DENDROCHRONOLOGY—A REFERENCE CURVE FOR SLOW GROWN OAKS,A.D. 1230 TO 1546

Details are given of how the widths of the annual rings of oak boards, which form the panels for certain sixteenth-century portraits painted in south-east England or adjacent parts of the Continent, have been matched with one another. A representative ring-width curve based on eighteen trees has been obtained and dated by region-to-region bridging from the master chronology, derived at Munich, for oaks grown in central and southern Germany. The feasibility of dendrochronology for oaks of slow and regular growth in late medieval times has been established for a region which extends beyond south-east England to Oxford on the west and to Flanders and parts of France on the east and south-east.