ROOME, Jan van - b. ~1470 ?, d. ~1525 Brussel

Flemish painter and designer of tapestry cartoons, stained-glass windows and sculpture. He is first documented in 1498, as a Brother of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, and later became court painter at Mechelen and Brussels to Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Spanish Netherlands. Jan’s widely imitated tapestry designs, filled with graceful, melancholic figures set in a mixture of Late Gothic and Renaissance architecture, helped to create a uniform style in Brussels tapestries in the first quarter of the 16th century. The basis for attributing tapestries to Jan, or his workshop, is the documented series of the Story of Herkinbald (Musées Royaux d’Art & d’Histoire, Brussels), which was made for the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament at Leuven and for the design for which Jan was paid 2.5 Rhenish guilders and some wine in 1513. His collaborators were the painter ‘Philips’ [Maitre Phillipe] and the weaver ‘Lyeon’ [Leon de Smet (active 1490-1524)].

In 1509-10 Jan executed designs for a carved screen for the Balienhof in Brussels. A similar screen with statues appears in Bathsheba at David’s Palace, the centrepiece of ten magnificent tapestries showing the History of David (Musée de Cluny, Paris), now attributed to Jan, for which the drawing of Bathsheba survives (Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington). It is possible that this tapestry set was commissioned by Margaret of Austria, François I of France or Henry VIII of England.

For Margaret’s funerary church at Brou, Jan designed the windows, choir-stalls and sculpture for the tombs in Flamboyant Gothic; Conrad Meit executed the memorial statues, and work was completed in 1532. Jan’s archaic style, reminiscent of Hugo van der Goes and Quentin Massys, also incorporates Italianate influences, notably that of Perugino.

Tomb of Margaret of Austria

The church of Saint-Nicolas-de-Tolentino at the royal monastery of Brou at Boug-en-Bresse was the burial site of Margaret of Austria and her beloved husband, Philibert II of Savoy, as well as Philibert’s mother Margaret of Bourbon. A masterpiece of Flamboyant Gothic, this architectural complex and its interior embellishment, including the tombs, was a long-term project commissioned by Margaret and lasting from 1506 until her death in 1530. Margaret’s tomb was designed by Loys van Boghem and Jan van Roome.

Margaret of Austria employed a succession of architects and sculptors on this project, among them Conrad Meit, who was engaged between 1526 and 1531 to produce a life-size recumbent figure of the archduchess for each of the tiers of her tomb monument.

Both secular and sacred aspects are evident in Margaret of Austria’s tomb at Brou. Every inch of the alabaster monument has been intricately carved with rich, multiple moldings. The heavy canopy carries an ornate and idiosyncratic tracery motif, while its weight is disguised by four elaborately worked tabernacles that cover the corner piers. These tabernacles ascend along various paths toward the central pinnacle, the clarity of their form partly obscured by simulated vegetal incrustation.