The Frame Blog

The frame conference which had been arranged to take place physically at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, in May 2024, was moved online to become a virtual conference on 25-26 September 2024.

You can find, below, the programme of speakers and summaries of their presentations, followed at the end of each of the three daily sessions by links to the six video recordings of the talks.

‘This online conference on the history and care of frames was organized by the Museum’s curatorial and conservation departments, in a spirit of mutual co-operation. The AGO is home to an important collection of historic frames, and a project is currently under weigh to catalogue and conserve this collection, making it more accessible for study and use. In the light of this project, the conference presented current research which looks at frames in their many incarnations and contexts, including research on framemakers, framing traditions, frame collections, pairings of frames to paintings, their after-lives, artists’ frames, the commercial history of framing, and related topics.’

Wednesday, September 25, 2024:

Welcome and Introduction to the Frames Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario

• Opening keynote address: Lynn Roberts (The Frame Blog, London): ‘Histories of the frame’

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Morning Session:

• Martin Hanssen (Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena): ‘The Bonn Diptych and its frame, c. 1485. Technical investigations into an unusual devotional object’.

School of the Lower Rhine: top (l to r) Descent from the Cross and Martyrdom of St Sebastian, c.1485; below, reverse of framed panels (l to r): Salvator Mundi on Descent from the Cross; back of the panel of Martyrdom of St Sebastian,  Bonn, LVR-LandesMuseum

Martin Hanssen discussed two 15^th century Rhenish panels, the Descent from the Cross and the Martyrdom of St Sebastian, the latter of which has a period polychrome and parcel-gilt frame on which the 20^th century setting of the former is based. However, this older frame itself was actually applied to the panel by Julius Meyer and Wilhelm Bode – a very rare frame of the right period and place, acquired at the end of the 19^th century. Recent examination revealed that it was one unit (carved from a single piece of wood) which had survived, like the two painted panels, from a much larger altarpiece.

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• Jesús Jiménez Peces (Complutense University, Madrid): ‘The problem of originality and documentation in Spanish frames of the 17^th century’

Murillo (1617-82), Immaculate Conception, 1667, Seville Cathedral; frame by Bernardo Simón de Pineda

This paper tackled the lack of original Spanish frames on works scattered throughout the world’s museums, and their often  generic reframings, which do not consider the original context of the paintings, or try to consult archival material for evidence as to style and maker. The importance of the great altarpiece was emphasized, with the army of artists involved in its construction – architects, carpenters, carvers, master sculptors, gilders, painters – as well as the influence of centres such as Vallodolid , Madrid and Seville, and earlier influences from Flanders and Italy. However, specifically Spanish motifs emerged, such as the use of gem-like motifs, widely and misleadingly referred to as the ‘Herrera’ style, in the way of many named frames.

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• Marco Bei (Scuola Normale Superiore): ‘What really is a Maratta frame?’ – on the difference between a ‘Salvator Rosa’ and a ‘Carlo Maratta’ frame.

Carlo Maratta (1625-1713), Portrait of Cardinal Alderano Cybo, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille, with detail on left showing the ‘Maratta’ frame of the Potsdam Madonna Immaculata; detail, bottom right, of Pompeo Batoni (1708-87), St Paul, 1740-43, o/c, 73 x 60.5 cm., Basildon Park, National Trust

Carlo Maratta has left us an example of his own voluptuous variation on the relatively plainer Salvator Rosa; it is painted into the top right corner of his Portrait of Cardinal Cybo, and was used to frame his Madonna Immaculata, now at Potsdam. Here is the portrait of Cybo (montaged into the plainest variant of a Salvator Rosa), with below it, on the right, a corner of the original Salvator Rosa frame on Batoni’s St Paul. On the left is a larger detail showing the Maratta frame from the Madonna Immaculata; it was made of ebonized pearwood and was considerably more ornamented than the frame it was based on.

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• Federica Gigante (University of Cambridge): ‘15^th century Venetian frames with Islamic bookbinding motifs’

Detail of the period frame of Jacopo Bellini (1400-70), Madonna & Child, c.1448, Galleria dell’Academia, Venice: elements in the decoration compared with a drawing of an Islamic motif

Giovanni Bellini (c.1430-1516), Madonna degli Alberetti, 1487, o/panel, 71 x 58 cm., Gallerie dell’Academia, Venice

Federica Gigante’s paper was a fascinating summary of the number of these frames which share what are literally true ‘arabesques’ in their decoration, rather than the classical motifs originating in the Domus Aurea which are usually meant by that word. In the image immediately above, the corner roundels on Bellini’s Madonna degli Alberetti in the Academia, Venice, are compared with the arabesque motifs on one of the tooled Islamic bookbindings which supplied this kind of decoration for Italian craftsmen to emulate.

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Morning session moderated by Adam Levine (AGO)

Video recording of the presentations above:

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Midday Session:

• Gerry Alabone (National Trust, UK): ‘Mary Ashfield: 17^th century London framemaker’

William Miller (1796-1882), The ceremony of administering the Mayoralty Oath to Nathaniel Newnham, 8 November 1782, o/c, 155 x 216 cm., detail showing Fire Judges in their frames, Guildhall Art Gallery

Mary Ashfield was one of the three female framemakers of the 1670s (all called Mary) who were involved in making the giltwood frames for the series of twenty-two full-length portraits by John Michael Wright of the Fire Judges: men who settled the property claims after the Great Fire of London in 1666. In 1671, Mary was paid £96.00 for eight of the frames.

Edmund Ashfield (1640-79), Amphilis Tichborne, 1674, Libson & Yarker; and Mary of Modena, Chirke Castle

Mary Ashfield also made the frames for her husband Edmund’s pastel portraits (here, Amphilis Tichborne on the left, and Mary of Modena on the right). These are made after the ‘Sunderland’ pattern originating at Althorp, but without the distinctive meandering and cut-out sight edge of large Sunderland frames. Gerry has identified nearly thirty examples of Mary Ashfield’s frames.

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• Géraldine Bidault (Musée national du Château de Versailles): ‘Notable bordures of the 18^th century from the Château de Versailles’

Veronese (1528-88), Eliezer and Rebecca, 1551-1600, Château de Versailles

NeoClassical frame by Boulanger and Duret, 1773-74, Château de Versailles

Géraldine Bidault’s paper examined some of the more stunning 18^th century French frames categorized as bordures in the Château de Versailles. She has been involved in the immense task of cataloguing them all and assembling the archival documents, including account books and with reference to drawings, to support their history and identify their makers.

The grandest of these frames might cost almost as much as the painting, especially the royal bordures. Here, immediately above, is the superb NeoClassical frame made in 1773-75 for a portrait of Marie-Antoinette (not, sadly, the portrait it now contains by Vigée Lebrun, as the original has vanished). The frame itself was carved and gilded, with added plaster ornaments, by Jean-François Boulanger, with the figural carvings by François-Joseph Duret. It measures 420 x 220 cm. The frame above it was made in 1736 by Jacques Verberckt (after a design of 1729 by F-A Vassé), for Veronese’s Eliezer and Rebecca, as the chimneypiece in the Hercules Room, Versailles.

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• Marie Dubost (Freelance conservator, France): ‘La réparure in western Europe’

Marie Dubost’s presentation was not so much a talk as a love poem on the art of réparure – of redefining and creating ornament in the gesso’d frame. She described the skill of its practitioners, how it was actually executed, the tools for different operations, the chronological developments in réparure through stylistic changes, the variations in gilding for certain effects, and the names of the various motifs, etc.

Listening to someone speaking with such enthusiasm and feeling for their subject is extremely moving, and would win the interest of the most hard-boiled of audiences.

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Mid-day session moderated by Michael Gregory (Arnold Wiggins & sons, London)

Video recording of the presentations above:

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Afternoon Session:

• Cynthia Moyer (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York): ‘A NeoClassical French frame at the Met: recovery and discovery’

Marie Guillemine Benoist (1768-1826),  Jeanne Eglé Mourgue and her son, 1802, Metropolitan Museum, New York 

This paper began with a very helpful summary of how frames in the Met are (admirably) catalogued and described online – in those cases which have been chosen for this treatment – with profile drawings, etc., and notes on the suitability of the frame to the painting it holds. The particular frame on which the paper focused was that on a portrait by Marie Benoist, a student of Jacques-Louis David’s. The frame retains its original gilding, and the extraordinarily sculptural and opulent ornament is carved in walnut and limewood on an oak back frame. The ornaments used also appear on contemporary furniture. The cleaning and restoration of this frame was described in fascinating detail, including the creation of 3D-printed elements produced to replace losses.

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• Genevieve Tobin (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC): ‘Gel-like materials for cleaning gilded picture frames: current and prospective research’

Frame currently in use for Corneille de Lyon, Portrait of a man, c.1536-40, National Gallery of Art, Washington 

Gels from different sources help in the conservator’s unending battle against the plague of radiator paint which was used from the later 19^th century onwards to conceal losses, and also for modern varnishes. Some of these innovative materials were used in the conservation of one of the little Venetian  Renaissance aedicules with Islamic-influenced decoration which have frequently been used to frame small portraits by Corneille de Lyon and his peers. This frame, from the collection of the NGA, had been altered in the past and given new columns, but the mordant decoration was still in place, and evidence of contrasting silver leaf was also found under the accumulated dirt and varnish.

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• Rosario I Granados (Blanton Museum of Art): ‘Golden crests: framemaking in Venezuela in times of political change, 1750-1830’

Domingo Gutiérrez (1709-93), giltwood tabernacle, 1770s, 52 x 33 x 10.16 cm., Denver Art Museum

Juan Pedro Lopez (1724-87), Our Lady of Guidance, c.1765-70, Carl and Marilynn Thoma Foundation 

Rosario Granados gave a paper on the Venezuelan adoption of the Rococo and the frames produced in this style, often for sacred paintings which were richly decorative and dramatically forceful. These frames have strikingly flared and flamelike crests (rather like German Rococo frames), and shallow profiles. They were made from local woods, colours and metals, by craftsmen from a variety of places including the Canary Islands, and at a time when the Rococo in Europe was beginning to give way to NeoClassicism.

They also (like the frame of Marie Benoist’s portrait of Jeanne Eglé Mourgue and her son in the Met) have a close relationship with contemporary furniture.

An important figure in the making of both furniture and frames was the master carpenter Domingo Gutiérrez; the artist Juan Pedro Lopez worked as a carver and gilder, and was also associated with Gutiérrez in the finishing of altarpieces.

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• Philippe Avila (Independent objects conservator, New York): ‘From East to West: lacquer and lacquered frames in the time of discoveries’

Top: Japanese School, namban oratory, late 16^th century, o/copper with lacquered wooden frame inlaid with mother-o’-pearl, Santa Casa da Misericordia, Sardoal, Portugal; bottom: Japanese namban oratory with sliding cover, late 16^th-early 17^th century, o/copper with similarly made frame, J.M. Collection, Portr, Portugal; centre right: Mexican School, Circumcision of Christ, c.1700, with both painting and frame of wood, oil paint and mother-o’-pearl inlay, Currier Museum of Art 

In the mid-16^th century, Europeans made their way for the first time to Japan, and in 1549 the founder of the Jesuit order followed, Francis Xavier. Missionaries needed sacred art and furniture for their churches and academies in Japan, and also for export, and they employed local craftsmen who were experts in the use of lacquer – a completely new material to the west. European objects such as caskets, altarpieces and frames for hanging paintings were imitated in lacquer and mother-o’-pearl; these are described as namban. These techniques were also exported via the Spanish to Mexico, where chests, frames and furniture were produced in the same style, sometimes even more colourfully, with green and yellow lacquers.

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Afternoon session moderated by Julia Campbell-Such (AGO)

Video recording of the presentations above:

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Thursday, September 26, 2024:

Morning Session:

• Adrian Moore (Tate Britain): ‘Aes[ethics] and frame conservation at Tate’

Turner (1775-1851), The angel standing in the sun, 1846, o/c, 78.7 x 78.7 cm., and its chronological parade of frames, Tate Britain

Adrian Moore of Tate Britain gave a fascinating paper on the part subjectivity and the personal aesthetics of those involved play in the framing and reframing of paintings in his (and, of course, any) collection.

Amongst many other works, he considered the example of Turner’s  Angel standing in the sun, which has had at least five different frames for which there is evidence. The first, a Rococo revival pattern, is probably nothing to do with Turner, as it bears little relation to the Baroque French styles he chose for himself, and is only known through a black-&-white photo. The three succeeding frames came about through the vagaries of fashion and the personal choices of curators or conservators, while the last reproduces a pattern used by Turner elsewhere. Even the finish and patina of a new or restored frame is mediated through the knowledge and preferences of the framemaker or conservator involved.

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• Flavia Crisciotti (Technical University, Munich): ‘Frameless: Veronese and Bellini on display, 1930-1950’

Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516), Pietà, 86 x 107 cm. (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan) in its replica frame of 1902-04, and displayed without this frame in the exhibition of his work, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 1949, designed by Carlo Scarpa

This paper discussed the unframing campaign in the late 1940s and 1950s in Italy – a reverse of the growing feeling in other museums that paintings should be framed where possible as they would have been seen originally.

Veronese (1528-88), Feast in the House of Levi, 1573, o/c, 560 x 1309 cm., Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice, with period entablature echoing that of the roodscreen in San Nicolò dei Mendicoli 

Unframing was not universal, however, even in Italian museums which had adopted the trend; so that in the Venice Accademia, Titian’s Pietà was shown in a contemporary frame (probably made from an architectural cornice) fitted to the painting in the 1920s. Veronese’s Feast in the House of Levi was presented by Carlo Scarpa in a deep entablature, carved, painted and parcel-gilt, stretching across the full width of the wall covered by the painting, an element which, together with the painted arches, echoes the entablature and arches in the roodscreen of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli, Venice. Contemporary and original frames were thus to be retained, where reproduction frames might be discarded as inauthentic.

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Julia Vázquez (Bibliotheca Hertziana): ‘What’s in a re-frame?’

A room from Claribel Cone’s apartment in Maryland, showing some of the Cone sisters’ collection of works by Matisse

When they reframe the works in their collections,

‘museums are choosing amongst divergent views of authenticity’.

Should, for example, Matisse’s paintings be shown in very minimal strip mouldings, as the artist might (perhaps) have preferred, or in the more ornamental frames which were their collectors’ choice (made in one case by a framemaker recommended by the artist)? Should Old Masters be placed in frames originating in the same time and place, or – if nothing like this is available – in replicas or reproductions which are only pretending to age and autheniticity?

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Morning session moderated by Lisa Koenigsberg (Initiatives in Art and Culture, New York)

Video recording of the presentations above:

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Midday Session:

• Tess Graafland and Josephina de Fouw (Rijksmuseum): ‘Finding the perfect match: framing and reframing at the Rijksmuseum’

Tess Graafland (frame conservator)and Josephina de Fouw (curator of frames and 18^th century Dutch painting) gave a paper which covered historical hangs and framing in the Rijksmuseum, the innovatory 1984 exhibition and book, Prijst de Lijst, and the current development of research into and concentration on the frame collection. They also described the return of Marius Bauer’s 1913 painting of Benares   to its original frame.

The images here show two views of the Prijst de Lijst exhibition (who wouldn’t have liked to have visited it?), whilst below is a School of Fontainebleau portrait, c.1550-74, which has been rescued from the rather sober frame on the left, and enthroned in the ornamental golden fantasy on the right. This is carved with an idiosyncratic egg-&-dart below the top edge, a design of undulating trumpet-like flowers on the frieze, and a scalloped sight edge. The stamens of the flowers have been glazed with red and green, dotting the frieze with tear-drop rubies and emeralds which echo the colours of the painted costume. The decorative richness and strangeness of the whole object is now much more like a piece of art from Fontainebleau, and is a beautiful leap of the imagination by the framing department.

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• Elise Lopez (Musée d’Orsay): ‘19^th century frame collections: researches and observations from the Musée d’Orsay’s frame conservator’

Alexandre Cabanel (1823-89), Paradise lost, Musée d’Orsay, top left & detail of frame below; André Hipp’s label, top right; and Cabanel in his studio, below

Elise Lopez, together with a curator and two registrars, looks after more than six-and-a-half thousand frames at the Musée d’Orsay. Here she described research into the patterns used by Alexandre Cabanel, supplied by the framemaker André Hipp. Cabanel’s frames were delicate but enriched variations on the Salon style, and in the face of changing tastes, some of them were discarded. One had belonged to the 1883 Portrait of Alexandre Armand, reframed in a narrow modern moulding from the original Hipp design in which it appears in a photo of Cabanel’s studio, hanging immediately behind the artist. This original frame remained in storage in the Museum, and when a series of Cabanels were found in exactly the same frame, including Paradise Lost, top left, there was every reason to reunite portrait and frame once more.

This is one result of a wide-ranging assessment of the frames in the Orsay; it led also to Elise Lopez’s PhD research into 19^th century Parisian framemakers. This relies on analogous documents to those behind Jacob Simon’s Directory of British Picture Framemakers on the NPG website – Bottin’s lists of suppliers (1798-1930), invoices, catalogues and patents records. The life of Souty’s framemaking dynasty was used as an example.

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18   Liza Nathan (Tate Britain): “Three frames, one painting: a contextual journey’

John Simpson (1782-1847), ?Ira Frederick Aldridge, 1827, o/c, 73.3 x 56.2 cm., Tate Britain: top left, in Vernon frame; top right, in ‘temporary’ 1995 frame; bottom, in 21^st century frame 

John Simpson’s portrait, possibly of the American actor, Ira Frederick Aldridge, was the subject of Liza Nathan’s talk; it was painted in 1827, exhibited in the British Institution, and purchased by the collector, Robert Vernon. Vernon seems to have preferred a frame pattern with a convex or ogee profile, and small calligraphic decoration in compo. By the 1990s, the circular frame which he had unaccountably chosen had degraded considerably, and, in 1995, a ‘temporary’ circular frame was produced; but it was not until 2022 that further research discovered that the portrait indeed hung originally as an oval in the British Institution, probably in a rectilinear frame with spandrels. A model was chosen which used very similar decoration to that on the Vernon frame.

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Mid-day session moderated by Adam Levine (AGO)

Video recording of the presentations above:

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Afternoon Session:

19 Gregory Porter and Andrew Haines (MFA Boston): ‘The conservation treatment of the frame on a 15^th century Venetian altarpiece by Bartolomeo Vivarini’

Bartolomeo Vivarini (fl. c.1440-post 1500), Virgin & Dead Christ with Ascension & saints, 1485, 236.1 x 198 cm., before conservation; MFA Boston 

The frame of this altarpiece is original and almost intact, but progressive conservation projects had resulted in a very bright finish, out of key with the paintings. Charles Prendergast, the early 20^th century American framemaker, was employed in 1905 to revive the frame: he added five finials and other parts, and regesso’d and regilded the whole – rather masking the fineness of detail. He also altered the structure, so that the painted panels no longer had the framing elements nailed to them, but could be inserted at the back and then secured.

Vivarini, Virgin & Dead Christ with Ascension & saints after conservation and repair

In the course of the most recent cleaning and restoration by the authors, some original polychromy was found, matching colours in the paintings, whilst losses (such as in the Virgin’s punchwork halo) were made good, and the gilded ground of paintings, sculpture and frame were matched and harmonized.

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• Christopher Brooks and Allison Langley (Art Institute of Chicago): “Reframing Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte: a process of research, revision and refinement’

Seurat (1859-91), Les poseuses, o/c, 200 x 249.9 cm., Barnes Foundation 

The Grande Jatte was found unframed in Seurat’s studio when he died, and has had at least seven frames during its life in the Art Institute of Chicago; although when it was first painted, Seurat himself recorded it in its earliest setting in his 1886-88 painting, Les poseuses. This paper gave a quick tour of the intervening solutions, before the most recently made.

Top: Seurat’s Les poseuses in a shallow cushion frame, and other works in plate frames, in 1892 exhibition in Antwerp; bottom: La Grande Jatte (1884-86; painted border added 1888-89, creating the need for a larger frame; o/c, 20.75 x 308.1 cm.) in new 2022 plate frame, Art Institute of Chicago 

From 1982 to 2004 the frame created in the Museum was based on the one shown in the background of Le Poseuses, and from 2004 to 2022, on the outer frame of Les Poseuses itself – a white cushion profile in which it was exhibited in 1892 but which later vanished. The choice made in 2022 is based on Seurat’s flat plate frames, at least five of which, on smaller works, hung around Les Poseuses in the 1892 exhibition in Antwerp. The finished frame is plain but monumental, the glazing alone weighing about 300lb, and it presents the painting very much as Seurat himself, in his last years, must have hoped for.

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• Sacha Marie Levay (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts): ‘Journal of a framemaker: witnessing framing trends in the Canadian paintings collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’

This talk followed the growth of frame knowledge, through a study of changing fashions in framing, reframing and hanging in the Museum, as far back as its foundation in 1879, when the Art Association of Montreal achieved its first permanent home.

Henry Rowland Eveleigh (1909-99), The fortune teller, 1939, o/c, 76.2 x 50.8 cm.; top: replacement stock moulding frame, and bottom: original artist’s frame, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 

From tiered hangs in Salon-style frames three to five pictures deep, through the removal of ornamental gilt frames a hundred years later, to an increasing awareness from the 1990s of historic frame patterns, research into and cataloguing of the frame collection has reunited some empty frames with their original contents, and produced better solutions for paintings displayed in their inlays or in minimal high street frames.

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• Allison Jackson (Harvard Art Museums): ‘A decade of intentional framing at the Harvard Art Museums’

Corrado Giaquinto, The presentation in the Temple, c.1764-65, o/c, 287 x 181 cm., Harvard Art Museums; before and after reframing 

Allison Jackson is the first specialist conservator of frames for the three united Harvard museums, carrying out, from 2012, all aspects of frame conservation, acquiring antique frames, creation of historically accurate reframing of replicas,  research, etc.

Her work spans all ages, from creating a setting for a 14^th century predella fragment which emulates its sibling with engaged moulding in the Courtauld, through replacing the unsatisfactory frame of the 18^th century altarpiece (above) by Giaquinto, to improving the framing of the 20^th century collection (getting rid of linen inlays!).

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Afternoon session moderated by Tracy Gill (frame scholar & principal, Gill & Lagodich Fine Period Frames, New York)

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Closing keynote address:

• Hubert Baija (retired conservator of frames, Rijksmuseum): ‘Colourful traces – original framing’:

Technical art history is where conservation meets the history of an object. The scientific analysis of surviving original framing from the Netherlands in the 15^th -17^th centuries often reveals colour, rather than the black overpaint and stripped profiles which we see today. The original frame of a painting deserves preservation as a unique source of information.

Hubert Baija’s presentation concerned two centuries of original Northern frames and their finishes, from the late Gothic of the Duchy of Burgundy to the 17^th century of the Dutch Golden Age. This took his audience from Van Eyck’s painted faux stone frames (for instance, on the portrait of his wife, 1439) to the extraordinary frame carved for Frans Post’s View of Olinda (1662), with its lizards, snakes and exotic plants, which Hubert believes would once have been realistically coloured, rather than gilded overall.

Master of Alkmaar, The seven acts of Mercy, 1504, Rijksmuseum; top, as it now appears; bottom, as it might have originally looked  

The vast altarpiece by the Master of Alkmaar in the Rijksmuseum, which is about fifteen feet wide or 470 cm., and consists of one immensely wide frame holding all seven panels of the Seven works of Mercy (1504), although preserving apparently original black inscriptions has actually been stripped of its first finish, retaining only tiny suggestions of colour – a turquoise blue – over fragments of a layer of gilding, which was applied over lead white.  So it may have appeared more like the recoloured version in the lower image above – covered in an azurite-based paint with gilded sight edge. There are so many of these altarpieces in the Netherlands which were once as colourful in their frames as the panels within.

Cornelis Engebrechtsz (1460/65-1527), Triptych with the Crucifixion, c.1515-18, o/panel, centre panel: 198.5 x 146 cm., each wing 182.5 x 66 cm., predella: 15 x 109 cm., where the later black paint and parcel-gilding conceal a finish painted to look like stone blocks; Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden

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Video recording of the presentations above:

 

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