A Roman Cook´s Boy Sharpening a Knife

The back of this painting is covered by a semi-transparent, polycarbonate sheet sealed along the edges with foil tape. The front of the painting is behind glass, which is also taped along the inner edges of the frame. This is called a microclimate frame, and ensures that the painting is kept in an airtight space. The construction is not visible from the front. Microclimate framing protects paintings that are particularly sensitive to fluctuations in humidity. This is true of paintings on wood or paintings on canvas that have been lined using glue-paste, i.e. that have had a new piece of canvas glued to the back of the original canvas. When works from the National Gallery of Denmark are on loan to museums with less adequate climatic control, or if a work is to travel over an extensive period of time, we mount fragile works in microclimate frames.