Frame

About

Frames began as part of the painting: medieval panels were often carved with their borders in one piece. Renaissance Italy built tabernacle frames like small pieces of architecture, with columns and pediments. In the 17th-century Netherlands, black ebony frames with rippled mouldings set off portraits and still lifes, while French carvers under Louis XIV and Louis XV produced lavish giltwood frames, laying gold leaf over gesso and burnishing it to a shine. Venetian mirror makers on Murano surrounded glass with etched, coloured and engraved glass borders.

Artists often took control: James McNeill Whistler designed and painted frames to extend his colour harmonies, and several Impressionists preferred plain white frames. Look at the corner joints, the gilding and whether the frame truly belongs to its picture, since many were changed.