The tomb of Philippe Pot is a funerary monument in the Louvre in Paris. It was commissioned by the military leader and diplomat Philippe Pot around the year 1480 to be used for his burial at the chapel of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Cîteaux Abbey, Dijon, France. His effigy shows him recumbent on a slab, his hands raised in prayer, and wearing armour and a heraldic tunic. The eight mourners (pleurants) are dressed in black hoods and act as pallbearers carrying him towards his grave. Pot commissioned the tomb when he was around 52 years old, 13 years before he died in 1493. The detailed inscriptions on the slab's sides emphasise his achievements and social standing.
The individual figures are made of limestone, decorated with paint, gold, and lead. The monument is recorded as commissioned in 1480, but its designers or artisans are not mentioned. Art historians generally cite Antoine Le Moiturier as the most likely designer of the pleurants, based on circumstantial evidence, including similarities to others of his known works.[3] The monument was seized during the French Revolution, and after changing hands several times, was placed in a private garden in Dijon in the 19th century. Since 1899, it has been in the Louvre Museum's collection and on permanent display. The piece underwent a major restoration between 2016 and 2018.
Soon after Charles's defeat and death in January 1477 at the Battle of Nancy, Burgundy came under French control, and Pot seemingly changed allegiance to Louis XI, king of France (r.1461–1483). Suspicious of his association with Louis, Charles and Isabella's daughter Mary of Burgundy expelled him from her realm and the court at Lille in June 1477. In disgrace, he fled to the then-French city of Tournai and was removed from the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1481.[4]
He travelled in August 1477 on behalf of Louis to Lens in northern France to negotiate a truce with Mary and her husband and co-ruler, Maximilian of Austria. The ceasefire was signed on 8 September, and Louis eventually appointed him as grand seneschal of Burgundy. Following the king's death in 1483, Pot served under Louis' son Charles VIII (r.1483–1498).[4][7] Pot died in Dijon on 20 September 1493, aged around 65, having already made detailed plans for his burial place, funeral monument and epitaph.[8][9]
Commission
Plans for Pot's tomb first appear in the historical records on 28 August 1480, when Pot paid the abbot of Cîteaux Abbey, Jean de Cirey, one thousand livres for a burial place in the abbey's chapel of Saint-Jean-Baptiste. Although the dates of its construction are unknown, it is generally assumed to have been between 1480 and 1483 given that the inscriptions mention events after the January 1477 death of Charles the Bold, and mention Louis XI as king.[9] Pot's motto "Tant L. vaut, était" (So much was he worth) was painted in several locations within the chapel.[9][10] The floor of the Jean-Baptiste chapel is lined with rows of medieval burial plots, although few are marked. Pot's tomb was placed at the corner of the south arm of the chapel's transept. He was buried underneath his monument, located to the left of the altar.[9]
Pot's monument was one of the last of the Burgundian-style tombs, whose characteristics include the deceased having naturalised faces, open eyes and angels above their heads.[2] The portrayal of the mourners (pleurants) is their defining motif. The style began with the tomb of Philip the Bold (d. 1404), built by the sculptors Jean de Marville (d. 1389) and Claus Sluter (d. 1405/6) from 1381, for the Chartreuse de Champmol, outside Dijon.[11][12] Described by the art historian Frits Scholten as "one of the most magnificent tombs of the Late Middle Ages",[12] its innovation was in transforming the mourners from the earlier static and unemotional figures to, according to the art historian John Moffitt, individualised weepers that "stumble forward in mutual anguish while praying in perpetuity for the late Duke's soul".[13] This treatment was often copied and developed over the following century.[14][15] By the time of Pot's commission the figures had become much larger – Sluter's have an average height of 40cm (16in) – and were free-standing rather than attached to the monument.[13][16]
Pot commissioned his tomb some 13 years before he died, with his date of death left blank during construction; the current one was probably added in the 19th century.[9] The tomb's extensive inscriptions indicate he wished to leave a record of his importance and prosperity, and to explain his change in allegiance to Louis XI. He probably first employed a painter to agree an overall design and then hired stonemasons, sculptors and craftsmen to construct the tomb.[17]
Description
Effigy
Detail of Pot's effigy with crest, helmet and pillow
The monument is made of limestone.[1] Pot's effigy is carved in the round so it can be seen from all sides.[18] His skin is painted in vermilion and lead white.[19] His body rests on a slab, and his head is nested within a stone cushion. He is dressed in a tunic, silver armour decorated with a gilded breastplate, and a knight's helmet.[20] Pot's eyes are open and his hands are clasped in prayer. A sword lies to his side and his feet rest on a brown animal of uncertain species;[21] as a result of unsympathetic restoration of the animal and feet before the era of photography, art historians disagree whether the animal is a lion or a dog, and there are conflicting interpretations as to its iconography.[20] Most see it as a dog – a traditional symbol of fidelity in Burgundian tomb art.[22][23]
The coats of arms on his shield and on those of the mourners are painted in a variety of colours including gold, white, red, blue and black.[19] They represent the insignia of his ancestral families of Pot, Courtiamble, Anguissola, Blaisy, Guénant, Nesles and Montagu. The effigy does not contain the angels often found in contemporary northern European tombs, guiding the deceased to the afterlife.[20]
Pleurants
Mourners on the right-hand side
The eight mourners carrying Pot's slab were carved from limestone that was then polychromed in four shades of black paint (ranging from charcoal to pure black) for their robes and hoods.[1][24][25] Their rigid forms and austere poses give the impression of the slow movement of a funeral procession.[21] They range in height from 134to 144cm (53–57in),[26] slightly less than life-sized, allowing the recumbent figure to align with the viewer's line of sight.[21] The full weight of the stone slab is supported by a narrow point on a shoulder of each figure, a feat described by the French art historian Sophie Jugie as "masterful... in its technical audacity".[7]
The mourners wear full-length black cloaks and shoulder-length hoods that mostly cover their faces.[21] The hoods identify them as laity participating in a ceremonial burial rite often held in the region from the 13th to the 16th century.[27] Although mourners with black hoods were not common in contemporary sculpture or painting, they can be found on works such as the mid-15th-century "Office of the Dead" miniature from Jean Fouquet's illuminated manuscript the "Hours of Étienne Chevalier".[28] Each bears a painted and gilded heraldic shield that refers to specific members of Pot's lineage, indicating the monument is of the "kinship tomb" type.[29] The four shields on the left represent the heraldries of Guillaume III Pot (d. c. 1390) and Raguenonde Guénant, the Cortiambles family, the Anguissola family, and the de Blaisy family. Those on the left represent the de Montagus and de Nesles, and two unidentified families.[30]
Although their faces are mostly covered and thus do not have individualised features, the mourners have different poses, heraldic shields and folded drapes.[21][31] The clothing contains deep, angular folds, and seems influenced by the works of the mid-15th-century Early Netherlandish painters such as Rogier van der Weyden (d. 1464). Other potential influences include the relief of four monks with covered heads on a short side of the tomb of Pierre de Bauffremont (d. 1472), commissioned in 1453 for his planned burial in Dijon,[32] and a near-contemporary tomb in Semur-en-Auxois that was likely known to Philippe.[33]
The extensive carved inscriptions on the edges of the slab are in Gothic script.[35] They are written in three rows, each beginning on the right side of the head of the effigy and ending behind his head on the opposite side. The text outlines his career with Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, as well as his reasons for switching sides to serve under Louis XI and Charles VIII following the Burgundian's 1477 defeat at Nancy.[35] Most of the text was written before Pot's death. His year of death is erroneously recorded as l'an mil ccccxci[v] ("in the year 149[4]").[36][37]
Inscriptions on a side of the slab
Attribution
Art historians have not identified the artists or craftsmen responsible for designing and building the tomb. Antoine Le Moiturier (d. 1495) is often suggested as likely to have designed the pleurants, given the similarity of the solid and rigid rendering of their clothing to the Mourners of Dijon which are often attributed to him.[38][39] Guillaume Chandelier, a painter active in Dijon at the time, has been suggested as involved, although with little supporting evidence.[40][2]
Art historians generally distinguish between the conventional design of the effigy, the expressive form of the mourners, and the inventive placing of the slab on narrow points above each of their shoulders.[17][41] While it is possible that a single artist, who was both a painter and sculptor, oversaw the tomb's completion, the variation in the quality of sculpture indicates several hands. The art historian Robert Marcoux notes variabilities in skill, and believes that parts of the sculpture are so sparsely detailed that they were likely completed by workshop members.[42]
Provenance
The monument passed through several owners and locations over the centuries, and its complex history was only fully pieced together in the mid-20th century.[5] It was mentioned in 1649 by Pierre Palliot, a bookseller and printer in Dijon, when he described the coats of arms and the inscriptions. The antiquarian and collector François Roger de Gaignières (d. 1715) made drawings of the tomb between 1699 and 1700, which are lost and known only from copies by the artist Louis Boudan (fl. 1687–1709); these are uninformative as they contain inaccuracies.[43] The tomb was nationalised during the early years of the French Revolution when the state took ownership of all church property.[5]
Sometime between 1791 and 1793 François Devosge, an artist and director of the Dijon School of Drawing, was employed to relocate it to the Benedictine abbey in Saint-Bénigne. It was next mentioned in September 1808 when it was acquired for fifty-three livres by Count Richard de Vesvrotte, following a legal case against the French state. He placed it under trees in the garden of his hôtel particulier (townhouse), the Hôtel de Ruffey at 33 rue Berbisey in Dijon.[45][46]
Richard's son Pierre sold the townhouse in 1850 and relocated the tomb to the Château de Vesvrotte in Beire-le-Châtel, Côte-d'Or,[47] where it was again placed in an outdoor garden. It was photographed for the first time in a series of photolithographs commissioned by Pierre's son Alphonse Richard de Vesvrotte. They were published in 1863, and inspired the artist, antiquarian and collector Charles Édouard de Beaumont's 1875 painting Au soleil (or At the Tomb of Philippe Pot), which shows a couple lying at the foot of the tomb in a meadow surrounded by trees.[46][48][49]
The Vesvrotte family attempted to sell the tomb after Richard's death in 1873. The French state sought to block the sale, claiming it was by now public property, a claim eventually rejected in 1886 by a Dijon court who gave full ownership to Pierre's son, Armand de Vesvrotte.[50][49] It was nationalised by the French state that August on the grounds that it was an "object of national historical importance".[1] It was acquired for the Louvre in 1889 by the intermediator Charles Mannheim.[5][46]
Condition and restorations
The tomb was cleaned and restored several times in the 19th century, as evidenced by comparison to earlier reproductions, such as an engraving that shows Pot's fingers as being badly damaged.[46] Early drawings show his feet and the animal in very poor condition until c. 1816. Some of the letters and words on the inscription were restored before 1880 by the archivist Jean-Baptiste Peincedé.[1] The tomb underwent a major restoration between 2018 and 2019 in a project led by Sophie Jugie, who was then director of the Department of Sculptures at the Louvre.[7] It had been in poor condition, covered by accumulated layers of brown dirt around the heraldry, and had layers of gloss and polyvinyl alcohol from earlier cleanings. The restoration was preceded by an in-depth technical analysis conducted between 2016 and 2017 by the Centre for Research and Restoration of Museums of France. Surface layers of bleach, gloss and brown fouling of the blazons were taken off, the unpainted stone was cleaned, and additions from earlier restorations were removed.[51]
Imitations and replicas
The monument had a significant influence on later funerary tombs. It transformed the conventional size and placement of pleurants, which previously had mostly been relatively small figures standing in niches. The motif of eight mourners carrying an effigy's slab can be seen on the tombs of Louis de Savoisy (d. 1515) and Jacques de Mâlain (d. 1527).[27][52] The tomb was photographed several times in the mid-19th century before it was acquired by the Louvre.[45]
In 2010 the American sculptor Matthew Day Jackson exhibited The Tomb, a wood and plastic installation showing astronauts carrying a glass box containing a human skeleton.[53][54]
Related Research Articles
Claus Sluter was a Dutch sculptor, living in the Duchy of Burgundy from about 1380. He was the most important northern European sculptor of his age and is considered a pioneer of the "northern realism" of the Early Netherlandish painting that came into full flower with the work of Jan van Eyck and others in the next generation.
Philip II the Bold was Duke of Burgundy and jure uxoris Count of Flanders, Artois and Burgundy. He was the fourth and youngest son of King John II of France and Bonne of Luxembourg.
François Rude was a French sculptor, best known for the Departure of the Volunteers, also known as La Marseillaise on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. (1835–36). His work often expressed patriotic themes, as well as the transition from neo-classicism to romanticism.
Anne of Burgundy, Duchess of Bedford was a daughter of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy (1371–1419), and his wife Margaret of Bavaria (1363–1423).
Juste or Giusti is the name conventionally applied to a family of Italian sculptors.
Philippe Pot (1428–1493) was a Burgundian nobleman, military leader, and diplomat. He was the seigneur of La Roche and Thorey-sur-Ouche, a Knight of the Golden Fleece, and the Grand Seneschal of Burgundy.
The Chartreuse de Champmol, formally the Chartreuse de la Sainte-Trinité de Champmol, was a Carthusian monastery on the outskirts of Dijon, which is now in France, but in the 15th century was the capital of the Duchy of Burgundy. The monastery was founded in 1383 by Duke Philip the Bold to provide a dynastic burial place for the Valois Dukes of Burgundy, and operated until it was dissolved in 1791, during the French Revolution.
The Palace of the Dukes and Estates of Burgundy or Palais des ducs et des États de Bourgogne is a remarkably well-preserved architectural assemblage in Dijon. The oldest part is the 14th and 15th century Gothic ducal palace and seat of the Dukes of Burgundy, made up of a logis still visible on Place de la Liberation, the ducal kitchens on Cour de Bar, the Tour de Philippe le Bon, a "guette" overlooking the whole city, and Tour de Bar. Most of what can be seen today, however, was built in the 17th and especially the 18th centuries, in a neoclassical style, when the palace was a royal residence building and housed the estates of Burgundy. Finally, the façade of the musée on place de la Sainte-Chapelle was added in the 19th century: it was erected on the site of the palace's Sainte-Chapelle, demolished in 1802. The Palace houses the city's Hôtel de Ville and the musée des Beaux-Arts. It was designated a monument historique by the French government in 1926.
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon is a museum of fine arts opened in 1787, in Dijon, France. It is one of the main and oldest museums of France. It is located in the historic city centre of Dijon and housed in the former ducal palace which was the headquarters of the Burgundy State in the 15th century. When the duchy was assimilated to the Kingdom of France, the palace became the house of the King. In the 17th century, it became the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy following a project by Jules Hardouin-Mansart.
A tomb effigy is a sculpted effigy of a deceased person usually shown lying recumbent on a rectangular slab, presented in full ceremonial dress or wrapped in a shroud, and shown either dying or shortly after death. Such funerary and commemorative reliefs were first developed in Ancient Egyptian and Etruscan cultures, and appear most frequently in Western European tombs from the late 11th century, in a style that continued in use through the Renaissance and early modern period, and is still sometimes used. They typically represent the deceased in a state of "eternal repose", with hands folded in prayer, lying on a pillow, awaiting resurrection. A husband and wife may be depicted lying side by side.
Antoine Le Moiturier (1425–1495) was a French sculptor. He was born in Avignon into a family of sculptors. His uncle was the itinerant French master Jacques Morel.
The Mourners of Dijon are tomb sculptures made in Burgundy during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. They are part of a new iconographical tradition led by Claus Sluter that continued until the end of the fifteenth century. In this tradition, free-standing sculptures depict mourners who stand next to a bier or platform that holds a body in state. The figures are cloaked in robes which mostly hide their faces.
Jean de la Huerta was a Spanish sculptor of Aragonese origin. Most of his work was produced in the duchy of Burgundy.
Pleurants or weepers are anonymous sculpted figures representing mourners, used to decorate elaborate tomb monuments, mostly in the late Middle Ages in Western Europe. Typically they are relatively small, and a group were placed around the sides of a raised tomb monument, perhaps interspersed with armorial decoration, or carrying shields with this. They may be in relief or free-standing. In English usage the term "weepers" is sometimes extended to cover the small figures of the deceased's children often seen kneeling underneath the tomb effigy in Tudor tomb monuments.
The Tomb of Philip the Bold is a funerary monument commissioned in 1378 by the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Bold for his burial at the Chartreuse de Champmol, the Carthusian monastery he built on the outskirts of Dijon, in today's France. The construction was overseen by Jean de Marville, who designed the tomb and oversaw the building of the charterhouse. Marville worked on the tomb from 1384, but progressed slowly until his death in 1389. That year Claus Sluter took over design of Champmol, including the tomb. Philip died in 1404 with his funerary monument still incomplete. After Sluter's death c. 1405/06, his nephew Claus de Werve was hired to complete the project, which he finished in 1410.
The Cadaver Tomb of René of Chalon is a late Gothic period cadaver monument (transi) in the church of Saint-Étienne at Bar-le-Duc, in northeastern France. It consists of an altarpiece and a limestone statue of a putrefied and skinless corpse which stands upright and extends his left hand outwards. Completed sometime between 1544 and 1557, the majority of its construction is attributed to the French sculptor Ligier Richier. Other elements, including the coat of arms and funeral drapery, were added in the 16th and 18th centuries respectively.
The Tomb of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany is a large and complex silver-gilt and marble sculptured 16th century funerary monument. Its design and build are usually attributed to the Juste brothers although the work of several other hands can be distinguished. Designed for and installed at the Saint-Denis Basilica, France, it was commissioned in 1515 in memory of Louis XII and his queen Anne of Brittany, probably by Louis' successor Francis I, and after years of design and intensive building was unveiled in 1531.
The tomb of Isabella of Bourbon was a funeral monument built for Isabella of Bourbon, a member of the House of Valois-Burgundy, then rulers of the Burgundian State. Little is known about her due to her death of tuberculosis in 1465 aged 31. Her monument was commissioned by her daughter Mary of Burgundy and constructed in Brussels sometime between 1475 and 1476 by Jan Borman and Renier van Thienen. Originally placed in the church of St. Michael's Abbey, Antwerp in 1476, it was dismantled in August 1566 during the Iconoclastic Fury when parts were either destroyed or looted. Other elements of the tomb were lost during the French Revolution when the church itself was destroyed.
The Tomb of Mary of Burgundy is a funeral monument completed in 1501 for Mary of Burgundy's grave in the Church of Our Lady, Bruges. She died in March 1482, aged 25, following injuries sustained during a hunting accident a number of weeks earlier.
The tomb of Joan of Brabant was built between 1457 and 1458 by the bronze caster Jacob de Gerines after wooden models by the sculptor Jean Delemer, and placed in the church of the Carmelite monastery in Brussels. Joan of Brabant was a Duchess of Brabant and died in 1406.
Chabeuf, Henri. Jean de La Huerta, Antoine Le Moiturier et le tombeau de Jean sans Peur, Dijon. Paris: Darantière, 1891. Republished: West Columbia, TX: Wentworth Press, 2018. ISBN978-0-3414-5950-7.
Hofstatter, Hans. Art of the Middle Ages. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1968.
Jugie, Sophie. Le Tombeau de Philippe Pot. Paris: Ediciones El Viso, 2019. ISBN978-8-4948-2447-0.
Jugie, Sophie. The Mourners: Tomb Sculpture from the Court of Burgundy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. ISBN978-0-3001-5517-4.
Kiening, Christian. "Rhétorique de la perte. L'exemple de la mort d'Isabelle de Bourbon (1465)". Médiévales, no. 27, 1994. JSTOR43026850.
Marcoux, Robert. Le tombeau de Philippe Pot: analyse et interprétation. Montréal: Université de Montréal, 2003
McGee Morganstern, Ann. "Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries, and England". University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. ISBN978-0-2710-1859-1.
Moffitt, John. "Sluter's 'Pleurants' and Timanthes' 'Tristitia Velata': Evolution of, and Sources for a Humanist Topos of Mourning". Artibus et Historiae, volume 26, no. 51, 2005. JSTOR1483776.
Sterling, Charles; Salinger, Margaretta. French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1966
Vaughan, Richard; Paravicini, Werner. Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy. London: Barnes & Noble, 1973. ISBN978-0-0649-7171-3.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
