THE “EASING UP”

After the middle of the fifteenth century a new spirit gradually came over sculpture, a phenomenon which the art historian Louis Courajod has called /a dtente, the “easing up” of French art, in order to stress the contrast between the tension and emphasis of Claus Slutcr and his Burguudian following and that tendency towards quieting down, towards the search for grace and equilibrium. In reality this new style, more complex thau a simple reaction to au opposing current, was nourished by traditions from the beginning of the century, still hardy after several decades. And although this later art sometimes shows a hint of Netherlandish influence, it totally diverges from the experimeuts being carried out in the Germauic lands.
Jacques Morel, often considered to be the prime mover behind the “easing up,” ensured the continuity of the muffled and peaceful manuer of the early fifteenth century, accompanied by the habitual penchant for individualized features and heavy fabrics with soft and ample folds. Among the works created during the itinerant career which led Morel from Lyous, where he is mentioned iu 1418, to Toulouse, Rodez, Avsgnon, Souvigny aud Angers, where he died in 1453 in the service of King  Ren ofAujou, there is preserved only the funerary monument of the Duke of Bourbou at Souvigny (Allier), commissioned in 1448 on the model of the tombs of Champmol.
The latter left Dijon in s456. and it was Antoine Le Moiturier of Avsgnon, assumed to be the pupil of Jacques Morel, who in 1466 was given the job of completing the tomb ofJohn the Fearless and who helped to reorient the Burgundsan style in accordance with the general trend towards a “relaxed” art. The two angels surviving from the altarpiece, now destroyed, of SaintPierre-le-Vieux at Avignon, conimissioned from Le Moiturser in 1463, enable us to define the plastic language of this sculptor who simplified forms, accentuating the angular lines and large empty areas of the breaking folds; precisely dehneated the fringes and braid of the clothing on the surface of the stone; and enhanced the sweet and childlike expressions of the rounded faces. There was no superfluous complication in this style. quiet and sober but without roughness, in which the formal vocabulary, blending with the specifically Burgundian tradition, was abundantly and diversely utihzed by the prolific workshops of the Auxois and the Autunois in the late fifteenth century.
Several sculptured groups are doubtfully attributed to Le Moiturier, including the Entombment of Semur-enAuxois (1490). On the other hand, the famous tomb of Philippe Pot (Louvre, Paris) cannot be from the master’s hand: the idea of enlarging the mourners almost to hfessze and making them carry the slab on which the tomb effigy lies is daring, and testifies to an original conception that gives the old formula a new lease of life; but in detail the execution is weak and the handling dry and perfunctory.