He married before 1447 Catherine van Voshem, whose sister
Elizabeth was the wife of the famous painter, Dierick Boudts, and
inhabited his own house in the _Rue de Diest_ at Louvain, where he died
on the 17th of March 1489. Matthew, Jan's second son, followed his
father's trade, and he also busied himself with painting and sculpture:
the indentures of an apprentice whom he undertook to instruct, in three
years, in the art of painting are still in existence, and we know, too,
that some of the carved beams in the Town Hall at Louvain are his work.
For the rest, he in due course took to himself a wife, who presently
bore him a son, whom he named Hendrick and trained to his own
calling. No record of any work that he executed has as yet been found,
but he seems to have done well in his profession, for in 1505 he
purchased a house in the Cattle Market at Mechlin, hard by the Chapel of
Saint Eloi, and here in 1521 he received Albert Dürer, who in his
journal notes that at Mechlin he was the guest of 'Maister Heindrich.'
[Illustration: Saint Rombold's Cathedral]
Andrew, the youngest son of old Jan Kelderman, was a man more famous
than either of his brethren. He was city architect of Mechlin, and
supervised the carrying out of his father's design of Saint Rombold's
tower for thirty years; and when he died, in 1485 or thereabout, it had
risen as high as the bell-chamber. He was the author of divers beautiful
rood-screens, amongst them that in the church at Bergen-op-Zoom, which
he wrought in 1471 with the aid of his son Anthony, who, it will be
interesting to note, dwelt in a house at Mechlin which is still
standing--No. 13 _Aux Tuileries._
This man, succeeding his father, directed the building of Saint
Rombold's tower until he in his turn died, on the 15th of October 1512.
He was the author of two famous buildings--the Town Hall of Middelburg,
in the island of Walcheren, and, in his native city, the Church of
_Notre-Dame au-delà de la Dyle_, and the father of two sons who were not
unworthy of the family name, and each of whom set their mark on the
family tower. The younger was aptly enough called after the saint with
whom the Keldermans had been so long associated; honours were presently
his, and wealth and a wide reputation, if he were not the greatest of
his race, at least he was the most successful, of Rombold Kelderman II.
we shall have much to say later on; the elder was named, after his
father, Anthony, and though he died young, he lived long enough, but
only just long enough, to design a monument which still proclaims his
genius--the old _Broodhuis_ at Brussels, now called _La Maison du Roi_.
Some three days before the foundation stone was laid young Anthony was
gathered to his fathers (December 5, 1515), and the guerdon which he
would have received was paid into the hands of his widow.
[Illustration: NOTRE-DAME AU-DELÀ DE LA DYLE.]
[Illustration: LA MAISON DU ROI.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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