Tomb of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy

The tomb of Philip the Bold, made for the choir of the Chartreuse de Champmol is an early sepulchre with pleurents or mourners. This stressed the living grieving for the deceased duke, not his physical transience. Philip’s effigy, modelled after old prints, dates to 1825 since the original was smashed during the French Revolution in 1793. Only his hands survived. Accompanied by a lion at his feet and two angels holding his helmet, the resplendently dressed duke lies on a large black marble slab quarried near Namur. Jean de Marville’s tomb design includes elaborate Gothic architectural decoration, with alternating triangular and rectangular bays, around the base. Claus Sluter, who succeeded as court sculptor in 1389, and his assistants carved forty-one statuettes. Arranged in groups of one or two figures, these form a mourning procession, which begins with a choir boy carrying an aspergillum, or holy water receptacle, at the head of the tomb and continues counter-clockwise around the base. The entourage mimics an actual mourning procession performed after a noble’s death.

Sluter’s extant statuettes vary in identity, pose and expression. Their ranks include a bishop, clerics, Carthusian monks, nobles, courtiers, weepers, and finally, a man apparently dressed as a doctor of theology. No two men are alike. To make these mourners more visible, de Marville and Sluter raised the tomb on an elevated black platform.