BAERZE, Jacques de
Flemish sculptor. He probably came from Gent, and lived in Dendermonde some thirty kilometres away from Dijon. He was clearly a well-established master before the death in January 1384 of the local ruler, Louis II of Flanders, Duke of Brabant, as two commissions from Louis to produce carved altarpieces are recorded, though the works have not survived. These were for the chapel of the castle of Dendermonde, and the hospice of the Cistercian abbey of Bijloke, then just outside Gent.
These works were noticed by Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, Louis’s son-in-law and successor as Count of Flanders. In 1385 Philip had founded a Carthusian monastery, the Charterhouse of Champmol, then just outside Dijon, as the dynastic burial-place of the Burgundian Valois, and was filling it with impressive works of art. In 1390, he commissioned de Baerze to create two similar altarpieces for Champmol: one, now known as the Altar of Saints and Martyrs for the chapter house, and the larger, now known as the Retable of the Crucifixion, for the main altar of the church. Both are triptychs with hinged wings, carved on the interior, but the exterior panels, showing when the wings were closed, were to be painted by his court artist Melchior Broederlam. These painted outer panels only survive for the larger of the two retables. The triptychs would normally be shown closed, displaying the paintings, but opened to show the carvings for feast days.
The altarpieces were installed in Champmol by the end of 1399, after which de Baerze disappears from documented records.
Other smaller carvings attributed to de Baerze survive, including the figure from an altar crucifix which formed part of the Champmol commission, now in the Art Institute of Chicago, and a St George in the Mimara Museum in Zagreb.
