“Mourning Glory”
Among the highlights in our latest issue is a review by associate editor Matthew Boudway of The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy, an art exhibit touring the United States (and currently stopping in St. Louis).
Philip the Good had the statues made for the tomb of his father, John the Fearless, the second Valois duke of Burgundy. Sculpted between 1443 and 1457, they were set in an elaborate gothic arcade that circled the tomb under recumbent stone effigies of the duke and his wife. There the statues stood in single-file procession. Only one side of the them was ever meant to be seen, but visitors to this exhibition, who have the luxury of viewing them from several angles, might have trouble guessing which side, so carefully did the artists, Jean de la Huerta and Antoine Le Moiturier, carve every exquisite detail. As the mourning procession was a ritual performed in the sight of God, so the statues were designed to be seen by the One who sees everything.
Such monuments were for death a little like what modern wedding albums are for marriage: treasured memorials of initiation into a mystery that time threatens to bury. The tomb was designed not to impress museum-goers but to remind the Carthusians at Champmol to keep praying for the duke in case he hadn’t yet made it to heaven. Until he did, the procession continued.
Read the whole thing here. And if you can’t make it to see the statues in person, you can get a good view on the exhibition’s Web site. Have you seen them? What did you think?
I’ve got a personal take on this. I had seen the tomb and its figures in Dijon. If I hadn’t, I’m sure I’d have been much more impressed with the figures when I saw them at the Met. But the fact of the matter is, the tomb is set next to another tomb in which the figures were carved by Claus Sluter (d. 1405 or 1406). It’s clear that the Sluter figures were the model for these later works. The ones traveling on show are elegant and superbly competent. But they simply do not touch Sluter’s genius. In fact, the juxtapositioning of the two tombs (they are displayed in the same room) was a lesson to me in the difference between genius and technical proficiency, between a work of incomparable value and a valuable imitation. Go, see these, enjoy and admire them by all means, especially if you are unlikely ever to be traveling to Burgundy. But if you really want to see pleurans, see the work of Claus Sluter.
My memories of Dijon are dim, but Rita Ferrone is absolutely right about Claus Sluter.
Rita and Nicholas: Are there any images of, or links to, Sluter’s work that we could post?
You know, Joseph, that’s an excellent question. They are not that easy to find. The most helpful shots I’ve been able to hunt down in a little web search right now are of individual figures.
Here is one
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/ru/bilder/sonstig/sluter01.jpg
Here is a pair of them
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/91/60291-050-E8DE9EF3.jpg
and another
http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/sluter11d.jpg
Still, these only give a hint, really.
I’ve puzzled over why I should find them so much more affecting, and I think there may be several reasons. They are less exact with regard to proportion, more of the faces are veiled, and there are fewer tokens of wealth or status. The stance, the hands, say everything. These figures seem given over to their mourning. It reaches to their depths. I cannot imagine them the next day at court or in the marketplace. There is also not the slightest sense of histrionics or something being done for show. Perhaps it is because Sluter lived through the later years of the plague, perhaps it was his religious sense (he ended his life in a monastery), perhaps he was just a better artist, I don’t know. But he captured the essence of the mourning he depicted.
Poor Jean de la Huerta and Antoine la Matourier. We are supposed to be discussing their work, and here I am raving about the competition. Thank you though, Nicholas, for your affirmation.
Thank you, Rita. They’re wonderful. I did not know of Sluter’s work before.