The Frame Blog

 by Keith Christiansen

 ‘As for frames, there is no doubt that they are useful, in the first place, as a defense from external damage, and, in the second place, because they give the paintings a quality of majesty and make them appear as though seen through a window, or, better, as a carefully circumscribed panorama, and they give them a certain ornate majesty’ [1].

 Introduction

 Gallery of 17^th century Dutch paintings at The Metropolitan Museum, New York

Anyone strolling through the galleries of European paintings at The Metropolitan Museum cannot help but notice the variety of frames on the pictures in the collection.  It is not merely that they vary widely in appearance, style, date, and place of origin, some being quite plain, with simple profiles and little or no ornamentation or elaborately carved surfaces, while others are profusely decorated and brightly gilded and possess a presence which can verge on the sculptural or even architectural.  This sort of variety is only to be expected in a collection of paintings which ranges in date from the 13^th to the early 20^th century; which covers a geographic area extending from Italy and Spain in the south to Scandinavia and Russia in the north; and which encompasses works ranging from fragments of Gothic altarpieces and modestly-scaled religious-themed pictures for private devotion to complex narrative compositions, portraits, landscapes, genre scenes and still life paintings.

But this breadth of scope does not explain how or why such diversity extends to the very different frames found even on pictures from the same century and national school, or on works by a single artist. How is it, for example, that paintings in the collection by Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Vermeer are displayed both in the kind of restrained and rigorously geometric black frames commonly associated with the 17^th century Dutch Republic, as well as in richly carved and gilded frames typical of 17^th and 18^th century France?

Paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, variously framed, at The Met

…or that paintings by Van Gogh and Cézanne appear not only in the kinds of French frames which were popular at the time, but also in Italian examples of the 16^th and 17^th centuries?

The short answer is that the majority of these frames are not original to the pictures they adorn.  Rather than representing the wishes of the artist (when we happen know what those might be), they reflect, instead, the tastes of their past or most recent owners, or the marketing strategies of the dealers who may have sold the pictures they adorn. It is a simple fact that few paintings have come down to us in the frames created for them or chosen by their first owner, who, with the rise of the international art market in the 17^th century, may have been a dealer or even a merchant of second-hand goods.  More often than not, frames were changed repeatedly by successive owners, either to accord with prevailing fashions or to match the décor of the room in which the picture was to hang, or to impose a decorative uniformity on an entire collection.

Collectors’ frames

 
The collection of 17^th century Netherlandish and Spanish paintings in Benjamin Altman’s residence, before 1913

To take but one pertinent example, photographs of the Fifth Avenue residence of Benjamin Altman, who bequeathed his magnificent collection of Old Master paintings to The Metropolitan Museum in 1913, reveal that his outstanding paintings by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Vermeer, Anthony van Dyck and Velázquez were uniformly displayed in French Régence-style frames, some of which Joseph Duveen, of the famous British art dealers Duveen Brothers, specially commissioned for the pictures.

Italian Renaissance paintings on the left-hand wall; Netherlandish paintings at the back; Benjamin Altman’s residence, before 1913

Although the frames on Altman’s equally notable collection of Italian Renaissance and early Netherlandish paintings broke with this uniformity, they too were mostly modern interpretations, made in Paris for the Duveens by the Sienese-born framemaker, Ferruccio Vannoni, with the objective of asserting their importance and their prospective display in his richly decorated mansion. Not coincidentally, Duveen also dealt in furnishings and freely advised his clients on interior decoration.

At The Met, many of the frames reflecting this 19^th and early 20^th century taste have been discarded by curators in favor of something deemed more appropriate to the period of the work in question. Thus the variety of frames encountered in the collection of European paintings reflect not only the tastes of their previous owners – both of the distant and more recent past – and the shifting fashions of interior design, but the marketing practices of dealers and the initiatives of curators.

View of a gallery, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

The taste evident in Altman’s residence for heavily decorated interiors with panelled or upholstered walls, and Old Master paintings in uniform frames, was commonplace in New York at the turn of the 19^th century and can still be experienced in the Frick Collection. It reflected a tradition going back three centuries, to the formation of aristocratic and royal collections. In historic collections such as those of the Medici in Palazzo Pitti in Florence, the Doria-Pamphilj in Rome, or in grand country houses in Great Britain, such as Holkham Hall in Norfolk, pictures of the 16^th to 18^th centuries are displayed in richly gilded frames – regardless of artist, period, or national school – so as to confer a decorative coherence and identity on the collection.

The radically different approach current today, of favouring frames which reflect the period and style of a particular picture, rather than the prevailing taste of the collector or the reigning fashion of interior decoration, is a reflection of modern museology.  Yet, as will be seen in the following survey, even the most historically-informed decisions relating to the framing or reframing of a picture encounter uncertainties and contradictions, because, inevitably, they also involve, however involuntarily, the highly subjective impulse of aesthetic conviction. And as everyone knows: de gustibus non est disputandum.

The following story, from the website of Harewood House, Leeds, brings these matters into clear focus. Finding himself on military duty in the trenches during World War I, the 6^th Earl of Harewood seems to have found distraction from the horrors of war by imagining the frames which would best suit the pictures that hung in the extensive collection formed by his forebears.  On 10 June 1917, he wrote to his mother:

‘I think the frames very important to make the best of the pictures. The Greco’s frame is wrong and will have to be put right but I have not made up my mind about it’ [2].

Deciding what was ‘right’ extended beyond matching the period of the painting with that of the frame. There was the consideration of the collection as a whole. For the early Italian pictures, the young earl turned to the same framemaker Duveen employed, Ferruccio Vannoni, to whom he expressed his desire that the commissioned frames should be patinated so as to harmonize with those works in the collection which were already in antique frames.

El Greco (1541-1614), Allegory, c.1575-80, o/c, c. 65 x 90 cm., as framed by Henry Lascelles, 6^th Earl of Harewood; Trustees of the Harewood House Trust

As for the El Greco – one of the artist’s remarkable allegories depicting a boy blowing on a burning candle – the frame which the earl settled on, although Spanish, is far more decorated than might be preferred today. Such is the subjectivity inherent in ‘getting it right’.

Changing frames: Raphael’s Colonna Madonna

A prominent example from The Met’s collection exemplifying this process – one reflecting changing curatorial decisions – is provided by Raphael’s Madonna & Child enthroned with saints (the Colonna Altarpiece, c.1504).  Its original frame must have been discarded when it was sold from the convent of Sant’Antonio da Padova in Perugia in 1678.

Salvatore Colonelli-Sciarra (fl.1726+), The Colonna Gallery in Rome, watercolour drawing, 1730, with detail showing Raphael, Colonna Altarpiece, Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 911524

When it hung in the Colonna collection in Rome, it had a relatively modest moulding – in keeping with the other pictures in the collection (the frame is visible in a watercolour depiction of the gallery dating from 1730, above).

Raphael (1483-1520), Colonna Altarpiece in the frame it was given between c.1936-1970s, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Raphael (1483-1520), Colonna Altarpiece in the antique 16^th century frame given to it in the 1970s; the columns have since been removed. Metropolitan Museum, New York

Since this important work entered The Met’s collection in 1916 – the much-publicized gift of J. Pierpont Morgan – the frame has been changed twice in an effort to ‘get it right’. The most recent change was in 1977, when the painting was conserved.

Raphael (1483-1520), Colonna Altarpiece as it stands today; Metropolitan Museum, New York

It was then that the decision was made to modify the period frame which had been found and adapted for the picture by removing its highly distinctive candelabra columns.  Sometimes attributed to the important Sienese woodworker Antonio Barili (1453- 1517) and integral to the frame, the columns were nevertheless felt to distract from the picture – de gustibus non est disputandum [3].

Opinions about the best way to approach the matter of framing must always have differed. In early 17^th century Rome, Giulio Mancini – papal medical doctor, friend of artists, and outstanding connoisseur – was keenly attentive to enhancing the impact of pictures.  He advised collectors to use gold frames for old pictures which had dulled over time, and lost some of their original brilliance, as well as for dark paintings, such as those by Caravaggio, whilst brightly coloured pictures were, he thought, best set off by black frames.  Ebony, he suggested, was good for small works and miniatures, perhaps with the addition of a gold or silver fillet around the sight edge. To judge from the great collections formed during his lifetime, his advice was mostly unheeded.

Framing and reframing paintings in The Met’s collection

As examples of the frequency with which, over the course of time and changes of ownership, pictures in The Met’s collection have been reframed, we may cite a few well-documented cases.  The first concerns Caravaggio’s Musicians. From the 1627 post-mortem inventory of the artist’s important Roman patron, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, we know that the picture, which had been commissioned from the artist by the cardinal, was in a simple black frame—almost certainly of the type known as a cassetta, defined by a flat inner frieze bordered by raised mouldings on the inner and outer edges.

This basic, intentionally austere type of frame was much favoured in the restrictive Counter Reformation environment of late 16^th and early 17^th century  Rome, and it is doubtless the type Mancini had in mind when he mentions a black frame.  Caravaggio’s painting, evidently acquired by Cardinal Antonio Barberini at a public sale held in 1627 following Cardinal del Monte’s death, was subsequently given by the francophile Barberini family to the French ambassador in Rome, Charles I de Blanchefort, Maréchal de Créquy, who took it back to Paris.  When an inventory of the Maréchal’s Parisian collection was drawn up in 1638, the painting had shed its black frame for a gold one (‘garnie de sa bordure dorée’ is the wording).

Caravaggio (1571-1610), The musicians, 1597, o/c, 92.1 x 118.4 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

After it passed through the prestigious collection of Cardinal Richelieu and his niece, we lose track of the picture, which was only rediscovered in a British private collection in 1952.  The gilt frame had doubtless again been changed, and although the present black cassetta is of the period, it is not original to the picture.  It does, however, represent an informed attempt to recapture the picture’s appearance when owned by Cardinal Del Monte.

Caravaggio (1571-1610), The denial of Saint Peter, 1610, o/c, 94 x 125.4 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

The frames on the artist’s Denial of Saint Peter and the Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio’s Neapolitan follower, Battistello Carracciolo, are modern reproductions of this same type of frame, which was pervasive in Italian collections until the second quarter of the 17^th century, when the taste for more opulent gilded frames replaced them.  The frame on Annibale Carracci’s Coronation of the Virgin is a beautiful, period variant of this type of cassetta, and is entirely appropriate for a picture painted in the 1590s, although unlike the giltwood frame it had prior to 1665, when it is described in an inventory of the famous Doria Pamphilj collection in Rome as in ‘sua cornice dorata’.

Andrea Sacchi (c.1599-1661), Marcantonio Pasqualini crowned by Apollo, 1641, o/c, 243.8 x 194.3 cm., and detail, Metropolitan Museum, New York

How Andrea Sacchi’s extraordinary allegorical portrait of 1641, depicting the castrato singer Marcantonio Pasqualini, was originally framed we cannot say. Might it have incorporated carved leaves which echoed the crown of bay leaves Apollo is shown bestowing on the singer? Such a frame would have added a further layer to the extravagant compliment which the singer was paying himself, since we now know that he commissioned it from Sacchi.

Bedford Lemere (1839-1911), the ballroom in Spencer House, Westminster, 1895, detail showing Sacchi’s Pasqualini on the left and Guido Reni’s Liberality and modesty on the right. Photo: © Historic England Archive: National Monuments Record, AL1915

Whatever the case, the splendid 18^th century frame now on the picture is British, not Italian, and reflects the taste not of Marcantonio but the painting’s transfer to England, where not long after 1758 John, 1^st Earl Spencer, had it installed in his London house. There it was paired with a painting by Guido Reni displayed in an identical frame, both probably designed by the Scottish archaeologist and artist, James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, whom the earl employed as his architect. Interestingly, the original surface was a pale bluish-grey colour, which has been overgilded.

Johan Liss(c.1595/1600-d.1631), The temptation of St Mary Magdalen in its Palladian overmantel, Edgcote House

Johan Liss’s sensual, verging-on-the-erotic interpretation of The temptation of St Mary Magdalen lost the Baroque frame it must have had when it hung in the Venetian palace of the Bonfadini family, following its purchase by Richard Chauncey, and its incorporation into an elaborate overmantel in the billiard room of Edgcote House in Northamptonshire (occasioning the loss of  about 11 cm. of canvas along the bottom of the composition). The house was rebuilt between 1747 and 1753, with elaborate interior woodwork carved by Abraham Swan.

Johan Liss (c.1595/1600-d.1631), Temptation of St Mary Magdalen, c. 1626, o/c, 98.8 x 125.8 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Having been removed from the house in 1994, the painting was put in its present period frame for sale at auction.

 

Carlo Maratti (1625-1713), The Flight into Egypt, c.1664, oil on copper, 60.3 x 48.6 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

By contrast, Carlo Maratti’s beautiful Flight into Egypt – an exquisitely detailed work painted on copper, possibly for Pope Alexander VII – was acquired by the 1^st Earl Spencer before 1746, and has retained the frame it had in Althorp House.  Similarly, Ludovico Carracci’s Lamentation retains the fine, gilded cassetta – one typical of the region of Emilia-Romagna – which was probably put on the picture by its first owner, the Bolognese Count Alessandro Tanari, who was an ardent patron of the artist.  The frame survives today because the painting remained with Tanari’s descendants until 1825, and has subsequently changed hands only twice.

Cover of Time Magazine, 24 November 1961

A different circumstance pertains to Rembrandt’s Aristotle with a bust of Homer, the purchase of which by The Met created international headlines when it was sold at public auction in 1961 for what was then a record-setting price.  This extraordinary portrayal of the great philosopher of the 4^th century BC – the tutor of Alexander the Great – was commissioned not by a compatriot of the artist but by the Sicilian nobleman Don Antonio Ruffo, for by the 1650s Rembrandt enjoyed a European reputation.  The picture was shipped from Amsterdam to Messina in the summer of 1654, most likely with a simple travelling frame for protection. Ruffo did not have his acquisition put into a carved and gilded Italian frame until 1657, when matching frames (‘intagliate uniforme et adorate’) were put on other pictures – including two more by Rembrandt – which Ruffo commissioned to form a series with Aristotle. The frames thus served to give unity to what was an impressive but stylistically diverse group of paintings.

Rembrandt (1606-69), Aristotle with a bust of Homer, 1653, o/c, 143.5 x 136.5 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

In the early 19^th century the Aristotle was sold to a British collector, who must have discarded the Italian frame as a matter of course. The painting was purchased by the Duveen brothers and crossed the Atlantic in 1907; the very splendid Louis XIV frame which currently holds it reflects the popularity among American collectors of impressive French and French-style frames.

Rembrandt (1606-69), Portraits of Pieter Haringh  and his wife Elisabeth Delft, 1660s, o/ c, 91.4 x 74.3 cm., and 92.1 x 74.6 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

The lengths British and American dealers went to in order to obtain frames of this quality to enhance the works they offered key clients is exemplified by the two pendant portraits painted by Rembrandt in the 1660s, and possibly depicting the Amsterdam auctioneer Pieter Haringh and his wife Elisabeth Delft.  The Duveens sold this stunning pair to Benjamin Altman in 1909 for the then princely sum of $262,980 and, to emphasize their outstanding quality, a very fine French Régence frame was found for one of them.  The frame was not the right size and it had no mate, so once the necessary adaptations were completed on the period frame, an excellent copy was made for the other portrait.

Rembrandt (1606-69), The standard-bearer: Floris Soop, 1654, o/c, 140.3 x 114.9 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Similarly, when in 1926 Duveen sold Rembrandt’s portrait of the wealthy Amsterdam collector Floris Soop to Jules Bache – another major benefactor of The Met – he once again located a particularly splendid Régence frame and had it adapted to fit the picture.

Framing 17^th century paintings from the Dutch Republic and Britain

Elegant, French-style frames may seem to some a flagrant contradiction of the more restrained black frames we commonly associate with 17^th century Netherlandish, Flemish and German paintings, but that is perhaps an overly-restrictive view.  Most of the ebony and ebonized frames now on Netherlandish pictures in museum collections either date from the 19^th century, when there was a revived interest in them, or are more recent, modern copies. Often they were put on the pictures by curators.

Rembrandt (1606-69), Portrait of a Man, 1632, o/ panel, 75.6 x 52.1 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Rembrandt (1606-69),  Portrait of a Woman, 1633, o/ panel, 67.9 x 50.2 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

This is the case with the octagonal black frames on Rembrandt’s oval Portrait of a woman and Portrait of a man, both of which entered the collection in French frames.  The black frames currently on the pictures represent a curatorial effort to present them as we imagine the artist might have expected to see them, with all the uncertainties which that implies. They are based closely on period prototypes, and careful attention was paid to such constructional details as the visible joints of the oval inlay.

Rembrandt (1606-69), Herman Doomer, 1640, o/ panel, 75.2 x 55.2 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Although a period frame rather than a modern reproduction adorns Rembrandt’s portrait of Herman Doomer, it is not original and is made up of various elements.

Herman Doomer (attrib.; c.1595-1650, looking-glass frame, c. 1640-55, oak veneered with ebony and baleen stained black, 50.5 x 45.3 cm., Rijksmuseum

Doomer was Amsterdam’s most accomplished worker in exotic woods such ebony, which was imported from southern India following the founding of the United East India Compan (chartered in 1602). Apart from deluxe cabinets, including portable table models such as one in The Met’s collection, Doomer also made frames, although to judge from the single example attributable to him in the Rijksmuseum, they were incomparably more elaborate and luxurious in appearance than the one on The Met’s painting.

Rembrandt (1606-69), Self-portrait, 1660, o/c, 80.3 x 67.3 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Doomer doubtless had some of Rembrandt’s wealthy patrons as clients, and it is intriguing to imagine how a painting such as Rembrandt’s great Self-portrait of 1660 – one of the stars of the Altman collection – would look if the French frame in which it is shown were replaced with one designed by Doomer, or by another fine ebony frame.  And yet, the French frame is not inappropriate, for although the first owner of The Met’s picture was presumably Netherlandish, by 1738 it belonged to a French collector, Jacques François Léonor de Goyon, duc de Valentinois, who lived in the magnificent Hôtel Matignon, today the residence of the Prime Minister of France.

It is important to remember that the ubiquity of black frames in museum collections and the consequent popular association of them with Netherlandish painting masks a more complex reality, related both to shifts of taste among the increasingly wealthy bourgeois collectors of the Dutch Republic and the international market for Netherlandish paintings in 17^th century Europe, exemplified in the history of Rembrandt’s Aristotle.

Vermeer (1632-75), Young woman with a lute, 1662-63, o/c, 51.4 x 45.7 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Frans Hals (1582/83-1666), Merrymakers at Shrovetide, c.1616-17, o/c, 131.4 x 99.7 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Moreover, black frames were hardly uniform in design, ranging from the simple rectangular models embellished with a ripple border which are so familiar, to others with an entablature or scotia (hollow) profile, with little or no ripple decoration (these might be made of ebony, ebonized fruitwood, or polished to display the natural colour of what was often pearwood). There were others again incorporating geometric elements such as outset corners which give the frame a more complexly decorative effect [although these were more likely to originate in Germany or Middle Europe, and to have been designed as looking-glass frames]. The current frame of Vermeer’s Young woman with a lute is a modern copy of one of the latter, as are the frames of Frans Hals’s Young man and woman in an inn and Merrymakers at Shrovetide (above).  As we have seen, the latter two had French frames when they belonged to Benjamin Altman.

Frans Hals (1582/83-1666), Portrait of a man, possibly Nicolaes Pietersz Duyst van Voorhout, c.1636-38, o/c, 80.6 x 66 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Rubens (1577-1640), Study two heads, c.1609, o/ panel, 69.9 x 52.1 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

The handsome ebonized fruitwood frames of Frans Hals’s Portrait of a man, possibly Nicolaes Pietersz Duyst van Voorhout and Rubens’s Study of two heads – one with a polished scotia frame with an inner canted section, the other a compound profile and a rich, almost chocolatey colour – are of the period, dating to around 1640, but were only put on the pictures in 2013, replacing their earlier French Baroque frames.

Gerard ter Borch (1617-81), A  woman playing the theorbo-lute and a cavalier, c.1658, o/panel, 36.8 x 32.4 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

The ripple frame on Gerard ter Borch’s A  woman playing the theorbo-lute… has a brown tone which a dealer must have thought would complement the picture, but it was made in the early 20^th century using old, worm-tunnelled wood.

Jacob Vosmaer (c.1584-1641), Vase with flowers, c.1613, o/panel, 85.1 x 62.5 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

And then there are those marvellously exotic frames fashioned from tortoiseshell.  The one on Jacob Vosmaer’s A vase with flowers is not original to the picture, which has been cut at the top, but is of the period and was put on the painting following its conservation in 1992.

Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625), Woodland road with travellers, 1607, o/panel, 46 x 83.2 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

The tortoiseshell frame on Jan Brueghel the Elder’s A woodland road with travellers dates to about 1720 and has been adapted to fit the picture, but its rich effect, obtained by underlaying the translucent tortoise shell with gold leaf and a transparent red glaze, perfectly complements the detailed execution of the picture and the brilliant pigments which the artist employed. Just as in Italy, so in the Dutch Republic over the course of the 17^th century, black frames increasingly gave way to the pervasive European fashion for showier, carved and gilded frames.  Inventories dating from the second half of the 17^th century reveal that paintings in the same collection might be displayed alternatively in ebonized, gold or even ebony frames, but costly gold and ebony ones increasingly dominate, and must have created a brilliant effect when seen against the lavishly tooled and gilded leather hangings which adorned the walls of the well-to-do – such as the splendid set in The Met.

Pieter de Hooch (1629-84),Woman with a water pitcher, c.1667-70, detail with an Auricular frame, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Gabriël Metsu (1629-67), The visit to the nursery, 1661, detail with a gilded overmantel frame, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Rembrandt (1606-69), Portrait of Elisabeth Delft, early 1660s, detail with curtained gilded frame, Metropolitan Museum, New York

The rising fashion for gold frames is seen in the framed paintings depicted in the backgrounds of interiors such as those in Pieter de Hooch’s Woman with a water pitcher, and a man by a bed, Gabriël Metsu’s The visit to the nursery, and Rembrandt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Delft (Woman with a pink).

Cornelis Bisschop (1630-74), A young woman and a cavalier, early 1660s, o/c, 97.8 x 88.3 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Cornelis Bisschop’s A young woman and a cavalier has what may be its original Netherlandish giltwood frame with a highly individual form of carved decoration, known from the peculiarity of the shapes it employs and the fluid transition of one form into another as Auricular or ear-shaped. This organic style – which influenced 19^th and 20^th century Art Nouveau – derived from earlier goldsmith work, such as the remarkable ewer created in 1619 by Adam van Vianen. In the characteristic tendency of the Auricular to combine vegetal and animal forms, elephant heads emerge from the corners at the top of the Bisschop frame and a lion’s muzzle from the centre – details which reflect the global reach of the Dutch Republic.

Gerard ter Borch (1617-81), Curiosity, c.1660-62, o/c, 76.2 x 62.2 cm., and detail, Metropolitan Museum, New York

A large Auricular frame is depicted as an overmantel in the richly appointed interior where Gerard ter Borch’s Curiosity is set, and which is itself in an elaborately carved and gilded frame. This frame is in the style of the Italian Renaissance rather than in a reflection of 17^th century Netherlandish taste, but it is the creation of Duveen’s Italian framemaker Ferruccio Vannoni.

Gerard ter Borch (1617-81), A young woman at her toilet with a maid, c.1650-51, o/panel, 47.6 x 34.6 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

In contrast, the artist’s A young woman at her toilet with a maid  is in a fine gilded Louis XIII frame.

The picture gallery at Althorp House

The Netherlandish Auricular style had a British analogue, the Sunderland frame, named after the 2^nd Earl of Sunderland, Robert Spencer, who reframed his portraits by Van Dyck, Peter Lely and others uniformly in this style to decorate the picture gallery he built at Althorp House in Northamptonshire between 1665 and 1668. [Sunderland frames are recognizable by the shaped size edge, which encroaches on the pictorial surface].

Peter Lely (1618-80), Mary Capel, later Duchess of Beaufort, & her sister Elizabeth, Countess of Carnarvon, o/c, 130.2 x 170.2 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Peter Lely (1618-80), Sir Henry Capel, o/c, 126.4 x 102.9 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Peter Lely (1618-80), Sir Henry Capel, and Mary Capel & her sister Elizabeth, displayed on the staircase from Cassiobury House in the British Galleries, Metropolitan Museum, New York https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/197338

Fine examples of Lely’s own version of the Auricular style frame his portraits of Sir Henry Capel and of Mary Capel, later Duchess of Beaufort, and her sister Elizabeth, Countess of Carnarvon.  The sisters were both interested in botany, and Elizabeth, an amateur artist, is depicted holding a simply framed picture she had painted of a tulip. On the left, Sir Henry’s surprising (to us) gesture has been thought to indicate the plighting of troth, suggesting that the picture may have been painted on the occasion of his marriage in 1659.

Sir Henry’s elder brother, Arthur Capel, 1^st Earl of Essex, rebuilt and enlarged the family seat at Cassiobury Park from 1677, and the portraits remained in the library of the house until 1922, explaining the survival of their original frames. The staircase where they are displayed comes from Cassiobury House, which was demolished in 1927.

Nicolaes Maes (1634-93), Admiral Jacob Binkes, c.1676, o/c, 43.8 x 32.7 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

The elaborately carved trophy frames on Nicolaes Maes’s small paired portraits of 1676 depicting Admiral Jacob Binkes and his betrothed, Ingena Rotterdam, indicate yet another type of highly ornamental gilded frame which gained favour in the Dutch Republic as the century progressed, and the demonstration of wealth and position superseded Calvinist restraint.

Nicolaes Maes (1634-93), Ingena Rotterdam, betrothed of Admiral Jacob Binkes, c.1676, o/c, 43.8 x 33 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

These extraordinary frames almost overwhelm the sitters, the emblematic figures and morifs which adorn them – nautical and military for Admiral Binkes; a female goddess with flowers and doves for his wife – exemplifying Maes’s international Baroque style, so different from the intimate domesticity of his earlier Young woman peeling apples.

Nicolaes Maes (1634-93), Young woman peeling apples, c.1655, o/panel, 54.6 x 45.7 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

The latter had a gilded frame when it belonged to Benjamin Altman, but is now shown in a fine black ripple frame, picked out with subtle gilding.  The frame has been reduced to fit the painting, with which it is contemporary – although it is Italian rather than Netherlandish, reminding us that black frames were popular throughout Europe.

Vermeer (1632-75), Allegory of the Catholic faith, c.1670-72, o/c, 114.3 x 88.9 cm., and detail, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Over the past half century, the frame on Vermeer’s Allegory of the Catholic faith has been changed more than once by the curatorial staff; the painting has been displayed in both gold and black frames – though never in an Auricular one!  Given its date, it could well have been displayed originally in either an ebony or a gilded frame, although we might deduce the artist’s own preferences from the painting he includes in the background: a large Crucifixion displayed in a plain black frame.

Vermeer (1632-75), Study of a young woman, c.1665-67, o/c, 44.5 x 40 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Vermeer’s Study of a young woman, which seems to have belonged to the artist’s most supportive patrons, Maria Simonsdr de Knuijt and her husband Pieter Claesz van Ruijven, is currently displayed in a beautifully detailed Louis XIV frame which has been adapted to fit the picture.

Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588-1629), The Crucifixion with the Virgin & St John, c.1624-25, o/c, 154.9 x 102.2 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

The question of a black or gilded frame can seem purely a matter of taste, but period appropriateness takes on particular relevance when a curatorial decision has the potential of suggesting a specific function or interpretation of the work.  This is the case with a remarkable painting purchased by the Museum in 1956 by the Netherlandish follower of Caravaggio, Hendrick ter Brugghen.  It depicts the Crucifixion, and is unusual for the way in which the artist has modified the Caravaggesque naturalism and dynamic figural construction he embraced following his sojourn in Rome, and for which he is best known. He has apparently done this in order to create something which has seemed to many scholars reminiscent of a 16^th century German style of painting. The composition is planar, the space shallow, and the figures are set against the backdrop of a starry sky, like statuary in a medieval altarpiece.

The picture has, indeed, been thought to have functioned as an altarpiece in a Catholic setting, and the modern frame which was made for it was therefore based on 16^th rather than 17^th century models, and was intended to emphasize both its archaic aspect and its presumed function.  However, concrete evidence for the theory that the work was created as an altarpiece in a clandestine Catholic church is lacking.  It seems far more likely that, however archaicizing we may find the style of the picture and whatever explanation there might be for its visual features, its original frame would have been of its own time, and probably similar to the black frame which Vermeer has depicted in his Allegory of the Catholic faith.

Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588-1629), Roman Charity, 1622, o/c, 147.6 x 137.5 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

For the artist’s compelling treatment of the exemplary Roman story of Roman Charity, the strongly Caravaggesque style of which is entirely characteristic of the artist, curators elected to commission a modern copy of a Netherlandish 17^th century-style cabinetmaker’s frame.

As to the impact frames could have on marketing a picture, the Netherlandish poet Constantin Huygens, who was well acquainted with artists in Amsterdam as well as with the art market, remarked,

‘Thus an ebony frame can enrich a poor canvas,
And make it look good or sell as well as a good one’ [4].

Willem Schellinks, who was both painter and poet, had a different opinion, commenting in another poem,

‘What need a Gold or Ebony frame?
This splendid piece merits its own fame!’ [5]

In a period in which frames could be extremely costly – especially if they were elaborately worked or employed exotic woods such as ebony – these two comments, one extolling the market-enhancing value of frames, the other asserting that the painting rather than its frame should be the measure of artistic achievement (and, ultimately, value), are eminently reasonable. The Parisian collector Jean-Baptiste de Bretagne would evidently have shared Schellinks’s view that great paintings did not require elaborate embellishment, for he framed Georges de La Tour’s stunning Fortune teller in a simple gilded molding (‘la platte bande dorée’ is the way the frame is described in his inventory): a far cry from the impressively carved Louis XIV frame the picture is exhibited in today.

George de La Tour (1593-1652), The fortune teller, c.1630s, o/c, 101.9 x 123.5 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Bretagne owned five works by the artist, and clearly his choice of frame did not imply a lack of appreciation for the artist or of the painting, which was amongst the most highly-valued items in his posthumous inventory. It’s worth recalling that La Tour’s work, together with his name, were pretty much forgotten after his death.  Only in the 20^th century was he rediscovered, and his stature as one of the most singular French painters of his day reasserted.  The splendid frame currently on this painting clearly reflects the place we accord him today.

Framing fame: Rubens, Poussin and 17^th century France

No artist enjoyed greater esteem in Europe and was employed by a more prestigious clientele than Peter Paul Rubens. Marie de Medici in Paris, Philip IV in Madrid and Charles I in London were only the most prominent three rulers of those who competed for his services. Amongst others were Ferdinando II de’ Medici in Florence and Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria. The widespread and continuing admiration his pictures commanded is reflected in the provenance of the paintings in The Met’s collection. Three of them – his magnificent portrait of himself with his wife Helena Fourment and their son Frans, Venus and Adonis, and Atalanta and Meleager – were owned by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and between 1704/06 and 1884/86 hung in the magnificent setting of Blenheim Palace, designed for him by John Vanbrugh. 

Rubens (1577-1640), Atalanta and Meleager, c.1616, o/panel, 133.4 x 106.7 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

It seems appropriate, therefore, that two have finely carved giltwood French frames of the early 18^th century – that on Atalanta and Meleager is particularly splendid. Although neither is original to the picture, and they are not those in which the paintings were displayed when they hung at Blenheim Palace, they would not be out of place in its grand interiors.

Rubens (1577-1640), The artist, Helena Fourment and their son, Frans, c.1635, o/panel, 203.8 x 158.1 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

The frame on Rubens’s family portrait has been adapted to fit, so was clearly conceived for another picture, but it has the virtue of conveying the regal status Rubens’s paintings continuously enjoyed in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. In 1884, the 8^th Duke of Marlborough sold this family portrait to Baron Alphonse de Rothschild in Paris, and it was from the estate of Baronne Germaine de Rothschild, through the dealer Wildenstein & Co., that  the picture was acquired for The Met by Mr and Mrs Charles Wrightsman.

The pervasive taste for French frames is further attested by Van Dyck’s supremely aristocratic portrait of James Stuart, Duke of Richmond and Lennox, which has a British interpretation of a Louis XIV frame created a century after it was painted.  By contrast, the Régence style frame on Robert Rich, 2^nd Earl of Warwick was made in Paris for the Duveens and, once again, reflects Duveen’s marketing strategies and the fashion in America for emulating the taste of the ancien régime.

Van Dyck (1599-1641), Queen Henrietta Maria, 1636, o/c, 105.7 x 84.5 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Exceptionally, Van Dyck’s iconic portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria, commissioned in 1636 as a royal diplomatic gift to Cardinal Francesco Barberini in Rome, retains a late 17^th or early 18^th century Italian ‘Salvator Rosa’ frame.

Rubens (1577-1640), Wolf and fox hunt, c.1616, o/c, 245.4 x 376.2 cm., and detail, Metropolitan Museum, New York

The frame on Rubens’s action-filled Wolf and fox hunt tells yet another story.  The picture was acquired from the artist by Philippe Charles d’Arenberg, duc d’Aarschot, and subsequently formed part of the prestigious collection of the Spanish military commander Diego Messía Felípez de Guzman, Marquis of Leganés.

It was acquired in 1820 by the enterprising British dealer and framemaker, John Smith, who advertized himself as

‘Picture Frame Maker, by Appointment To His Majesty, Carver, Gilder & Looking Glass Manufacturer, Et Marchand de Tableaux’.

It was sold four years later to Alexander Baring, 1^st Baron Ashburton, who installed it in his magnificent house, The Grange at Northington in Hampshire, distinguished by its imposing Greek temple façade [6].

Rubens (1577-1640), Venus and Adonis, c.mid-1630s, o/c, 197.5 x 242.9 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

Given the fame and importance of Rubens’s paintings and the illustrious provenance of Venus and Adonis, already noted, it must seem curious that this wonderful retelling of the fateful love of a goddess for a mortal bent on leaving her to hunt entered The Met’s collection in a frame of negligible quality.  Until 1706, it had formed part of the princely collection of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria.  It was seized in that year by Emperor Joseph I, and was presented to the 1^st Duke of Marlborough in recognition for the victories which had secured the safety of Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army during the devastating War of the Spanish Succession.

Rubens (1577-1640), The Cycle of Decius Mus in the collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein, Vienna

How it was then framed we cannot say. The black  and parcel-gilt ‘Salvator Rosa’-style frame currently on the painting was made more than a decade ago; it emulates the contemporary frames on Rubens’s famous cycle celebrating the Roman consul Decius Mus, in the collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein. A nearly-identical frame was made at the same time for Rubens’s The Holy Family with SS Francis & Anne and the infant St John the Baptist.

Rubens (1577-1640), A forest at dawn with a deer hunt, c.1635, o/panel, 61.5 x 90.2 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

In contrast, when in 1990 it was possible to purchase the small and intensely poetic A forest at dawn – a painting which the artist had kept until his death and which was subsequently owned by Sir Joshua Reynolds – it seemed proper to try to find a period gold frame for it. The current design, with bunched leaves of bay leaf-&-berry, oak and acorn, jonquil and primrose, and sunflower centres and acanthus corners, is Louis XIII in style and dates to around 1640; thus it is more or less contemporary with the picture.

Poussin (1594-1665), Self-portrait, 1650, o/c, 98 x 74 cm., Musée du Louvre

The artist whom many critics have considered to be the champion of an idealizing counterpoint to the sensual Baroque style of Rubens is Nicholas Poussin, who spent almost the whole of his career in Rome.  Pictures commissioned by the artist’s elite French clientele in Lyon and Paris had therefore to be sent overland.  We know from letters that Poussin would prepare the picture by applying egg glair to its surface to protect it and then rolling the canvas so that it could be transported in a tube.  Upon arrival, the canvas had to be mounted on a strainer, the egg glair washed off with a clean cloth and water, and the picture framed.  Poussin had his own preferences for framing.  He liked a simple style – such as those he depicts in the background of his self-portrait in the Louvre, with its partial views of several framed canvases – and he advised one patron that the gilding should be matt, which he felt would harmonize with the colours in the painting.  Whether his advice was followed in that particular case we don’t know.

Poussin (1594-1665), The abduction of the Sabine women, c.1633-34, o/c, 154.6 x 209.9 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

However, most works by the artist were put into prestigious, elaborately carved and gilded frames which reflected the esteem in which the artist was held, as well as the stature of the collector and the character of his collection. The magnificent Louis XIV frame on the Abduction of the Sabine women thus attests to its illustrious ownership, which included Cardinal de Richelieu (who also owned Caravaggio’s The musicians), rather than the wishes of the artist. The frame, which has not been cut, was clearly made for the painting and is of the highest craftsmanship [7]. It has been dated to c.1660-70, when the work was in the collection of the Cardinal’s niece, Marie Wignerod de Pontcourlay, duchesse d’Aiguillon, and hung in her residence on rue de Vaugirard in Paris.  Poussin also painted for a select group of Italian collectors (Midas washing at the source of the Pactolus, The companions of Rinaldo, The agony in the garden), and these works would inevitably have been displayed in Italian frames.

Poussin (1594-1665), The agony in the garden, 1626-27, o/copper, 61.3 x 48.6 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

The first reference to his early Agony in the garden, a night-time scene painted on copper which was commissioned by the Genoese art dealer Stefano Roccatagliata, describes its frame simply as black – possibly of the common cassetta type. A later owner, Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo, evidently put it in a more costly ebony frame, suitable to a prestigious work on copper. Currently, it is in a Baroque gilded frame of Italian design.

Poussin’s compatriot (and, later in Paris, his rival) was Simon Vouet, who spent fourteen years (1613-27) in Rome before he was summoned back to Paris as premier peintre du Roi.  His Woman playing a guitar was painted in the papal city, where by the 18^th century it formed part of the  Patrizi family’s notable collection.

The Sala Rossa in the Palazzo Patrizi Collection, Rome, with Vouet’s Woman playing a guitar hanging on the back wall (before 2017)

Simon Vouet (1590-1649), Woman playing a guitar, c.1618, o/c, 106.5 x 75.8 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

 In recognition of its Roman past, it is shown in a period Italian ‘Salvator Rosa’ frame, which was adapted to fit the painting. This design, either completely plain or with two or more carved decorative mouldings, was extremely popular in 17^th and 18^th century Roman collections, and was, as will be seen, also much copied in Britain.

Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632), Lutenist, c.1625-26, o/c, 128.3 x 99.1 cm., Metropolitan Museum, New York

By way of contrast, when the Museum purchased the Lutenist by the Rome-based Valentin de Boulogne, the curatorial decision was made to put it in a richly-carved period Régence frame rather than in an Italian design, in order to reflect its provenance in the celebrated Parisian collection of Cardinal Mazarin, most of which is today in the Louvre. Although these two framing solutions may seem so different, in each case an effort was made to choose frames which might hint at the history of the pictures and the admiration they elicited.

Charles Le Brun’s monumental family portrait of the banker and extraordinary collector Everard Jabach presented a significantly different and more daunting curatorial challenge. Unlike Poussin and Valentin de Boulogne, Charles Le Brun made his career in Paris, rather than Rome, serving Louis XIV as premier peintre du Roi and undertaking the direction of the most important royal projects, including the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles.  There was no question but that this monumental canvas, commissioned by his key patron and supporter before he obtained his royal position, originally had a French frame.  But of what kind and style? Jabach’s son had taken the painting to the family’s residence in Cologne, and in 1792 – during the uncertainties and upheavals of the French Revolution – it was sold and transported to England.

Charles Le Brun, Everhard Jabach and family, before its acquisition by The Met

It was sold twice more, and from 1832 hung in a country house in England where, because of its size, a portion of the canvas was folded over. It had also been put into a nondescript frame – one scarcely worth transporting across the Atlantic.  Once purchased by The Met and conserved to recover its original dimensions, the question of its frame therefore had to be confronted.

A drawing for the frame of the portrait of Louis XIV by Charles Le Brun given by the King to the duc d’Antin; Bibliothéque nationale de France, Est. Ha 18, T.II, fol. 40

There are sketches by Le Brun for an elaborate frame intended for a portrait of Louis XIV which was to be given to the duc d’Antin – an example of the practical interest taken by painters in the frames made for their work.  In addition to a strongly sculptural profile, the frame was to be embellished with an elaborate cartouche at the top – something which was standard for royal portraits, the opulence of the carving and the emblematic motifs being an indication of the recipient’s identity and importance.  Jabach was a banker, as well as a notable connoisseur and insatiable collector, and his family portrait clearly belonged in a different category.  It was intended to decorate his magnificent new Parisian residence, whilst a second version (formerly in Berlin but destroyed in World War II) was evidently sent to the house he retained in his native Cologne.

In the portrait, Le Brun depicts two framed pictures on the back wall of the room in which the sitters are posed. Additionally, there is depicted a black framed looking-glass in which is reflected the image of the artist at his easel with another framed painting behind him.  The frames on these paintings are gilded but otherwise notably restrained in profile.

Model for the new frame for the Charles Le Brun, using the reposes from the coronation frame on Rigaud (after), Louis XV as a child, c.1716-24, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Charles Le Brun (1619-90), Everhard Jabach and family, c.1660, o/c, 280 x 328 cm., and detail, Metropolitan Museum, New York

With this in mind, a possible prototype was identified in the collection. A cast was made of the moulding, without the corner and centre ornaments, and this was sent to a well-known framemaker in Paris, who executed the frame now on the painting.

[The process of selecting and commissioning the frame was the subject of two posts on The Met’s blog, and can be read here, ‘What, no frame?‘ and here, ‘An update on the frame‘. They shine a rare light on the fascinating processes undertaken by the curatorial and framing departments of a museum to provide an appropriate frame for a major painting which has been acquired as a naked canvas.]

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The next two essays will explore ‘New norms: the 18^th and 19^th centuries’ and ‘Before frames were “Frames”: 14^th -16^th century Europe’

 A specialist in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, Keith Christiansen was curator and, from 2009 to 2021, chairman of the Department of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum.

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 Bibliography:

In addition to the many indispensable essays by various authors on The Frame Blog, the following books and essays have been particularly important sources for these three essays.  I would especially like to thank Timothy Newbery for sharing his incomparable knowledge of the frames in The Met’s collection.

Reinier Baarsen, ‘Herman Doomer, ebony worker in Amsterdam’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 138, no 1124, 1996, pp. 739-749

Isabelle Cahn, ‘Degas’s Frames’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 131, no 1033, 1989, pp. 289-293

Fédéric Destremau, ‘Pierre Cluzel (1850-1894), encadreur de Redon, Pissarro, Dégas, Lautrec, Anquetin, Gauguin’, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art français, 1995, pp. 239-47

Elizabeth Easton and Jared Bark, ‘Pictures properly framed: Degas and innovation in Impressionist frames’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 150, no 1266, 2008, pp. 603-611

Peter Mallo, ‘Artists’ frames in pâte coulante: history, design, and method’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 56, 2021,  pp. 160-73

Claude Mignot, ‘Le cabinet de Jean-Baptiste de Bretagne: un « curieux » parisien oublié (1650)’, Archives de l’art français, n.s. 27, 1984, pp. 71-87

Paul Mitchell & Lynn Roberts, A History of European picture frames, London, P. Mitchell in association with Merrell Holberton, 1996

Timothy J. Newbery, George Bisacca, Laurence B. Kanter, Italian Renaissance frames,

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990

Timothy Newbery, Frames, The Metropolitan Museum of Art  in association with Princeton University Press, 2007

Nicholas Penny, ‘Reynolds and picture frames’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 128, no 1004, November 1986, pp. 810-825

Nicholas Penny, ‘Notes on frames in the exhibition, Portraits by Ingres, Exhibition review’, February 1999, accessible on the National Portrait Gallery website

Nicholas Penny and Karen Serres, ‘Duveen and the Decorators’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 149, 2007, pp. 400–06.

— ‘Duveen’s French frames for British pictures’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 151, 2009, pp.388–94

Gemma Plumpton, ‘Framing the Renaissance’, on the Harewood website

Bruno Pons, ‘Les cadres francais du XVIII siècle et leurs ornaments’, Revue de l’Art, no 76, 1987, pp. 41-50, republished in English on The Frame Blog as ‘18th century French frames and their ornamentation’

Karen Serres, ‘Duveen’s Italian framemaker, Ferruccio Vannoni’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 159, May 2017, pp. 366–74; and reviewed on The Frame Blog as ‘19^th and 20^th century Italian framemakers: articles in The Burlington Magazine’; further information on Duveen’s reframing can be found in the Duveen Files, available through the Getty website

Antoine Schnapper, ‘Bordures, toiles et couleurs: une révolution dans le marché de la peinture vers 1675’, Bulletin de la Societé de l’histoire de l’art français, année 2000, 2001, pp.85-104

Pieter J.J. van Thiel and C. J. de Bruyn Kops, Framing in the Golden Age: picture and frame in 17^th century Holland, translated by Andrew McCormick, Rijksmuseum, 1995

The entry on John Smith from the website of the National Portrait Gallery

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Footnotes

[1] Giulio Mancini, ca. 1617-21

[2] Gemma Plumpton, ‘Framing the Renaissance’, Harewood House

[3] See also ‘Presenting the legend: the many frames of Raphael’

[4] Constantin Huygens, Hofwyck, 1653

[5] Willem Schellinks, Klioos kraam, vol verscheiden gedichten, 1657

[6] ‘Baring had purchased the house in 1817, and in 1820 he hired Robert Smirke to build an addition.  At the time, Smirke was working on the design of the façade of the British Museum.  Timothy Newbery has observed in The Met’s online entry that the frame has the character of an architectural interior moulding, and it is possible that Smirke designed it ’.

It is more probable, however, that the frame is by Smith; see the entry for John Smith in the Directory of British Picture Framemakers, NPG website,  and also see ‘The clue is in the frame’.  The interior decorative schemes of the additions were designed by C.R. Cockerell: the dining-room and the staircase

[7] The frame is decorated with paired wolves, the emblem of Romulus (whose followers abducted the Sabine women) and his twin, Remus, confirming that it was made specifically for this painting