Posted: 04 Dec 2024 by PML
This portrait - although the sitter’s identity was only recently discovered - turns out to have descended in her family for two hundred years, almost certainly retaining its original frame, until it was sold to a member of the Rothschild family in 1865.
Posted: 09 Oct 2024 by PML
In 2012 this striking double portrait of a future husband and wife by the Flemish-born artist, Jacob Huysmans, was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne ...
Posted: 10 Jun 2024 by PML
The large arched painting of the Battle between Christians and Moors at El Sotillo in the Met Museum was only one part of an immense altarpiece, about 15 metres high, painted by Zurbarán in 1637-39 for a Carthusian monastery near Cádiz ...
Posted: 22 Feb 2024 by PML
The project to reframe this painting by one of the great 17th century Spanish masters was very exciting, since it required the design to incorporate a sense of the piety, symbolism and Catholic splendour of the original setting. This is one panel from a set of seven canvases which surrounded an altarpiece of the Madonna and Child by Murillo in the private oratory of the Archbishop of Seville, in southern Spain ...
Posted: 28 Nov 2023 by PML
The National Gallery possesses a particularly tender and moving painting of the Madonna and Child by Ghirlandaio. It has a curved, segmental top, and an integral painted trompe l’oeil border giving the effect of the inside of the arched niche in which the two figures stand, which has made it difficult to frame – even in an arched version of a conventional frame ...
Posted: 14 Sep 2023 by PML
Van Gogh painted Madame Roulin, the wife of his friend Joseph Roulin, a postman in Arles, as a kind of secular Madonna - a symbol of family love and security. He even presented it to Gauguin after their destructive breach, asking that it should be hung as part of a triptych, between two paintings of sunflowers ...
Posted: 04 May 2023 by PML
Franz Maulbertsch (1724-96) was a Viennese artist whose work was sought after for castles and churches across the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had been particularly influenced by Venetian Rococo painting, and his wall, ceiling and easel paintings are all infused with the airy lightness of Tiepolo and Piazzetta ...
Posted: 27 Apr 2023 by PML
Franz Maulbertsch (1724-96) was a Viennese artist whose work was sought after for castles and churches across the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had been particularly influenced by Venetian Rococo painting, and his wall, ceiling and easel paintings are all infused with the airy lightness of Tiepolo and Piazzetta.
Posted: 08 Feb 2023 by PML
A painting is a window onto another world – of history or of the imagination - and we can only enter this world completely if there is a context to ease us in, and nothing to distract from the welcome of that opening window ...
Posted: 25 Jun 2020 by PML
The second part of this essay continues to explore the evolution of frames and their relationship to their architectural surroundings, resuming with the Baroque style in Britain during the 18th century up to the Art Deco style in the 20th century ...