To Me, To You

We've all done it - bought a lovely piece of furniture only for the delivery guy to drop it at your door and discover that there is no way you can get it through the tiny door frame. Somehow, you expect a major national gallery to be better prepared but nevertheless Cumbria's Abbot Hall Art Gallery has had a struggle on its hands after acquiring a giant triptych more than a decade ago. However, the three parts of The Great Picture, first commissioned in 1646, have finally been reunited in the gallery and the giant work will go on display there for the first time today.

The Great Picture was paid for by Lady Anne Clifford (1590 - 1676), the daughter of George Clifford, the third Earl of Cumberland and a favourite at the court of Queen Elizabeth I. After much the death of her cousin and uncle in the 1640s left no male heirs to the family's estates in Westmorland and Yorkshire, she petitioned for the return of her rightful inheritance. The Great Picture, thought to have been painted by Dutch artist Jan Van Belcamp, marks the moment when she finally received her due several years later.

Since acquiring the work in the late 1990s, the two side panels of the triptych have been on display at Abbot Hall but the central panel, measuring 2.5m square, had sat in storage while the team found a way of getting it inside the tightly-proportioned Georgian venue.

The pictures below show how the team finally got the central panel out of storage and into the gallery...

The reunited triptych will be on display at Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria, until December 2013.