The Jabach Portrait: An Update on the Frame
A sample of the frame being created for the Jabach portrait is held up against the picture. Photograph by Keith Christiansen
«The Jabach portrait is now back on its stretcher, and Michael Gallagher is about to move on from the complex structural work that has occupied him these past few months to the final retouching and varnishing. In other words, we are in the home stretch.»
Naturally, I have become concerned about the progress on the frame, which was the subject of a previous post. As noted there, over the years we have established a working relationship with a number of outstanding frame dealers in New York and London, but occasionally we look further afield in our attempt to find an appropriate period frame. The large size of Le Brun's painting of Everhard Jabach and his family, however, pretty much excluded the possibility of locating a period frame, so the matter came down to finding a model and deciding on a firm that would replicate it. Ultimately, we settled on one that has been in business in Paris since 1847 and came highly recommended by colleagues there. We made a cast of a section of a period frame in the Metropolitan's collection and asked them to reproduce it to the dimensions necessary.
The frame in progress, together with two examples of gilding options, in the Paris workshop of the frame maker we've contracted for the project. Photograph by Keith Christiansen
The week before Christmas, when I was in Paris for business, I was able to see the progress. I hope you will agree that there is every reason to think that the completed frame will have the combination of elegance and sobriety we felt the picture required and that Le Brun himself favored in the frames he depicts around the landscapes that hang behind the family in Jabach's grand Parisian mansion.
Keith Christiansen
Keith Christiansen, John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings, began work at the Met in 1977, and during that time he has organized numerous exhibitions ranging in subject from painting in fifteenth-century Siena, Andrea Mantegna, and the Renaissance portrait, to Giambattista Tiepolo, El Greco, Caravaggio, Ribera, and Nicolas Poussin. He has written widely on Italian painting and is the recipient of several awards. Keith has also taught at Columbia University and New York University's Institute of Fine Art. Raised in Seattle, Washington, and Concord, California, he attended the University of California campuses at Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, and received his PhD from Harvard University.