Framing news!
June 3 2016
Picture: Peter Schade
AHN likes to keep an eye on all things framing - which is so often an area ignored by art history. Nowadays, the wonders of the web and social media means we can bypass all those closely cropped photos in books which chop off frames, which are such an essential part of how pictures were displayed and even conceived.
In the National Gallery, the head of framing Peter Schade continues to work framing wonders, and his latest project has been to put Murillo's St John the Baptist with a Lamb in a more appropriate Spanish 17th Century frame, top. You can see the rather dull frame that used to hang on the painting above. Here is Peter's Twitter feed, where he posts photos of his progress.
Meanwhile, another museum in the US has re-framed its prized Caravaggio, this time in a modern replica of a period frame. The Cleveland Museum of Art commissioned Paul Mitchell Ltd to designed and make a new frame (above) for its Crucifixion of St Andrew. You can read more about the process here on Paul's website. I love the fact that US museums still come to London, home to a number of world-class framers, to get this kind of thing done.
Finally, there's a two day framing conference coming up in London on 5th & 6th October at the Wallace Collection. It's being organised by Lynne Roberts (who has the excellent Frame Blog here) and Gerry Alabone of Tate. The conference is all about auricular style frames of the 17th Century, of which an example is below, around a copy of Van Dyck's Self-Portrait with a Sunflower at Ham House. More here.
