An Overview of the History of Matting

Circa 1640  Wenzel Hollar Aeneas Plucking the Golden Branch, Etching,  printed in England This print, after a painting by F. Cleyn, depicts a scene from Virgil’s poem “Aeneid”, Book 6, Line 280 according to the notation in the plate.  Virgil ( Publius Vergilius Maro, 70 - 19 BC ) wrote this tale of a Trojan hero in Latin, and it is not clear which translation Hollar refers to.  A rough translation of this portion of the poem is “Aeneas followed the directions of the Sibyl.  His mother, Venus, sent two of her doves to fly before him and show him the way, and by their assistance he found the tree, plucked the branch, and hastened back with it to the Sibyl”.

Hollar was born in a noble family which lost everything in the  Bohemian wars.  He took up etching as his life profession and traveled throughout Europe before being discovered by the great English connoisseur Thomas Howard, the Earl of Arundel, who brought him to England in 1637 to reproduce his collection. At this time there were no native artists in England.  Hollar left England for the safety of the Continent after the beginning of the Great Rebellion ( First Civil War 1642-46, Second Civil War 1648 - Charles I beheaded 1649 ).  After the Restoration he returned but worked for the book and print publishers and died in poverty in 1677. In the early Baroque period, Italian influence spread throughout Western Europe.  Baroque is characterized by dynamic movement in painting and sculpture, emphasized by sharp lighting effects and realistic details. Architectural elements included rich materials such as colored marble and gilt, broken lines and deep-cut details.  During the first half of the seventeenth century, leadership in the decorative arts passed from Italy to France.  By combining Italian Baroque influences with their own taste for rectilinear order and serenity expressed in classical forms, the Louis XIII era ( ruled 1610-1643 ) commenced two centuries of French leadership in the arts. The mat design is a classic “French mat”, a traditional, seventeenth century line pattern originally executed with ink on mid-weight paper.  Most early paper mats were simply decorated backing sheets, but later examples had cut-out windows. (see PFM, Sept. 1993 ).  In deference to the delicacy of Hollar’s work, the frame is a scaled-down adaptation of a Venetian frame of the period.