Holbein’s Cromwell portrait, beaded frame and panel

[Michael Kellough]

Holbein’s amazing attention to detail (in this nearly 500 year old painting) reveals a style of frame and panel edge detail that I’ve never seen.

You can see that the stile ends are tenons which are pinned into the rail. He even paints the medullary rays of the quarter sawn oak, though the grain is omitted.

The unfamiliar aspect is the intermittent bead across the rail.

 

[bertv]

I think it is a detail added to tie in the design and it is graduated in depth, which would be quite easy to do. A full bead across the whole width could have weakened to tenons strength. Just my 2 cts!