The Frame Blog

The Frame Blog is an online magazine for articles, interviews and reviews about antique picture frames: theframeblog.com/

2025-06-28

Bordercore: Why frames became the new frontier in contemporary art

by Katie White This article was first published on Artnet (News) on 3 April 2025, and is republished here with the permission of the author. For a century, the frame was meant to disappear. Today, it’s a site of rebellion, narrative, and physical presence. Years ago, the artist Harry Gould Harvey IV came across a fallen black walnut tree in a friend’s yard.

theframeblog.com/2025/06/28/bo

2025-06-07

Artcurial: ‘Mobilier & Objets d’Art’: a sale including antique frames

An auction,  ‘Mobilier & Objets d'Art', will be held in Paris by Artcurial in two sessions, on Tuesday and Wednesday 17th and 18th June 2025. It comprises an eclectic group of 416 lots, with amongst them a number of striking antique picture frames, looking-glass frames, and picture frames which have been converted to hold looking-glasses. The e-catalogue is available…

theframeblog.com/2025/06/07/ar

2025-05-09

National Gallery: building a Gothic polyptych frame

This is the story of how the panels of an enormous 14th century altarpiece, which were purchased by the National Gallery in 1857 as twelve separate paintings, have been united again in the most authentic replica Gothic polyptych frame to be created in the last six-and-a-half centuries [1]. The history of the altarpiece This work, the central panel of which depicts the…

theframeblog.com/2025/05/09/na

2025-04-20

Framed crucifixes. Part 1: conserving an Italian Calvary

Introduction This is the first of a pair of articles on the small but important category of framed domestic crucifixes, which may have begun in Italy with altarpieces like the one featured here, and which produced - from the late 17th century onwards - an especially striking class of French crucifixes with shaped frames. Belgian School (Liège?), integral framed panel with crucifixion scene, c.1100, walrus ivory,…

theframeblog.com/2025/04/20/fr

2025-04-11

Cambi d’Aste, Genoa: Sale of antique frames on Tuesday 15th April 2025

A large and varied sale of frames, this will be held at the Castello Mackenzie in Genoa on Tuesday 15 April 2025, from 3.00 pm local time. Viewing is from 11-14 April. Note that in the catalogue the dimensions aren’t consistently given as height before width, although the frames below have their measurements in the right order as far as is possible to determine.

theframeblog.com/2025/04/11/ca

2025-03-30

In this 250th post on The Frame Blog, Keith Christiansen looks at the framing of 15th-16th century Netherlandish works in The Metropolitan Museum, New York

theframeblog.com/2025/03/30/fr

2025-03-14

Figurative frames in the Low Countries

in the 16th & 17th centuries by Dorien Tamis Amongst frames made to hold a single painting (to differentiate them from those which are a part of a larger assemblage, i.e. an architectural ensemble, an altarpiece etc.), figurative painted frames stand out as a subcategory. Usually, early modern frames provide a clear boundary between the artwork they frame and the interior where they hang.

theframeblog.com/2025/03/14/fi

2025-03-09

Thierry de Maigret and Vincent Guerre: sale of antique frames in Paris, 11 March 2025

This auction will be held by Thierry de Maigret at the Hôtel Drouot at 11.00 a.m. and 1.30 p.m. local time on Tuesday 11 March. It includes a variety of frames, including some from the collection of the Berès family; the 518 lots comprise a wide range of periods, from the 16th /17th century to the 20th century, and a correspondingly wide range of styles and prices.  

theframeblog.com/2025/03/09/th

2025-02-24

Framed! European picture frames from the Johnson Collection, an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Curator’s introduction A picture frame can be a work of art in its own right. This installation explores how European frames changed from the 1500s to the 1800s, focusing on examples from the John G. Johnson collection. Whilst the artists who made these frames rarely signed their works, their labour and skill remain evident even when their names are lost.

theframeblog.com/2025/02/24/fr

2025-02-08

Framing emptiness: an exhibition of inscribed Renaissance frames

Tanja Lemke-Mahdavi and Olaf Lemke describe their exhibition of 15th and 16th century Italian and Spanish frames with painted and gilded inscriptions, all of which once had an intimate connection with the paintings they held, explaining and commenting on them. The exhibition runs from 22 November 2024- 22 March 2025 at Antike Rahmen & Antiquitäten, Eisenacher Str. 7, 10777 Berlin.

theframeblog.com/2025/02/08/fr

2025-01-28

A summary of frame exhibitions

2025 is the year for exhibitions of picture frames. From being an extremely rare and exotic beast, we are beginning to see displays of frames pop up ever more frequently around the world, as museums awake to an under-appreciated area of their collections. As an introduction to these, here is as comprehensive as possible a guide to frame exhibitions in the 20th and first twenty-four years of the 21st century (please excuse any omissions).

theframeblog.com/2025/01/28/a-

2025-01-18

Frameless art, boundless Modernism:

A chapter from the history of the clip frame by Volker M. Welter In May 1957, the Patent Office of the Federal Republic of Germany extended protection to a new method of hanging artwork which would render unnecessary any traditional picture frame. The clip, the centrepiece of the Bildträger system as seen from the front and the side. Photo: Content Production…

theframeblog.com/2025/01/18/fr

2025-01-05

Artcurial: ‘Rêveries fin-de-siècle’: a sale of Symbolist works

The art historian and dealer Gérard Lévy (1934-2016) opened the gallery which bears his name   in the 1960s, on Rue de Beaune in Paris. It specializes in objects from China, Japan and Tibet, and also in historic and early photographs; it is now run by his daughter, Patricia. Lévy was a collector, as well, assembling a notable group of more than eighty decorated fans…

theframeblog.com/2025/01/05/ar

2024-12-22

‘Many lives : Picture frames in context’: an online conference

The frame conference which had been arranged to take place physically at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, in May 2024, was moved online to become a virtual conference on 25-26 September 2024. You can find, below, the programme of speakers and summaries of their presentations, followed at the end of each of the three daily sessions by links to the six video recordings of the talks.

theframeblog.com/2024/12/22/ma

2024-12-13

Artists’ frames in pâte coulante: history, design, and method

by Peter Mallo  This study was first published in the Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 56, 2021, pp.160-73. During the final decades of the 19th century in Paris and London, methods for presenting exhibitions were undergoing a major reconsideration, and frames from this period begin to take on a new rôle both visually and conceptually. This development was driven by artists themselves to indicate that their…

theframeblog.com/2024/12/13/ar

2024-10-20

Frames in paintings: Part 2 – the 17th century

This is the second part of a series of articles on paintings in which pictures are shown hanging in their (often very realistically drawn) frames, giving some idea of the real contemporary fashions in displaying them - always remembering that the artist could be titivating them a bit, or imagining the whole setting, or that these might be hangs which had existed in that interior for some time.

theframeblog.com/2024/10/21/fr

2024-09-29

Histories of the frame

This paper on the historiography of frames was written for the recent online conference (‘Many lives: Picture frames in context’; 25-26 September 2024) organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Art history is still quite a young discipline itself, and has only been formally taught from around the 1840s and 50s; whilst the history of picture frames has – very disgracefully – never been taught consistently anywhere at all.

theframeblog.com/2024/09/29/hi

2024-08-25

Framing the European paintings at The Metropolitan Museum: Part 3

 by Keith Christiansen FRAMES BEFORE THE AGE OF FRAMES: the 14th to the 16th century, focusing on Italy Between 1508 and 1510, on the vault of the choir of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, Bernardino Pinturicchio depicted the four Evangelists, viewed through feigned marble oculi. Pinturicchio (1454-1513), St Luke painting the Virgin, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome St Luke, the patron of painters, is shown…

theframeblog.com/2024/08/25/fr

2024-07-26

National Gallery, London: Renaissance intarsia and the Battle of San Romano

Paolo Uccello (c.1397-1475), Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano, c.1438-40, tempera on panel, 182 x 320 cm., bought 1857, National Gallery, London Uccello’s large, spectacular and decorative battle scene of ornamentally-caparisoned knights on rocking-horse chargers has been framed for a century and-a-half in a distracting Victorian interpretation of a Romanesque billet…

theframeblog.com/2024/07/26/na

2024-07-16

Framing Impressionism

London Art Week is a festival – a sort of Glastonbury – of fine arts and antiques, which happens every year at the beginning of July, when auction houses, commercial galleries and some public museums around the city mount special exhibitions. You can go physically on an art crawl encompassing all sorts and styles of object, and also watch and listen to talks and discussions online.

theframeblog.com/2024/07/16/fr

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