Aloysa Romaine Berens from Luxembourg is an art historian and much involved in studying the culture of the French Renaissance. For a long time, her interest has been focused on the court-painter Jean Perreal. Parallel to this research, she continues her investigation on the poet Guillaume de Machaut and recently she was reflecting on Count Mansfeld's disappeared palace in Luxemburg.

“How did she come to this?” people are wondering: While still a teacher at the Speech Centre (Centre de Logopédie) in Luxembourg, she tried to awaken among her deaf and speech troubled pupils the enthusiasm for weaving and tapestry. In vain, because a new area was dooming, that of informatics, which came to capture all attention.  When she started to study art history, she continued to be much involved with the art of tapestry: Her memory, written at the University of Trier to obtain the master’s degree, was about Jean Bondol, the creator of the famous tapestries of the Apocalypse at Angers, whom she identifies with the 'Master of Hohenfurth'. Later on, she studied Renaissance-literature in Fribourg (CH) and achieved her doctorate at the University of Bern with the thesis: Jean Perreal’s contribution to the princely memorial at Brou, foundation and funeral place of Margaret of Austria (published in 2009 und in 2010 in German language). 

The research of ARB about this fascinating and mysterious royal court-painter Perreal and the art of tapestry continues, as her occasional publications demonstrate. She is convinced that the Unicornhunt in New York, as well as the Parisian Lady of the Unicorn, were conceived by Jean Perreal, as she tries to demonstrate in two of her books.

Recently she focussed on the disappeart castle of the governor Pierre-Ernest of Mansfeld in Luxembourg, and tried - succesfully, as she thinks - to solve the riddle enveloping this constraction of the 16th century.

(See abstract)