Jean Bellegambe: Making, Meaning and Patronage of His Works

Jean Bellegambe (c. 1470- 1535/36), whose career as far as we know spanned the first three decades of the sixteenth century, was a successful painter. His patrons included some of the most high-ranking clerics in the Habsburg-Burgundian Netherlands as well as members of the ruling class of Douai, the town where he lived and worked all his life. This is the first study to appear since Dehaisnes' 1890 monograph that is exclusively devoted to the artist. By reassessing primary evidence - archival documents and material evidence from the works of art themselves - it aims to highlight Bellegambe's artistic achievements. Close scrutiny of his paintings and investigation of the artist's working methods will show that Bellegambe visualised the concerns of his patrons by closely linking the physical characteristics of his works to their original imagery, function and use. This volume presents a series of five case studies of his works that were made for a monastic community, two individual clerics, a town hall and a bourgeois layman, thus providing rich evidence of patronage and audiences. The objective here is to examine how Bellegambe met the challenges posed by these commissions, and to gain further insight into the practice of a skilled artist who - rooted in a long line of craftsmanship and artistic tradition and in close collaboration with his colleagues and patrons - produced a body of highly original works.