Oil on panel

Signed and dated with monogram IRO lower right 1543

We like to thank Dr. Jan de Maere for his research.

Jan Rombouts was the son, pupil and collaborator of Jan Rombouts the Elder.

His father listed in Leuven as 'Johannes Rombouts pictor' is the grandnephew of the Leuvense glasspainter Claes Rombouts.

Jan the Younger worked in his father's workshop and later as an independent free master in Leuven. Both father and son were both painters and glass painters.

Their complex and colorful compositions, inspired by the Antwerp Romanists and Italianate examples of pseudo-Renaissance architectural elements, introduced in their

home town the stylistic innovations realized by Albrecht Durer, Lucas van Leyden and Bernard van Orley.

The father was more restrained in his draftsmanship and closer to the Renaissance style, as we see in his wing ‘Saint Margaret of Antiocha’ of the monogrammed

altarpiece ‘The Conversion of Saint Paul’ in the M-museum Louvain, His son was more extravagant in an exuberant mannerist style, as seen in the present painting. This

‘Suzanna and the Elder Men’ is an important discovery for early Mannerist painting in Louvain in the first part of the sixteenth century.

In the nineteenth century, the city archivist of Louvain Edward van Even read the monogram of the works of Jan Rombouts the elder as ‘IVR’, wrongly identifying the

author as the Louvain painter Jan van Rillaer. The latter was only born in 1520/25. Therefore it is obvious that it is in fact the monogram of Jan Rombouts the elder,

active and documented as a free master already in 1520-1525.

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