- Jacques Jonghelinck
Jacques Jonghelinck (
Antwerp ,21 October 1530 - 1606) was a Flemish sculptor and medallist working inBrussels in the Mannerist style common to the Catholic courts of Western Europe. He moved from Antwerp to set up a workshop inBrussels in 1562 and was appointed court sculptor the following year.In Brussels he specialized in funeral monuments for an aristocratic clientele and was also a successful merchant, and financier. He belonged to the immediate entourage of the diplomat
Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle , president of the council of state from 1556 to 1564.Jonghelinck was a major patron of
Pieter Brueghel whose pictures he kept “in his house located at ter Beken”. They included “sixteen items by Bruegel including the tower of Babylon, a Bearing of the Cross, the Twelve Months...” [Rudy Rucker's notes for his "As Above So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel" ( [http://www.rudyrucker.com/bruegel] )] .He collaborated as sculptor and bronze-founder with the sculptor
Joos Aerts in the gilt-bronze and black marble memorial of Charles the Bold (died 1477) in the Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk ("Church of Our Lady") (Bruges ), completed in 1563.Letters between de Granvelle, now in
Madrid , and his secretary Morillon in Brussels show that Jonghelinck, now as medallist, made a mould for a small medal in the spring of 1566. Successively he cast medals in lead, tin, copper, silver or gold of the type known asGeuzen medals .One of his masterworks, a full-length, over-lifesize bronze of
Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba - made in 1569 from the gunmetal of the 16 cannon captured at Jemmingen and erected in the citadel of Antwerp - was destroyed after the death of Alba on orders of king Philip II. The statue - even in Italy and Madrid - was thought to be too pompous and to exhibit unnecessary cruelty. It is a coincidence that Jonghelinck at that moment already had returned to Antwerp, where he was "waardijn" (director) of the mint.His bronze of "Silenus astride a Cask", 1570, is the figure for a fountain in the gardens of the Aranjuez; it replaced
Giambologna 's "Samson and a Philistine", [Now at theVictoria and Albert Museum , London.] which had been given to Charles, Prince of Wales in 1623, on the ill-fated diplomatic mission over the "Spanish Match ".References
* [http://collections.frick.org/Obj1137$7756 Frick Collection, New York: "Bust of the Duke of Alba"] , bronze, dated 1571
* [http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/12692-popup.html Victoria and Albert Museum: "The Spanish Fury at Antwerp", bronze low-relief roundel attributed to Jognhelinck] : circa 1580, depicting events of 1576
*Smolderen, Luc, "Jacques Jonghelinck: Sculpteur, medailleur et graveur de sceaux (1530-1606)" (Louvain, 1996)
* [http://www.lowcountriessculpture.org/briefhistoryen2.htm Léon E. Lock, "A brief history of the sculpture in the present-day Netherlands and Belgium"] Brief mention of Jonghelinck in context
* [http://www.digam.net/expo/schaetze/dokument_71.htm Contract for the funeral monument of Count Philipp III von Hanau-Münzenberg (died 1561)] , 1562
*Henry Kamen, "The Duke of Alba" (Yale University Press, 2004)
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
