Noble residences in the Burgundian Low Countries and their legacy
The session questions the impact of the Burgundian court in the field of architecture within the broader reaches of court society in the Low Countries on the one hand and within the milieu of the urban élites on the other.
In the Low Countries of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the residences built for noble families such as the Croÿ, Lalaing, Arenberg and Nassau took up a central position in the architectural vanguard of the era. Canny acquisition tactics and well thought out marriage strategies had enabled them to build empires which extended across the different lands of the Burgundian federation. The first decades of the sixteenth century were characterized by a true building mania on the part of the new high nobility, which was an integral part of the ostentation and conspicuous spending expected from them.
The panel will address, specifically, the interaction with the court of the reigning prince as part of the broader question of transmission and transformation of value patterns within the social hierarchies, as expressed through architecture. Was there a Burgundian ‘model residence’? Can we indeed hypothesize a ‘trickle-down effect’ from the higher ranks to the lower, as is done implicitly in much of the current research production? Does the highly organized building sector at court interact at all with construction in the urban context, booming at the time as never before? To what extent does the urban culture of the Low Countries transpire in the residential patterns adopted at the Burgundian court during the fifteenth century and ‘modernized’ in the sixteenth? Can we differentiate, on the architectural plane, between the high nobility close to the reigning prince and to international court life, and the Netherlandish urban élites (merchants, bankers, councillors…) without whom the Burgundian and Habsburg courts could not function?
Krista De Jonge: ‘Burgundian palaces’? Urban residences of the nobility in the Low Countries (1450-1530)
The existence of an influential Burgundian model of court organization developed between France and the Low Countries in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries has been debated time and again, and its connection with the later Spanish Habsburg court, a powerful model in its own right, has been explored in various ways. On the architectural plane, we have shown earlier that the ‘manner of Brabant’ of the higher nobility (as defined in the early Habsburg Low Countries) was adopted as a royal style by monarchs as far apart as Philip II of Spain and Frederik II of Denmark in the later sixteenth century, generating widespread imitation by the local nobility. The constitution of this architectural model at the turn of the fifteenth century in the central Low Countries has not yet been fully charted, however.
In particular, the interaction with the urban milieu from the Burgundian residence cities (Bruges) to the early Habsburg ones (Mechelen) needs closer examination. Apart from a rare example such as the heavily restored Markiezenhof in Bergen op Zoom, the ‘urban palace’ around 1500 has not been studied this perspective. In this paper we will address questions of typology related with surviving noble residences such as those of Bladelin, Adornes and Watervliet in Bruges and lost ones such as those of York or Cambrai in Mechelen, and Croÿ and Nassau in Brussels, paying special attention to the similarities and discontinuities with contemporary court residences and to their place in the residential network of the nobility.
Merlijn Hurx: ‘To spend as little as possible’, the impact of bureaucratic procedures on architectural planning in the late Middle Ages in the Low Countries
Multiple studies that recognize the importance of administrative pre-conditions for architectural practice concern nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments. Although, the growing impact of bureaucratic procedures on architectural planning strikes us as typical modern, its origins go back to the late Middle Ages. To control the ever-increasing cost of building, the French and English courts introduced a centralised governance in the late fourteenth century. Other princes, among whom the Dukes of Burgundy, quickly followed them; the dukes introduced a centralised administration to effectively organise and control the many construction sites in their domains in the Low Countries.
I will argue in this paper that this was not only a financial reform, however; it also represented an important step towards a more rationalised architectural planning. Often, the medieval planning process is considered a process of improvisation and continuous redesign that extended well into the building process. The rediscovery of a vast part of the early sixteenth-century building administration of the Duchy of Brabant demonstrates that the new procedures introduced by the Burgundian dukes made it necessary to record decisions and agreements that were otherwise left implicit; it gave rise to a better documentation of the design and the construction process. The great number and wide range of documents that is preserved, which includes drawings, cost estimates, building specifications, contracts, allow to understand how meticulously well planned and monitored construction for the court was in the Low Countries.
Sanne Maekelberg: The Prince’s Court at Bruges (1395-1468), a Burgundian model for ducal residences?
The Prince’s Court in Bruges was one of the main residences of the dukes of Burgundy in the fifteenth century. There had been a residence on site ever since the fourteenth century, belonging to Lodewijk van Male, count of Flanders. Through the marriage of his daughter – Margareth of Male- with Philips the Bold, the residence becomes part of the Burgundian legacy. At the end of the fourteenth century the domain had been renovated by Philips the Bold, after which his grandson’s wife Isabella of Portugal commissioned several major adjustments. Based on the construction accounts covering a period from 1395 up until 1468 the culture of living at a fifteenth century Burgundian court were studied through the reconstruction of the buildings that were part of the complex. In this paper I argue that the Prince’s Court of Bruges served as a model for other Burgundian residences in the county of Flanders, despite the different urban contexts and particular building histories. Case in point being the Prince’s Court at Ghent (1422-1473) and the Palais Rihour at Lille (1453-1473).
