Though Rombold was undoubtedly an architect and artist of a very high
order, and though he remained to the end of his career a man of energy
and enterprise, and at last died in harness, full of years and honours,
strangely enough his memory is not kept alive by any monument which he
alone can be certainly said to have designed and carried to completion.
In his early days he was largely engaged in completing the work of other
men, or in adding to, or embellishing, or restoring buildings which
already existed. Later on he entered into partnership with Dominic De
Waghemakere, and henceforth most of his designs were not the outcome of
his unaided genius. Together they planned many glorious structures. Some
never got beyond paper, others were commenced and left unfinished, for
they lived in troublous times; only a few were brought to completion,
and of these but one remains, the Steen of Antwerp, spoilt by
restoration.
Rombold Kelderman had honours, riches, renown. His career from this
point of view was certainly a most successful one, but an untoward
fortune seems to have dogged his steps in the matter of his craft, and
this was so not only with his own creations but also with the buildings
which he reared and the plans which he made conjointly with Dominic De
Waghemakere.
Thus, for example, he was commissioned by Charles V. to transform the
unfinished Cloth Hall of Mechlin into a place of assembly for the Grand
Council of Brabant. He drew out plans; they were all that could be
desired--the original drawings are preserved amongst the city rolls;
somewhere about the year 1529 the foundation stone was laid, and at
first the work was pushed on bravely, but before it was half finished
came the troubles of Philip's reign and it had to be abandoned, but
Rombold grieved not at it, he had long since paid Nature's debt.
[Illustration: THE STEEN OF ANTWERP.]
Otherwise, and yet more deplorable, was the disaster which baulked the
realisation of Kelderman and De Waghemakere's magnificent scheme for the
reconstruction of the choir of Antwerp Cathedral.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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