Neo-gothic Picture Frame

Neo-Gothic picture frame.
Pine wood.
Middle of the 19th century.
h. 23,6 in. ; l. 20,4 in.

Neo-Gothic, pine wood picture frame ornated with architectural ‘redents’ imitating Gothic window mullions.

Similar picture frames, inspired by Gothic architecture, were designed for many Romantic and Nazarene paintings towards the middle of the nineteenth century. Paul Mitchell and Merrell Holberton (authors of A History of European Picture Frames) mention a frame with similar characteristics custom made for a Visitation by Ernst Deger. The frame of this painting, exhibited in Düsseldorf, features similar compartments inspired by Gothic architecture. They also mention a frame designed for Austrian Nazarene painter Joseph Führich’s The Road to Emmaus, with ‘inner and outer ribs intersect at the corners’.

Sources

Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, Paris, 1858.

Henry Heydenryk, The Art and History of Frames, New York, 1993.

Paul Mitchell and Merrell Holberton, A History of European Picture Frames, London, 1996.