fitted at right angles some distance into the wall; holes a meter deep are
not uncommon. Rubble and plaster (or adobe) were used to secure the
pieces into the wall; alternatively, wooden wedges were driven between
the sides of the opening and the beam to make it fast. Into these timbers,
which projected 15–30 cm from the wall, upright and horizontal beams
were nailed, following the contour of the wall. Most panels destined for
retables were not completely covered by the painted image; usually an
unpainted margin surrounded the composition (Fig. 8). The margin would
eventually be concealed by tracery and served the practical function of
providing an area into which the panel could be securely nailed against
the timber grid. Once the panels were in place, the tracery, columns, and
canopies of the altarpiece were nailed onto the front of the paintings.
For most large retables of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, it is
unlikely that the architectural elements had any real structural role; they
were applied as embellishments to panels already nailed to the armature.
It is interesting to note that the use ofdowels was generally restricted to
the joining of panel members and crossbars or the joining of two pieces of
gilt tracery. For construction, large nails, not dowels, were used freely and
allowed to remain visible. It was only in the second half of the sixteenth
century that countersunk nails or dowels became important, with gesso
and gilding obscuring the points of contact. By the seventeenth century,
the use of nails for retable construction was almost unknown, and the
large Baroque structures are very skillful examples of masterful joinery
and gilding. Again, the contracts reflect this change in practice: “All of
which must be made with pine from Soria, well dried, and it must be very
well assembled and fitted, and nothing must be stuck on or nailed, but
rather, everything must be doweled and joined” (García Chico 1941:283).
Even in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, after
canvas had replaced the wooden panel as the most convenient modern
painting support, well-crafted pine panels were still used extensively asW P M A S C S 145Figure 8
An altarpiece construction typical of
Castile,ca. 1500.