Featured Trying to find info on an old wood panel painting.

I didn’t mean to break her, I swear!

 

Lol, I think the painting is getting to you.

 

The dancer's in this painting by Poussin have a similar stance:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dance_to_the_Music_of_Time

 

I'm not seeing the image in your post, so I'm adding it here.

 

Thank you! I thought I embedded the picture in the post but I guess that didn't work.

 

What if my ladies are some of these ladies after they’ve been drinking?

 

Going back to the seal (it’s the bane of my existence) I always find ones close, and you guys have gotten a little closer, but it’s never similar enough. For instance, the one that is “The Unimaginative Merchant” is the closest yet, but it’s not facing the same way and is missing the cross piece. I don’t know if that’s a significant enough difference or what. It is definitely a deep deep rabbit hole.
Here’s what I see:

 

Sometimes her switch gets stuck in the ON position.

 

The Poussin is entirely symbolic, using tropes from classical mythology: Chronos playing the music for the endless wheeling dance of the Seasons; overhead, Phoebus Apollo in the Chariot of the Sun making his daily traverse of the heavens, Aurora leading the way, with the Hours in their own unending cycle; a Genius with an hourglass & the sands of time; another blowing soap bubbles, shimmering, impermanent; a janate head on a garlanded herm, the past & future. Completely allegorical with no human figures.

 

Also, my brother felt the it wasn’t two XX’s at the bottom, but actually the Freemason symbol. http://www.freemasonry.bcy.ca/history/marks/marks.html

 

#s 86 & 87, under Carpenter's Company, make the main body of your seal. Since both masons & carpenters use a square, not surprising there would be some overlap in their symbols. I would be interested in seeing your piece, front & back, when it's in the frame.

 

Some symbols are clearly runes:

 

Yes, I noticed that.
The Antique Roadshow guy said the frame wasn’t the original frame, but Idk. I’ll take a pic tomorrow morning and post it.

 

I'm ignoring all of you.

 

"An excerpt from the article that makes me realize what a complete stroke of luck it would be to find the owner of that mark."

The above is a statement I made on page 4 (4!) of this thread.

I still believe it.

But but but.

What we have here is a system of communication that, in the scheme of human history, is barely a moment ago.

And it is almost completely lost to us.

@Jeanette Torello brought us a piece of this language found in the wild.

How can that NOT be fascinating?

I know every bit of the info we glean is likely to lead to precisely nothing except the next bit of info.

That's where we are now.

My recommendation of someone to contact is Matt Champion, author of Medieval Graffiti: The Lost Voices of England’s Churches: https://eastanglia.academia.edu/matthewchampion

 

This is a whole new fascinating realm for me. I think the best hope will be the expertise of someone who knows paintings with the same age/origin. Assuming this is not unique in having such a seal on the back, an expert may know who in the sequence of its life would have been likely to put it there. For me, the really big excitement would be to learn the artist is recognizable.

 

Wax seals on the back of paintings is definitely a thing. I gave it a quick pass early on.

Didn't see any of this particular style, so didn't linger on the topic.