CLAUS SLUTER

The genius uf Claus Sluter dominates the art uf his time from the uutset. Luckily, his career in Dijon is fairly well known, thanks tu the accounts of the court of Burgundy, which supply precioui informauon about his works, as compared with the almost general anonymity of sculptures around 1400, subject to the changing game of attributions. A native of Haarlem in the County of Holland, recorded as being in Brussels about 1380, Claus Sluter came to Dijon in i385 to work in the service of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in the workshop ofjean de Marville whom he succeeded as the duke’s image-carver in 1389, until his death in January 14o.
At the Charterhouse ofChampmol near Dijon, founded by the luxury—loving patron to receive his sepulchre, Sluter broke up the static design fur the church portal provided by his predecessor. The vivacity of the Virgin placed in the centre, the movement ufrhe two patron saints who present the kneeling duke and duchess to her, are accompanied by ample draperies deeply creased with folds, and the handling of the faces brings out the thickness of the features.
The celebrated “Well of Moses” is in reahty the base of a monumental Calvary ornamented with prophets and angels in tears, bathing in the waters of a fountain. Built by Sluter in the centre of the cloister of the charterhouse from 1396 to 5405, and famous since its creation, it drew inspiration from the symbolic theme of the Fountain of Life. The imposing figure of Moses sets the tone of this potent art which translates into stone the superhuman grandeur of the visionaries of the Old Testament, harbingers of the Passion of Christ. But the accent is also placed on the vigorously characterized faces with intense expressions, by turns meditatiTe, inspired or wrathful. The illusion of life had to be strengthened to begin with by a few accessories, like the bronze spectacles of the prophet Jeremiah or the copper strings of David’s harp, and by a rich polychromy entrusted to Jean Malouel, court painter of the duke, and to Hermann of Cologne.
And yet the notion of realism frequently applied to the sculptures of Sluter seems excessive and too hmited. His extraordinary talent passes easily from one register to another, from the vehemence of the prophets to the hying dynamism of the Virgin or the sensitive pathos of the magnificent bust of the crucified Christ, the principal relic of the Champmol Calvary. And how are we to imagine the pastoral scene commissioned by Philip the Bold for his chteau of Germolles, portraying the duke and duchess as shepherd and shepherdess seated beneath an elm surrounded by sheep? The exact degree of participation of Sluter’s many collaborators, too, still needs to be assessed, in particular that of his nephew Claus de Werwe,who joined the Dijon workshop in 1396 and took charge of it in 1406 after his uncle’s death.
Comparative criticism has shown how novel Sluter’s art was. That novelty is already evident in the cortege of mourners on the ducal tomb, with which he probably began the work. Indeed, one looks in vain in the sculpture of Brussels or Holland for any true equivalents or forerunners of his style. And his contacts with contemporary sculptors in i393 he visited the worksire of Mehun-surYvre supervised by Andr Beauneveu in the service of the Duke of Berry have no particular echoes, at least in his surviving’ works. However, if the master’s creations opened new perspectives rich in possibilities, they are also totally in keeping with the embryonic fourteenth- century tendencies that burst into bloom around i400. The different versions of international Gothic are marked, on several accounts, by that common taste for dynamic figures, ample volumes deployed in space, thick and flowing draperies, and individualized faces.
But Claus Sluter bends these plastic themes to the daring inventions of his personal touch. He creates a style whose powerful ascendancy made itself lastingly felt in fifteenth— century Burgundy, and even far beyond.