# The Frame Has Its Own Provenance > Ten records carry evidence on a frame. Van Eyck's integral frames date the panels to 1410-1440; a 1970 loan label on a frame in Maine proves nothing at all. > The Study - 2026-09-18 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-frame-has-its-own-provenance/ ## Key points - Ten of the 285 published records in this archive carry evidence on or about a frame. In three the frame is original to the picture and in four it is a documented replacement. In three, including both stolen paintings, nobody knows when frame and picture were joined. - The Camden attic Rembrandt's 1970 Philadelphia Museum of Art loan label is on the reverse of the frame, not the panel, and the museum told CNN that a slip or label doesn't necessarily verify a work of art. What the frame does prove is arithmetic: a sight width of 41.9 cm cannot be cut from the 41.5 cm panel a 1908 misprint gave the picture, and fits the 44.5 cm panel the Mauritshuis catalogued in 1910. - The Met's van Eyck frames are cut from the same oak plank as the paintings, so dendrochronology on the frames, felling between about 1410 and 1440 in the eastern Baltic, dates the pictures. The frames were cut away in the 1867 transfer to canvas and kept; in 2015 to 2016 they were found to carry Middle Dutch inscriptions under brass leaf. - The Taking of Christ's original frame was inside the 125 scudi Ciriaco Mattei paid on 2 January 1603 and is lost. An 1802 frame carried a gilt tablet with the wrong painter's name, misspelled. The earliest Irish record of the picture is a 1924 receipt for 20 pounds to the Dublin restorer James Hicks for repairing the frame, found in April 2016. - The Salvator Mundi's Cook Collection number 106 was on a nineteenth-century frame in New Orleans in 2005 and, decisively, also on the cradle. Vermeer's Astronomer hangs in a frame De Boer gave the Louvre in 1983, and the Cimabue was sold in 2019 inside nailed strips that made a fragment look like an icon. ## A frame is a second object, and the record keeps forgetting it ## A loan label on the back of a frame in Maine ## The number that was on the frame and on the cradle ## The frame that was in the price, and the frame that got the name wrong ## Two oak boards from the Baltic, cut off in 1867 and kept ## A note on the backing paper, and a frame the painter carved ## Frames that arrived later: a mirror in Paris and four nailed strips in Compiegne ## Two empty frames ## What a frame proves, object by object ## Why this archive is free to read Every frame in these ten records was made by someone other than the painter, in a year other than the painting's, with one exception carved by Whistler and one grown on the same plank as van Eyck's paint. The marks on the others belong to the frames. A loan label in Maine, a number on a gilt moulding in New Orleans, a tablet with a misspelled Dutch nickname in East Lothian, a gallery gift in Paris and four nailed strips in Compiegne each tell you where a frame has been. Read the support first, ask whether the frame is integral and trace the frame's own chain before you let it carry the picture's, because the frame has its own provenance and it is usually shorter. ## Questions **Is a museum loan label on the back of a frame proof of a painting's history?** No. A frame can be taken off one picture and put on another, so a label on a frame proves where the frame was and what the lender called the picture in it. The Philadelphia Museum of Art said as much about the 1970 label on the Camden attic Rembrandt: a slip or label does not necessarily verify a work of art. **Why does dendrochronology on the van Eyck frames date the paintings?** Because each painting and its frame were carved from a single oak plank. The frames were cut away when the paint was transferred to canvas in 1867 and preserved, and Ian Tyers dated the felling of the wood to between about 1410 and 1440 in November 2012. On a separate frame the same test would date only the frame. **Is the frame on Vermeer's Astronomer in the Louvre original?** No. The Louvre's own record describes a Dutch seventeenth-century frame, possibly originally a mirror frame, given specifically for this painting by the De Boer gallery of Amsterdam in 1983. With the frame the object measures 91.7 by 84.8 cm. **Why are the empty frames still hanging in the Gardner Museum's Dutch Room?** Because Isabella Stewart Gardner's 1924 will requires the collection to be kept as she arranged it, with nothing moved, sold or added. The museum needed a court's permission in 2008 to add a wing. The frames are what compliance looks like, not a memorial. **What is the earliest Irish document for Caravaggio's Taking of Christ?** A receipt for 20 pounds paid to the Dublin furniture maker and restorer James Hicks for restoring the painting's frame, dated 1924, which came to light among Dr Marie Lea-Wilson's papers in April 2016. It is a bill for the frame, and it is what places the picture in Dublin by that year. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record 436282, Jan van Eyck, The Crucifixion; The Last Judgment, 33.92ab, Technical Notes by Sophie Scully (2025), Frame, and Signatures, Inscriptions and Markings tabs. Read in full 18 September 2026 in the in-app browser after a 429 on the plain fetch. Source for the single-plank integral frames, the 1867 transfer and Sidorov's signed inscription, the frames cut away and preserved, Ian Tyers's dendrochronology of November 2012 giving 1410 to 1440 and the eastern Baltic, the hinge recesses, latch holes and nails, the red outer mouldings with white and black Middle Dutch inscriptions found under brass leaf in the 2015 to 2016 treatment, and Marc Smith's palaeography. - [2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access API, object 436282. Read 18 September 2026. Source for isPublicDomain true, the primary image and the sixteen additional images including the frame member in four states and the reverse of the canvases. - [3] Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, lot record for lot 2363, After Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Summer Grandeur 2024 Day 2, 24 August 2024, read 18 September 2026 in the Internet Archive capture of 9 September 2024 because the live site returns 403. Source for the wording label verso from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, lent for a 1970 exhibition, the hand carved Dutch gold frame, the overall size 28 1/2 by 24 1/2 inches, the sight size 20 1/2 by 16 1/2 inches, the estimate of 10,000 to 15,000 dollars and the sold price of 1,175,000 dollars. - [4] Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, press release, New England Art Discovery: Rare 17th Century Portrait Fetches 1.4 Million, PR Newswire, 30 August 2024. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the statement that a label on the verso of the frame attributed the work to Rembrandt and recorded a 1970 loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and for the 1,410,000 dollar total and the private European collector. - [5] Oscar Holland, CNN, A portrait found in a Maine attic unexpectedly sold for 1.4M. Could it be a long-lost Rembrandt?, 8 September 2024, read in full 18 September 2026 in the ABC17 syndication. Source for the label on the frame's reverse, the Philadelphia Museum of Art being unable to confirm the loan, and the spokesperson's statement that a slip or label doesn't necessarily verify a work of art. - [6] Dianne Dwyer Modestini, History of the Salvator Mundi, Salvator Mundi Revisited. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the nineteenth-century gilded frame carrying inventory number 106 at the lower left in the April 2005 sale, the same number and the letters CC painted in white on the back of the early nineteenth-century cradle, and the match to the Cook Collection catalogue. - [7] National Gallery of Ireland, online collection, object 2882, The Taking of Christ, L.14702. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the 125 scudi of 1602, the sale to William Hamilton Nisbet on 27 January 1802, the Dowell's sales of 25 June 1921 at eight guineas and 3 May 1922 at five guineas, and the line that Dr Marie Lea-Wilson bought the picture at an unknown date. - [8] National Gallery of Ireland, Caravaggio: The Irish Connection, from the exhibition Caravaggio: 25 Years on Display. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the archival material that came to light in April 2016, the receipt for 20 pounds for restoration of the painting's frame by James Hicks (1886-1936) of 5 Lower Pembroke Street, and the finding that it establishes the painting in Dublin by 1924. - [9] National Gallery of Ireland, How did a masterpiece by Caravaggio end up in a Dublin dining room?. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the gilt tablet once attached to the painting's frame repeating the misspelling Gherardo della Notte, made for the new frame after the 1802 sale, and for the photograph of the 1924 Hicks receipt. - [10] Musee du Louvre, collections database, L'Astronome, RF 1983 28, ark:/53355/cl010064324. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the Dutch seventeenth-century frame, possibly a mirror frame, given specifically for this painting by the De Boer gallery of Amsterdam in 1983, and the dimensions with frame of 0.917 by 0.848 m and 6.7 cm deep. - [11] C2RMF, La derision du Christ de Cimabue - Restauration, 7 November 2024. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the strips of wood nailed on all four sides to give the fragment the look of a small independent icon, their removal against the grain by Jonathan Graindorge-Lamour in the 2022 to 2024 restoration, and the barbes marking the lost applied frame. - [12] Barbara Appelbaum Brown, The First Photograph, WAAC Newsletter, reprinted in Abbey Newsletter vol. 26 no. 3, November 2002, together with the companion note GCI/HRC Research World's First Photograph in the same issue. Both read in full 18 September 2026. Source for Bauer recording Niepce's name and an account of the process on the paper backing of the frame in 1827, and for the Getty frame conservator Gene Karraker's finding that the gilt wood frame dates stylistically to the period of the heliograph. - [13] Harry Ransom Center, The Niepce Heliograph, object page. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the plate's dimensions of 16.7 by 20.3 by 0.15 cm, the Gernsheim Collection number 964:0000:0001 and the 1963 purchase with the Gernsheim Collection. - [14] University of Glasgow, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, catalogue raisonne YMSM 050, La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine, Technical description and History tabs. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the 1864 Whistler frame with carved decoration, English made and possibly by Joseph Green, believed to have remained on the painting since 1864, the framing by the Peacock Room shelving, the Christie's sale of 28 May 1892, lot 39, to Alexander Reid for 420 guineas, and the sale to Charles Lang Freer in August 1903 for 3,750 pounds. - [15] Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Theft, the museum's own account of 18 March 1990. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the two Rembrandts cut from their frames, the Concert and the Flinck removed from theirs, and the Manet's frame left behind. - [16] Tufts University Museum Studies blog, The Contested Legal Legacy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 4 March 2022. Read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the terms of the 1924 will, nothing moved, sold or added on pain of dispersal, and the 2008 application for legal permission to build the New Wing. - [17] Al Jazeera, Egypt blames security for art theft, 23 August 2010, and The History Blog, Van Gogh Poppy Flowers stolen from Egypt museum, 22 August 2010. Both read in full 18 September 2026. Source for the canvas cut out of its frame with box cutters during opening hours on 21 August 2010 and the security official's statement that the cameras and alarm had not worked for a long time. The prosecutor general's count of no working alarms and seven of forty-three cameras is taken from the archive's record, which cites the same contemporaneous account. - [18] Wikimedia Commons, file page for Empty Frames at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, FBI photograph released 2013, LicenseShortName Public domain, read 18 September 2026 via the API and the file page; used for the hero plate.