Cradled wood art panels

[Daniel Rode]

I'm curious is anyone can provide and information on historical wood art panels. Some of the paintings that have best survived from centuries past were painted on wood rather than canvass. I've heard of poplar, oak, cherry and many other woods being used.

I'd like to make some larger panels perhaps 2' x 2' up to 4' x 4'. I assume that panels this size would typically be "cradled" which appears to be a structural frame behind the panel. I'd like to make them as similar as possible as they might have been made historically. I don't have a particular time frame in mind, just something that might have been correct 100 or 200 years ago.

I'd appreciate any tips or pointers toward more detailed information. How they were built, what materials, fasteners or tools were used, etc.

I'm reading through http://www.getty.edu/conservation/pu...paintings2.pdf, but it's a scholarly document, not really a how-to.

[Joseph Klosek]

Dan,

I made a frame for a 17th century portrait that was on wood. The back was cradled with a series of 1 1/2" wide by 3/8" or 7/16" strips. All the wood was oak. The panel itself was about 26" X 34". The cradling was spaced about

1 1/2" - 2" apart. All the joints were lapped and appeared to be just glued. The dealer for whom I made the frame said that the cradling was probably done later as there were linen strips still on the joints of the panel and many later

restorations to the painting. All the edges of the cradling strips were chamfered. I may be able to get a photo of the piece next week if you like.

J.

[Daniel Rode]

Thanks Joseph. Id be really interested in any photos you can find.

[John Vernier]

Hi. I studied 15th and 16th century European paintings when I was in grad school, and examined a number of them in museum conservation labs, so here's a little brain dump.

Italian paintings were most commonly painted on poplar (Italian and other European poplars are not the same genus/species as American tulip poplar, but American Cottonwood is a relative). These panels were often 1" to 1 1/2" thick. Netherlandish and German paintings were typically done on oak, the preference being for old growth oak from the Baltic coastal forest (Poland, Lithuania, and points east). This oak was imported for use in furniture and house joinery as well, as it was finer grained and much prettier than the native west European oaks, which were mostly cut from fast-growing managed forests, and used for structural work, ship building, etc. The Baltic oak is what was referred to in Netherlandish documents as wagenschott, which is where the word wainscot comes from. The finer grain of the Baltic oak also made it more stable and therefore a better substrate for painting. As I recall, there is good evidence that in the early 15th century, panels were left to season for a decade or more before being used for paintings. The Netherlandish Renaissance panels I have seen are much thinner than the Italian poplar panels, often less than 1/2", or even 1/4" for very small paintings. The Germans also often painted on pine, nothing wrong with that.

The thing about cradling is that it wasn't an original practice when panels were widely used for paintings. They are a conservation device which seems to have been used as far back as the 18th century to reinforce old panels, but they really came into vogue when a lot of European paintings began to be exported to America in the later 19th century. Seasonal humidity and temperature fluctuations on the east coast are much wider than the norm in Europe, and this played havoc with panels which had been relatively stable for centuries. Central heating in the days before modern sophisticated climate control made things even worse. The cradling was supposed to stop panels from warping badly, but in many cases it causes panels to split because they are restrained from flexing. In some cases thick panels were planed thinner in the hopes that they would be more stable, and then cradled. I saw one very large 15th century Italian painting, perhaps 5'x7', which had been planed to about 1/2" thickness, and had split apart into many sticks on its old cradle. When I saw it it was being carefully re-cradled on a modern flexible support structure which allowed for wood movement.

So, cradling has a bad name among conservators, although a lot of panels still have their cradles from past decades, as it is often a question of causing more damage by removing it rather than leaving it. However, I don't think any professional would consider planing and cradling a previously unrestored panel nowadays. Modern museums with good climate control keep panels relatively stable, and you will occasionally see a painting in a special mount which allows the panel to flex.

I hope that doesn't just make more questions for you, but it's a complicated subject. If I wanted to prepare a panel for painting I would look for a good straight, fine-grained quartersawn oak (early oak panels were almost certainly rived), or perhaps a vertical grain pine or fir. Assuming it was kiln dried, I would keep it indoors for a while before processing, then plane it but leave it over-thick, glue up my panel to size using hide glue and simple rub joints, the let it sit a while longer to see how it behaves before planing it to final size. In other words, it would be a lot like any carefully selected furniture panel, but done with an eye more for stability than for any interesting grain effects. I wouldn't plan on cradling or any sort of restraining frame, but I would build a frame which allows the panel to bow a little.

[Christopher Charles]

John, thanks for the fascinating read. I'll never look at wainscoting the same again. Or old paintings for that matter.

C

[Daniel Rode]

John, thanks for the detailed information. I assumed that the cradling was often original. The particular artist I have in mind likes to work on cradled hardboard panels (of her own construction) and I thought it might be interesting to offer up something from the past.