RKD STUDIES

The marking of panel supports by panel makers in Antwerp was well established and regulated during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but whether comparable practices existed in the Dutch Republic remains poorly understood. To date, no archival sources have been identified that document formal requirements for marking panel supports, nor have regulations comparable to those of Antwerp been found.

Nevertheless, a small corpus of 76 marked Dutch panels has so far been documented, demonstrating that some form of marking practice existed in the Northern Netherlands. None of these marks can yet be identified and their interpretation is often difficult. Many occur only once or a few times, making it uncertain whether they should be associated with panel makers, dealers, collectors, or other owners (see Appendix 1B). Despite these uncertainties, the marks constitute an important category of material evidence for reconstructing artistic production, workshop practices, and commercial networks in the seventeenth-century Netherlands.

Research into North Netherlandish panel marks remains in its infancy. An early contribution was made by the Dutch art historian Albert Heppner (1940), who reproduced several marks known to him at the time, including the "4MM" monogram which originated from the Northern Netherlands [1].¹ The exhibition catalogue Prijst de Lijst (1984) focused on seventeenth-century frame makers, but because some of these also made panel supports includes interesting references to those individuals.² In 2014, an ICOM-CC poster presentation highlighted the diversity of marks found on North Netherlandish panels and demonstrated how tool marks on the reverse can help distinguish Northern from Southern supports.³ Building upon this work, an interdisciplinary study published in 2023 investigated the recurring “4MM”-mark through dendrochronological, technical, and art-historical analysis. The use of boards derived from the same tree on multiple marked panels strongly suggested that the “4MM”-mark belonged to a panel maker, while biographical research into the painters who used these panels indicated that this maker was probably active in Rotterdam between 1632 and 1648 [2].⁴ Most recently, Angela Jager has presented the first results of archival research into the panel making trades and their organization in Amsterdam, Leiden and Rotterdam.⁵

The reverses of panels preserve tool marks, which often make it possible to distinguish North Netherlandish panels from their Southern Netherlandish counterparts. Of the 76 Dutch panels bearing makers’ marks, 56 display finely cut, evenly spaced saw marks, reflecting the rapid adoption of the wind-powered sawmill in the Dutch Republic after its introduction in 1596 [3].⁶ This innovation greatly increased productivity and reduced costs in the timber industry. Despite resistance from hand-sawyers, mechanical sawing rapidly became dominant, and by around 1630, hand-sawing had largely disappeared in major Dutch timber centres.⁷ Antwerp followed a different trajectory: there, hand-sawyers successfully resisted the introduction of sawmills until 1665.⁸ This divergence is reflected in surviving panel supports: whereas hand-sawn boards typically display slightly curved saw marks, mechanically sawn boards show regular, evenly spaced cross-grain traces [4-5].

The reasons why panel makers in the Dutch Republic marked their products remain uncertain. As stated, unlike Antwerp, no evidence has yet been found for regulations requiring such marks. It is therefore possible that marking practices emerged through individual initiative rather than guild enforcement. Several explanations may be considered. Marks may have functioned as guarantees of quality, as a means of identifying individual workshops, or as a form of commercial branding intended to distinguish a maker's products. Archival evidence from related woodworking trades demonstrates that marking could serve regulatory purposes: in Leiden during the 1670s, for example, ebony products were marked to prevent the fraudulent sale of stained woods as genuine ebony.⁹ Another possibility is that marking practices were introduced or encouraged by immigrants from the Southern Netherlands, where panel branding had long been established.¹⁰ However, this interpretation is complicated by the fact that no marks are known on panels produced by Antwerp-trained panel makers in the Dutch Republic, notably Jacques van Haecht ( d. 1637) and Reynier Roybaert (active 1625-1666). The unidentified mark of the six-pointed star, however, occurs on both Flemish and Dutch panels and may represent continuity between Southern and Northern Netherlandish marking practices.

1 Marks illustrated by Albert Heppner, 1940, including inverted ‘4MM’ (lower row, centre)

2
The ‘4MM’ mark

3
Jan Schenk after Adolf van der Laan
Allegory on the invention of the wind-powered saw mill, with Minerva, Aeolus and putti
Haarlem, Noord-Hollands Archief, inv./cat.nr. Historieprenten 0895

4 Hand-saw marks

5 Machine-saw marks