RKD STUDIES

The marking of objects to indicate quality was a common guild practice, known from, for example, pewter, gold, and silver.¹ In the visual arts, the first known guild ordinances concerning quality hallmarks emerged in fifteenth-century Brussels. There in 1454 and 1455, hallmarking was made obligatory for all parties involved in the production of altarpieces, to ensure that the materials and workmanship complied with the regulations of the various guilds. For example, the wood used by the sculptor for a carved altarpiece was inspected and marked by the Brussels mason’s guild (Steenbickelerenambacht) [1], while the wood used by the joiner for the case and wings was inspected and marked by the joiners’ guild [2].² As such, these marks functioned as mutual guarantees of quality between sculptor, painter and joiner as commissions passed between masters.

1
Hallmark of the Brussels mason’s guild

2
Hallmark of the Brussels joiners: a pair of sliding dividers and a carpenter’s plane

3
Hallmark of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke: the hands and the castle

Antwerp adopted comparable measures in 1470, 1472, and again in 1492, though within a different institutional framework.³ Unlike Brussels, where painters and sculptors belonged to separate guilds, both professions in Antwerp were united in the Guild of Saint Luke, which supervised both the quality of the wood and the polychromy. The brand of the so-called Antwerp hand denoted the quality of the wood, the sculptor’s responsibility, while the city’s coat of arms – a castle – indicated the quality of the polychromy added by the painter [3]. No specific mark was assigned to the carpentry of the altarpiece case, which could be executed in either a sculptor’s or a painter’s workshop.

As easel painting gradually replaced the production of carved altarpieces during the sixteenth century, these differing institutional frameworks led to divergent developments in marking practices. In Brussels, the division between guilds encouraged a system of mutual control between independent craftsmen, expressed through marks that operated across professional boundaries. In Antwerp, by contrast, most panel makers belonged to the Guild of Saint Luke, which integrated control over materials and workmanship and enabled more systematic regulation of panel production. These institutional differences were reinforced by market conditions: Antwerp’s large-scale, export-oriented painting industry created stronger incentives for reliable quality control. As a result, Antwerp developed a more consistent system in which panels were inspected and branded before entering the painter’s workshop, while marking in Brussels remained limited and sporadic.

In Brussels, only a small number of easel paintings bear marks on their reverses which all relate to the joiners’ hallmark of a pair of sliding dividers with a plane between its legs. This mark is found, for example, on the reverse of Portrait of Joost Joostz. van der Burch (1552), as well as on a small Head of a bearded man, formerly attributed to the circle of Peter Paul Rubens [4]. In addition, a variant of this hallmark is recorded on the reverse of the unattributed painting Mary Magdalene in the wilderness and several times on the reverse of Michiel Coxie’s Triptych with the Resurrection and donor portraits (c. 1585-1592) [5].⁴ This variant replaces the plane by a U-shaped tool, which is likely a mitre square, sometimes referred to as a ‘Melencolia square‘ after Dürer’s engraving ‘Melancholy’ [6]. This tool also appears in a probably seventeenth-century coat of arms of a German joiners’ guild [7], further supporting the mark’s association with the joiners’ profession.⁵

In Antwerp, by contrast, the marking of wooden supports developed into a systematic practice. In the early seventeenth century, panels occasionally bear guild brands from separate irons: one depicting a hand palm (the same hand applied twice, side by side), and another showing a castle with towers, often stamped at some distance from the hands. An example is the guild hallmark bearing two left hands on the reverse of Rubens’ The Holy Women at the Sepulchre (c. 1611-1614) [8], while Jan Brueghel (I) and Rubens’ Allegory of Touch depicts a right-hand branding iron being transported in a small iron cart with glowing coals [9]. These separate impressions probably do not, as previously suggested, reflect the continued use of older irons, as they do not correspond to the impressions found on sixteenth-century altarpieces currently recorded in the Marks on Art database.⁶ Another possible explanation is that the Guild for easel paintings sought to preserve a distinction between the hand and the castle, which had traditionally functioned as separate quality marks for the wood and polychromy of altarpieces. No documentary evidence for such a distinction in relation to easel paintings has been identified, however, and it was never formally institutionalized. From around 1613–1615 onwards, these separate motifs were increasingly combined into a single branding iron, uniting the hand(s) and castle into one stamp, simplifying the process and visually consolidating the guild mark, although separate impressions continue to occur sporadically until about 1620.

4
Hallmark of the Brussels joiners: a pair of sliding dividers and a carpenter’s plane on the bevel of a thin panel painting

5
Two punches of the sliding dividers and mitre’s square
Photo J.A. Glatigny

6 The oblong mitre square (left), also called the ‘Melencolia square’, detail of Dürer’s Melancholy (1514)

7 The coat of arms of a German carpenters‘ guild displaying a pair of dividers, a miter square and below a plane, probably from the seventeenth century. Illustration in Brockhaus, Konversations-Lexikon 16 (1895).
Courtesy of the University of Toronto Libraries.