Tomb of Joan of Brabant

The tomb of Joan of Brabant was built between 1457 and 1458 by the bronze caster Jacob de Gerines after wooden models by the sculptor Jean Delemer, and placed in the church of the Carmelite monastery in Brussels. Joan of Brabant was a Duchess of Brabant and died in 1406.

Drawing of the tomb of Margaret of Brabant

The tomb was commissioned in the 1450s by her great-great-nephew Philip the Good.[1] It underwent restoration in 1607, but was destroyed along with the monastery, by the French Royal Army in August 1695 during the bombardment of Brussels. Today its form and style is known through a number of drawings and written descriptions.[1]

Death of Joan of Brabant
Joan, Duchess of Brabant, Lothier and Limburg

Joan of Brabant was born in 1322 as the daughter of John III, Duke of Brabant and Marie d'Évreux. She was a Duchess of Brabant from 1355 until her death in 1406 at the age of 84. Her will requested that she be buried alongside her mother and that her mother's burial place was enlarged.[2]

Her tomb was commissioned in the 1450s by her descendant Philip the Good for the church in the Carmelite monastery in Brussels.[3] It was damaged during the Calvinist iconoclasm in the years 1578 to 1585, but was restored in 1607.

Description
Drawing of the effigy, with Guillaume de Brabant (d. 1410) to right.

The tomb is probably the earliest of the Burgundian-style tombs, whose characteristics include the deceased having naturalised faces, open eyes and angels above their heads.[4] Its design and build is attributed to the casters and sculptors Jacob van Gerines and Jean de le Mer, and its polychrome to the painter Rogier van der Weyden.[5]

Today it is known through a number of drawings and written descriptions, the most detailed being from Charles de Rietwyck's 1600 'Sigillographica Belgica' and in 1602 in Antoine de Succa's nl "Memoriaux". Succa also made notes, describing elements such as her blond hair and the coat of arms on her cloak.[6] De Rietwyck's notes detail that at the time, the tomb was positioned in the middle of the church's choir, that its epitaph was engraved on copper, and that it was 4 feet high, 10 feet long and 8 feet wide.[7]

Examining the various descriptions and drawings, the art historian Lorne Campbell believes the tomb was similar that of Louis II, Count of Flanders (d. 1384).[1]

Influence

The rows of mourners positioed below the slab were reproduces in a number of later Burgundain funerary monuments, most notably the tomb of Isabella of Bourbon, constructed between 1475 and 1476. Isabella was a descendant of Joan's ancestors,[8][9][10] and the mourners on her tomb were directly copied Joan's monument.[11]

References
  1. Campbell (1988), p. 163
  2. Adams; Barker (2016), p. 180
  3. Panofsky (1953), p. 476
  4. Jugie (2010), p. 51
  5. Campbell (1988), pp. 167–168
  6. Campbell (1988), p. 165
  7. Campbell (1988), p. 164
  8. "Weepers from the tomb of Isabella of Bourbon". Rijksmuseum. Retrieved 23 December 2022
  9. Perkinson (2002), p. 696
  10. Morganstern (2000), p. 211
  11. Panofsky (1964), p. 62

Sources
  • Adams, Ann; Barker, Jessica (eds). "Revisiting the Monument: Fifty Years Since Panofsky's Tomb Sculpture". London: Courtauld Institute of Art, 2016
  • Campbell, Lorne. "The Tomb of Joanna, Duchess of Brabant". Renaissance Studies, volume 2, no. 2, 1988. JSTOR 24409392
  • Jugie, Sophie. The Mourners: Tomb Sculpture from the Court of Burgundy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-3001-5517-4
  • Panofsky, Erwin. Tomb Sculpture. London: Harry Abrams, 1964. ISBN 978-0-8109-3870-0
  • Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting, Its Origins and Character. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953
  • Scholten, Frits. "Isabella's Weepers: Ten Statues from a Burgundian Tomb"'. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2007. ISBN 978-9-07145-0822
  • Silver, Larry. Marketing Maximilian: The Visual Ideology of a Holy Roman Emperor. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022

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