Square crop of original photograph. Burden of books. Carved stone cloister corbel of the early 1500s Royal Monastery of Brou at Bourg-en-Bresse, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France.


Bourg-en-Bresse, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France: carving on stone corbel in cloister of the Royal Monastery of Brou or Monastère royal de Brou. The monastery was rebuilt in the early 1500s by Margaret or Marguerite of Austria (1480 - 1530), Duchess of Savoy (Savoie) and Regent of the Netherlands, to commemorate her late husband, Philibert II (1480 - 1504), Duke of Savoy and to fulfil the wishes of Philibert’s mother, Margaret or Marguerite de Bourbon (1438 - 1483). The abbey church, dedicated to Saint Nicholas of Tolentino and known in French as the Église Saint-Nicolas-de-Tolentin de Brou, was designed by Flemish architect Loys Van Boghem (1470 - 1540), a master builder from Brussels, and built between 1513 and 1532. It is a masterpiece of Flamboyant Gothic style. Margaret, daughter of Habsburg archduke Maximilian, later Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and Mary, Duchess of Burgundy, was one of Renaissance Europe’s most powerful and well-connected women. She was made Regent of the Habsburg Netherlands for the future Emperor Charles V by her father, holding the post from 1507 to 1515 and again from 1519 to 1530. In Brou, she carried out her mother-in-law Marguerite de Bourbon’s wishes to rebuild the run-down abbey. Bourg-en-Bresse is in the Ain department of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, 70km (43 miles) northeast of Lyon. It was capital of the ancient province of Bresse and, since the Revolution, has been capital of the Ain. Throughout much of the middle ages it served as a major outpost of Savoy. It passed to France in 1601. Brou is an historic suburb of Bourg-en-Bresse, a mile east of the centre.


Size: 2586px × 2586px
Location: Royal Monastery of Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No

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