Among the artisans that were patronized by the Dukes of Burgundy, we
find the names of Jehan Villain, a goldsmith of Dijon from 1411 to 1431,
and _valet de chambre_ to John the Fearless and Philip the Bold; Jehan
Pentin, goldsmith of Bruges under Philip the Good; Corneille de Bonte, a
celebrated goldsmith of Ghent; and Henry le Backer of Brussels and
Gérard Loyet, both goldsmiths of Charles the Bold. The former executed a
famous altar group for the Count of Charolais (Charles the Bold) in
1456, consisting of a great cross at the foot of which knelt the Count
and Countess of Charolais with St. George and St. Elizabeth. Gérard
Loyet, who was goldsmith and _valet de chambre_ to Charles the Bold,
made in 1466 a statue of gold that the Duke presented to the Cathedral
of St. Lambert of Liège. He also made in the year of Charles the Bold’s
death two silver busts and two statues of that Duke. The busts, of
natural size, were made for St. Adrien de Grammont and St. Sebastian of
Brussels and the statues for Notre Dame d’Ardembourg and Notre Dame de
Grâce of Brussels. The latter, although of silver, were coloured and
were large in size. They represented Charles kneeling with folded hands
dressed in armour with sword at his side and wearing the collar of the
Golden Fleece.
There is very little furniture of the fourteenth and fifteenth century
in existence. One of the few good buildings dating from the fourteenth
century is the Guildhouse of the Tanners (Toreken) on the Rue des
Peignes, Ghent. The Rijks Museum in Amsterdam has a copy of the solid
oak ceiling of the Senate House at Sluis, dating from 1396, an imitation
of the ceiling and chimney of the Senate House at Zwolle, built by the
architect Berent in 1447; and a cast of an ornamental fireplace of the
fifteenth century from the Markiezenhof at Bergen-op-Zoom. The Rijks
also owns several Gothic cabinets, and a large Gothic cupboard of the
fourteenth century from a convent in Utrecht. The Museum in the Steen,
Antwerp, contains some good fifteenth century furniture.
A few names of wood-carvers of this period have survived. For example,
the Town Hall of Louvain, the ancient capital of Brabant, is a very rich
and lovely example of late Gothic work. It even surpasses the famous
Town Halls of Brussels, Oudenarde, Ghent and Bruges. This was built by
Matthew de Layens between 1447 and 1463. It is very rich in statues of
local celebrities, and the supporting corbels are ornamented with almost
detached reliefs representing biblical subjects.
The models in wood for the stone-cutters were executed after the designs
of De Layens, by John Vander Eycken, Goswin Van der Voeren, Mathew
Keldermans and John Roelants in 1448.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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