When the frame is not an afterthought
“Exceptional Picture Frame”
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain 🇪🇸, October 7, 2024 – January 21, 2025
Lorenzo Veneziano, Portable Triptych with a central Crucifixion, c. 1370-1375. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
This small but pointed exhibition offers a rare chance to look at the object we usually look through. The eleven works on view — spanning the 14th to 17th centuries, three still in their original frames — trace exactly the transition our magazine cares about most: the moment when the gold-ground panel, conceived as a single unified object of devotion, gives way to the framed easel picture as an autonomous work of art. Seeing a LorenzoVeneziano or an early Netherlandish panel alongside the carved, gilded, and painted structures that once anchored it in an altar or a domestic interior is a reminder that the frame was never a neutral accessory — it was part of the same "media technology" that made the gold ground legible to its first viewers, shaping how light, gilding, and the sacred image were meant to be received together.
From the museums press release:
“The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is presenting a display of eleven paintings from its permanent collection dating from the 14th to 17th centuries with frames - three of them the original ones - that reveal the artistic importance of this element. Made in Spain, France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, they exemplify a wide variety of styles which reflect both the artistic period in which they were made and changing tastes, principally in relation to furniture, while contributing additional aesthetic value to the works they accompany, embellish and protect. Opening to the public on 7 October, the first visitors to enjoy this display will be those benefiting from “Mastercard Mondays”, with free entry.
While the collection does not include a large number of the original frames, it does feature many old and important examples. Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza paid particular attention to this aspect of collecting and in the 1980s commissioned two scholarly studies of the frames in his collection. The examples chosen for the present exhibition are of a high technical and stylistic level, making them unique and valuable objects in themselves. They also provide additional information which assists in a more complete understanding of the historical and artistic context of the works they surround.”
Source: museothyssen.org/en/exhibitions/pictures-frames, Curator: Mar Borobia
