’oeil architectural settings for his frescos, and monumental constructions such as the high altarpiece of San Sebastiano, Venice, which was carved to his design by Salvatore Tagliapietre [10].

16^th century Italian Mannerist frame as purchased in 2023: cassetta in profile with wide frieze extending into outset upper corners; stopped channel fluting-&-dart at top edge; the plain frieze with three lateral and top carved & applied giltwood centres of tied acanthus leaves with scrolling tendrils ending in volutes, flowers & florets; the four corners with sculptural five-petalled roses; a bound & centred garland of imbricated leaves at the sight edge; parcel-gilt & painted dark brown & black, with a repeated (stamped or rolled?) floral pattern; 201.5 x 149 cm.

However, the National Gallery had the chance to acquire at auction in 2023 a splendid 16^th century Italian Mannerist frame, separated into its four elements but otherwise remarkably undamaged, and with much of its original finish remaining.

Michelangelo (1475-1564), Palazzo Senatorio, Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome; and details of windows

The rise of the Italian Mannerist silhouette of a frame with outset corners like this one began with the architectural designs of Michelangelo in Florence and Rome.  His façades for the Porta Pia in Florence (built 1561-65; façade completed after his original drawings in 1869), the windows of San Lorenzo’s cloister and the Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence (from 1525; continued from 1534-71 according to his instructions), and the façade of the Palazzo Senatorio, Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome (from 1537, finished in 1590s) are all marked by a use of windows (functional or blind) and doorframes with outset corners.

The architect Andrea Palladio made several visits from the Veneto to Rome in the 1540s to study the classical Roman monuments with which he had become familiar through the printed publication, in 1486, of Vitruvius’s De architectura; he was also able to see Michelangelo’s work (in construction, but probably also in plan). The effect of this upon his own architecture appears in elements such as surface stucco decoration, the use of giant orders of columns, and – particularly relevant here – windows with outset corners.

Andrea Palladio (1508-80), detail of windows on the façade of the Palazzo Chiericati, Vicenza, I quattro libri dell’architettura, 1550, Plate II B2

These variations on the window silhouette made their way into the vocabulary of Mannerist elements and motifs, and – because Michelangelo’s work encompassed Florence and Rome, and Palladio’s covered the Veneto – this was a style which diffused rapidly and with some consistence throughout Italy. It fed too into the Venetian Sansovino style of frame, which perhaps even owed something to Veronese himself, in the frescos he had executed in Palladio’s Villa Barbaro, Maser, from 1560-61.

Italian Mannerist frames with outset corners and a cassetta profile went on to exert further influence on the British Palladian or Kent frame of the 18^th century, through the travels of Inigo Jones in Italy in c.1600-01 and more particularly in 1613-14, and through his possession of Palladio’s I quattro libri dell’architettura. From this double strand of experience and learning he reshaped British architecture, creating interiors which used classicizing and Mannerist principles in the lines of chimneypieces and their overmantel frames. William Kent (1685-1748) succeeded to and built on Jones’s work, designing doors, windows and chimneypieces in a style harmonizing with the interior and exterior architecture, and reimagining a complete room, with a hang of frames ready for the patron’s art collection, and furniture which echoed the lines and ornament of door- and window-cases. The Palladian frame with outset corners and classical mouldings would be used to house paintings collected in Italy by the Grand Tourists; perhaps even pictures by Veronese [11]. Its earlier Italian source thus becomes an historical play on those frames created for English collections.

Such a background of multiple criss-crossing influences – architectural, decorative and painterly – makes this type of frame altogether very appropriate for Veronese’s work; and the catalyst to initiate the reframing of this very important series of four large paintings came in the acquisition of that single frame at auction.

16^th century Italian Mannerist frame, and details of frieze decoration

The warm, dark finish of the frieze provides a very effective foil for the palette of the Allegories – the cool areas of blueish greys, greens, whites and primrose – and has, besides, a really interesting and rare form of decoration executed in black on the brown ground. This appears to be a continuous floral pattern, either rolled along the frieze or stamped onto it, by a means which even now remains uncertain. At a short distance this pattern looks rather like snakeskin, and softens and varies the more usual finish of stained and polished wood or black paint. There is always a temptation to interpret the decoration of a frame as, to a greater or lesser extent, symbolic, and here this patterned finish could be seen as fortuitously appropriate, because it hints at the snake in the garden of Love – just as the carved and gilded rosettes in the corners of the frieze could be seen as the attribute of Aphrodite.

Peter Schade, an element of the auction frame, and Happy union

The auction frame was used for the last painting in the series, NG 1326, Happy union; it was reduced on the vertical and enlarged on the horizontal axis to fit, and became the model for producing the three replicas. The alterations of the antique and creation of new frames were executed by Peter Schade, Head of Framing, François Loudwig, Amanda Dickson and Stephen Guest [12].

Altering, extending, reducing and conserving the antique frame

François Loudwig carving one of the replica frames

Carving the corner rosettes for one of the replica frames

Replica frames: applying gesso to the mouldings (left), and then gilder’s bole (right)

Replica frames: gold leaf applied (top); gilding burnished (bottom left); the beginning of patination of the gilding and of developing the frieze with its unique patterning (bottom right) : all by Amanda Dickson

Replica frames: finishing details

Antique and replica frames

Veronese (1528-88),  Allegory of Love: Unfaithfulness, c.1575, in replica of 16^th century Italian Mannerist frame, NG 1318

Veronese (1528-88),  Allegory of Love: Scorn, c.1575, in replica of 16^th century Italian Mannerist frame, NG 1324

Veronese (1528-88),  Allegory of Love: Respect, c.1575, in replica of 16^th century Italian Mannerist frame, NG 1325

Veronese (1528-88), Allegory of Love: Happy union, c. 1575, in antique 16^th century Italian Mannerist frame, NG 1326

The reframed paintings have been installed in one of the Gallery’s octagons, where they can be appreciated as a single series, without other distraction. They are hung on a background of crimson, as they were in Oppenord’s salon à l’Italienne, in the Palais Royal, which – like the dark friezes and overall warm tone of the frames – provides the perfect foil, and lets them shine again.

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A brief video was made, mainly of the gilding and finishing of the frames, by Amanda Dickson:

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[1] The Allegories of Love appear in an inventory of Rudolf’s collection in 1637, twenty-five years after his death; Nicholas Penny, The 16^th century Italian paintings, volume II: Venice 1540-1600, 2008

[2] The diary of Samuel Pepys: Encyclopaedia: Christina of Sweden; the Palazzo Corsini was developed from the Palazzo Riario during the 18^th century

[3] Penny, op. cit.

[4] Ibid.

[5] See Jacob Simon’s Directory of British picture framemakers on the NPG website, under CR (Criswick)

[6] The frame is either original or contemporary; the work was recorded in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (1614-62), which included c.1,400 paintings and would form a sizable core of the Museum itself, giving perhaps slightly more weight to an argument for the authenticity of the frame in conjunction with the portrait

[7] Diana Pollini & Micaela Storari, ‘Per Paolo Caliari: note e aggiunte alla Pala Bevilacqua Lazise‘, Verona Illustrata, 2011, pp. 19-27; the giltwood frame, teeming with foliage, flowers and cherubs, has been altered to fit the painting

[8] See ‘Il Volterrano and a Baroque Florentine frame...’

[9] See the entry for the painting on the Museum’s website

[10] See the entry for the altarpiece on Chorus: Association for the Churches of the Patriarchate of Venice

[11] For example, the 1932 frame in Palladian style commissioned by the 6th Earl of Harewood for his  Veronese, Portrait of a gentleman of the Soranza family, c. 1585, Harewood House  (since 2022, in National Gallery as NG 6694 and reframed in a 16th century Italian mannerist walnut frame)

[12] Also Isabella Kocum. Peter Schade is the National Gallery’s Head of Framing