Jan Rombouts the Elder

Jan Rombouts the Elder or Jan Rombauts the Elder (alternative first name: Johannes) (c. 1480 in Leuven – 1535 in Leuven), was a Flemish Renaissance painter, glass painter, draftsman, printmaker and glass designer of a religious-themed oeuvre. Jan Rombouts was active in Leuven where he introduced the Renaissance innovations of Bernard van Orley and the Antwerp school.[1]

St. Margaret of Antiochia

Life

The details of the life of Jan Rombouts are sketchy. He signed his work with a monogram which had been read by the 19th century city archivist of Leuven Edward van Even as representing the letters IVR. As a result, he identified the painter using this monogram with the Leuven city painter Jan van Rillaer. When it was discovered that Jan van Rillaer was only born around 1520-1525 it became clear that he could not be identified with the monogrammist since the latter had already produced work in the period 1520–1525. It was subsequently understood that Edward van Even had misread the monogram, which should actually be read as IANR. Based on further evidence it was concluded that the monogrammist IANR had to be identified with Jan Rombouts the Elder.[2]

The earliest known archival document in which Jan Rombouts is listed as 'Johannes Rombouts pictor' dates from 1508. Jan Rombouts the Elder was the grandnephew of the glass painter Claes Rombouts. He was mainly active in his hometown Leuven.[3]

Rombouts married Barbele Roelants, with whom he had two children.[2] His son Jan Rombouts the Younger also became a painter. His daughter Marie married Jan Willems, a painter in Leuven.[3] Jan Rombouts was dean of Leuven's city administration from 1519 until his death in 1535 and also served on the board of governors of an Antonine chapel.[2][4]

His son (ca. 1505–59) worked in his fathers workshop and also held public offices in Leuven, such as that of alderman. Only the son is documented as a glass-painter but the evidence seems to indicate that Jan Rombouts I was also a glass-painter.[1]

Work
The Conversion of St. Paul (detail)

Jan Rombouts is regarded as an important modernizer through his complex compositions, moving figures, lively and colourful palette, meticulous eye for detail and pseudo-Renaissance architectural elements.[5] He thus introduced the innovations of Bernard van Orley and the Antwerp school in Leuven. At the same time he remained faithful to the traditions of his famous fellow townsman Dieric Bouts.[1]

His oeuvre is now believed to comprise four paintings (comprising three double-sided altarpiece wings and a single panel), seven engravings, a drawing on wood panel of The Judgment of Solomon, a vidimus drawing for a four-light church window (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) and more than two dozen painted glass windows, some of them believed to be after Rombouts’ design rather than by the master himself.[4]

His earliest known painting is The birth of St. John the Baptist (circa 1515–1520, collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh). This early work shows the painter still struggling with his figures. The neatly painted Renaissance architectural details indicate the artist's interest in contemporary artistic developments in Italy. The result is a work rooted in the 15th century Flemish tradition of Early Netherlandish painting but with a focus on Italy and the mannerism of among others Bernard van Orley. His principal panel works are the monogrammed wings of a dismembered altarpiece on the Conversion of Saint Paul and The Fall of Simon the Magus (now in the M - Museum Leuven) which are monumental and in a classicizing style.[4]

His engravings reflect the influences of his contemporaries Albrecht Dürer and Lucas van Leyden. His early prints lack technical and aesthetical finesse. His later works the Virgin and Child and Pyramus and Thisbe show the artist had mastered the art of the print medium.[4]

A monogrammed drawing The Judgment of Salomon dated 1528 (Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin) is a design for a glass-panel. The stained glasses from the former Carthusian monastery in Leuven (parts of which are now in New York's Metropolitan Museum and the Riverside Church) have been attributed to Rombouts and his workshop.[4]

References
Preparation for the Crucifixion, stained glass
  1. Till-Holger Borchert, Review of Jan Rombouts: The Discovery of an Early Sixteenth-Century Master in Louvain by Yvette Bruijnen, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Summer 2012), pp. 548-549, Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of America
  2. Matthias Depoorter, Jan (I) Rombouts - De opstanding van een zestiende-eeuwse schilder in: Openbaar Kunstbezit Vlaanderen 2012.6 (in Dutch)
  3. Jan Rombouts (I) at the Netherlands Institute for Art History (in Dutch)
  4. Dan Ewing, Review of Yvette Bruijnen, Jan Rombouts: The Discovery of an Early Sixteenth-Century Master in Louvain (Ars Nova 16). Turnhout: Brepols Publishers 2011, in: historians of netherlandish art, Vol. 30, No. 2 November 2013, p. 35-36
  5. Signed, Jan R. A Renaissance master rediscovered on Codart

Further reading
  • Yvette Bruijnen, Jan Rombouts: The Discovery of an Early Sixteenth-Century Master in Louvain (Ars Nova 16). Turnhout: Brepols Publishers 2011, 312 pp, fully illustrated. ISBN 978-2-503-52569-3.
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