ROMBOUT VAN TISSENAKEN (Malines c.1540 – 1614 Malines)
Rombout van Tissenaken (Malines c.1540 – 1614 Malines)
A pair of Malines alabaster reliefs depicting The Last Supper and The Entombment of Christ
Late 16th or early 17th century
Both sculpted alabaster with partial gilding, each 9.8 x 12.6 cm; contained in the original partially giltwood and ‘pastiglia’ frames decorated with interlacing motifs, outer dimensions 20.2 x 22.5 x 1.8 cm
Both signed with monogram ‘RT’ the letters around the distinctive anchor (lower centre)1
Provenance: private collection, The Netherlands
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This is an exceptional pair of alabaster sculpted reliefs in the original frames, by the Malines artist Rombout van Tissenaken.2 Mentioned to be ‘old about 71 years’ in a deed of January 1611, he must have been born around 1540; he was buried in the parish of St Catherine in Malines on 16 March 1614. He became a free master in the Antwerp guild of St Luke around 1580 and was later active in Malines. He was described in contemporary sources as a ‘stoffeerder’ (polychromer of statues), and also called himself ‘albastsnyder’ and ‘cleynsteker’ (‘carver of alabaster’ and ‘carver of small pieces’).
Malines (or Mechelen) in Flanders, located between Antwerp and Brussels, was a centre for such carvings during the period.3 Rombout van Tissenaken taught various other alabaster sculptors of the following generation, including Hans Hemelrycx, Justus Bol, Machiel Paillet and Philip Verschueren.
A relief of Moses Striking Water by Rombout van Tissenaken is preserved in the Städtisches Museum in Zwickau,4 while a relief of the same subject by his son Isaac van Tissenaken is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.5
1. For a discussions on monogrammes on such reliefs, see catalogue of exhibition Exposition de Sculptures anglaises et malinoises d'Albatre Musees Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels, 28 September - 5 November 1967, pp. 50-63.
2. For the artist, see A. Monballieu, ‘Documenten van het Mechelse schilders-en beeldsnijdersambacht. III: Het proces van de stoffeerders tegen de beeldsnijders (1608-1611)’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen 67 (1972), pp. 163 and 166.
3. For such alabaster reliefs, see Aleksandra Lipínska, ‘Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen": Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 2006, vol. 32, no. 4 (2006), pp. 231-258.
4. Inv. no. V 71/7/K3; Lipínska, op. cit. p. 236.
5. Alabaster relief 12.5 x 9.5 cm; including frame 22 x 20 cm; inv. no. BK-NM-3499; G. Bès de Berc, Sculpture d'Albâtre de Malines: Les reliefs de dévotion fin XVIème début XVIIème siècle, Saint Armel 2003, p. 57.
