A tour de force of carver’s art, this frame, together with its pair (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), was most likely made to display a marriage portrait, the unidentified coat of arms in the cresting referring to the sitter. Veneered with ebony, embellished with finely carved pieces of applied boxwood and garlands of naturalistic flowers, the frame is signed by Hannart, who was active in The Hague and Leyden. This artist worked in wood as well as in stone, indicating that the traditional division between stone sculptors and wood carvers was no longer strictly adhered to at the end of the seventeenth century.
