FUNERARY ART

Despite the scale of destruction, the innumerable tombs that have been spared give a good idea of the host of funerary monuments of all kinds which populated the churches and cloisters of the Middle Ages. If the pride of princes and churchmen shows itself all too clearly in imposing, lavishly decorated monuments, the necessarily modest tastes of less wealthy clients were content with ssmpler tombs or votive reliefs. But the dessre to stay present in the memory of the hying is common to them all. The type of tomb with a sculptured recumbent figure (gisaot) and weeping mourners beneath a series of arches, was now firmly established and spread universally (tomb of  Bishop Ramn Escales by Antoni Canet, 1409-1412, Barcelona Cathedral). It lasted down to the end of the Middle Ages with some variations touching, in particular, the arrangement of the funeral procession or the handling of the deceased person’s effigy.
On the tomb of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, commissioned from Jean de Marville in 1384 and continued by Claus Sluter and Claus de Werwe, the mourners are no longer conceived as applied reliefi placed side by side in the niches but as independent statuettes circulating beneath a veritable gallery of arcading. The revival of portraiture, which stems from the fourteenth century, bursts out in some of the recumbent figures: the ugly face of Jean de Berry is uncompromisingly rendered on the tomb statue at Bourges carved by Jean de Cambrai between 1405 and 1416, the date of rhe duke’s death.
From the idealized image ro the faithful portrait of the deceased, the evolunou of funerary sculpture also led to the representation of the emaciated or withered corpse (transi), which reproduces the grim visions of the plague and recalls the vanity of the things of thss world. In France, the oldest withered corpse statues, contemporary with the first dissections of the human body authorized in 1396, are those of the physician Guillaume de Harcigny (died s393) who attonded Charles VI (Archaeological Museum, Laon) and of Cardinaljean de La Grange (died 1402) at Avignon. The latter, remarkable for its anatomical accuracy, is accompanied by an inscription which gave to the macabre portrayal its full significance: “If all see, great and small, to what state they shall be reduced. . . then wherefore pride? For thou art dust and like me thou shalt again become a fetid corpse, ashes and food for worms.”
The tomb La Grange had built for himself in the choir of Saint—Martial of Avignon was remarkable for its size, its wealth of decoration and the range of its iconographic programme; this is clear from a seventeenth—century drawing and the surviving elements in the Petit Palais Museum at Avignon. Above the withered corpse, the tomb effigy and the College of Apostles, five successive storeys rose some fifty feet from the ground and showed La Grange, Louis of Orleans, Charles VI, Charles V and Pope Clement VII each kneeling and commended by a patron saint before a scene from the life of the Virgin. The theme of the Coronation of the Virgin, image of Paradise, and that of the Apostolic College, which evoked the desire to unite the Avignon Curia with the Apostles and thereby affirm its legitimacy, recall the traditional formula of the cardinal’s tomb at the time of the Schism.
The first example of this type, carved under the direction ofBarthlemy Cavalier from 5372 to 1377, was the funerary monument of Cardinal Philippe Cabassole; its design and layout may have inspired the great Neapolitan tombs of the late fourteenth century.
But La Grange enriched the usual design with a taste for pomp and a purpose of political commemoration already obvious in the statues of the “Bean Pilier” at Amiens Cathedral, which he had commissioned about ay. Adviser to King Charles V of France and instigator of the schismatic election of Pope Clement VII in 5378, Cardinal de La Grange chose to have portrayed on his tomb as the representanves of his spiritual family the Pope and the Royal House of France. The sculptures, of varied styles and uneven qnahty, bear witness to the diversity of influences mixing in the Avignon crucible and engendering international Gothic art. One of the main currents had its sources in France in the royal or princely circles of the end of the century.
On German soil, episcopal pomp found a new mode of expression: the wall-tomb, which, in a profusely ornamented frame, presented the sculptured image of the deceased in a standing position, supported by the wall or a pillar and no longer recumbent on a tombstone (Johann II von Nassau, died 1459, Mainz Cathedral).

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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.

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MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES

Around 1400, in several centres of the Netherlands and the Empire, materials like clay or east stone, less costly and easier to work with than traditional stone, marble or wood, came into current use. The practice of casting made it possible to produce statues and statuettes in series and at lower price, often with widespread distribution. The different regional variations of the “fine style” in the Germanic countries are illustrated by numerous works in moulded cast stone (Steinguss): Beautiful Madonnas, Virgins of Pity, male and female saints. Examples of sculptures are preserved, if not from the same mould, at least from moulds cast from the same model, as shown by the Virgins from Hallgarten and Eberbach, whose refined lyricism is characteristic of a whole group of works of the Middle Rhine regson.
In the course of archaeological digs in the Low Gountries at Utrecht and Liege, casts have been unearthed of statuettes and reliefs that were used in the fifteenth century to manufacture small terracotta objects, often exported. The earlier sets of such works have their place in the mainstream of internanonal Gothic. Modelled so as to produce statuettes of special charm, clay was a favourite medium at Nuremberg in Franconia, also in Swabia and along the Middle Rhine. It made possible a subtle relief and great delicacy in the handling of details, in harmony with the flowing drapery and sweetness of expression. An extreme care was taken in modelling the back of free—standing sculptures, such as the series of apostles at Nuremberg.
Glay could also be used, hke plaster, to fashion ma— quettes or models of sculptures frequently mentioned in documents from the end of the fourteenth century on,wards. At the Gharterhbuse of Champmol, just outside Dijon, founded by the Duke of Burgundy in 1383, the Dutch sculptor Glaus Sluter had a model made in plaster for the “Well of Moses,” perhaps lifessze: during the winter of 1398-1399 a teamster of Dijon spent sixteen days “hauling fine sand to make a plaster cast. . . and putting the markings on it for the construction and stonework of the fountain.”
Once the work was carved or modelled, the materials employed were generally not left in the natural state. Stone, wood, clay or cast stone received a carefully applied polyehromy using complex techniques which gave the sculpture a perfect finish. Alabaster and marble, sometimes wood as well, were partially heightened with colours and gold, which set off the parts left uncovered. But the fragility of this added colouring and the defacement or weathering it has suffered over the course of centuries (when it has not disappeared entirely) usually prevent us today from appreciating the play of gilding and colour, the beauty of painted decoration and the fineness of flesh-tints in their original brilliance.

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ALTARPIECES

Of all the creations of late Gothic art, the carved altar— piece is b&yond all doubt the most fascinating. It is in the decoration of the altar, holiest of holy places, on which all eyes are turned, that the artists’ imagination and virtuosity scored their triumph. The wall standing bchsnd the altar, rising vertically above the slab of the altar, took on unprecedented breadth and complexity. The art of the altar- piece, horn well before the fifteenth century, experienccd a remarkable flowering during this period. In the Germanic countries and thc Nethcrlands, the altarpieces in carved and painted wood, fitted with  folding wing panels, developed from fourteenth-century examples :, the vast rcliquary altarpieces, which associated the holy receptacles on several levels with an ornamentation of statuettes placed side by side beneath arcades; or the small altarpieees shaped like tabernacles, which housed the holy image in the centre. When closed, the painted (sometimes carved) wsng panels enabled the sculptures and relies to be protected; when open, to be presented on the altar for adoration by the faithful.
At the end of the fourteenth century, potentially far- reaching changes affected the shrine or casket (Schrein in German, screen in Flemish), the central part of the altar— piece. This shrine, being deeper, could receive narrative compositions in high relief beneath the architectural elements, and its median bay was elevated, breaking with the rectangular form and creating a vertical axis at the centre. That was the ease with the Crucifixion altarpieee commissioned by Philip the Bold in 1390 from Jacques de Baerze, a sculptor of Termonde, for the Charterhouse of Champmol. The way was open for formulas typical of the Netherlands around ioo, where scenes with multiple figures placed on rising ground were composed by small reliefs carved separately, then fitted together and arranged in tiers in the different compartments of the shrine. The form of those compartments and their architectural setting, composed of flamboyant fenestration, vaults, colonnettes, gables and pinnacles, evoke the inreriors of Gothic churches. The Dortmund altarpiece of about 1420 already offers an accomplished example of this type of shrine, called Kapellenschrein. But the attempt to suggest depth of space is restricted by the material confines of each compartment. In compensation, it brings with it a kind of miniaturization of forms and prohferation of details placed at the service of expressive and narrative values. The anecdotal episodes, picturesque costumes, and concrete elements rendered in minute detail help to situate the narratives drawn from the Bible or the byes of the saints in the sculptors’ contemporary world.
The monumental figure carvings standing in the shrines of the German altarpieces produce a different effect. In both eases, however, the altarpieee is conceived as a whole (Gesamthnnstwerk). Shrine and wing panels must be considered together, according to the opening and closing of the altarpiece as required by the necessities of the liturgical calendar. There is a dehberate progression of forms and imagery in the passage from the simpler paintings on the wing panels (often grisaille on the outside and more coloured representations or else low reliefs within) to the sculptures of the central shrine, where the most sacred and elaborate images stood. When closed, the altarpiece wears, 

as it were, its everyday face, adapted to days of toil or mouroing; when open on feast days, it shows itself in all its splendour.
The production of carved and painted altarpieces in the southern Netherlands, already considerable in the course of the fifteenth century, became extremely abundant at the close of that century and the start of the next. Strictly organized, and in some cases almost standardszed, this line of work was extensively commercialized, as shown by exports to France, the Iberian peninsula, the Balcaric and Canary islands, and the Germanic and Scandinavian countries. Two centres, Antwcrp and Brussels, were p;edominant, while the workshops of Malines specialized in the manufacture of statncttes. Several craftsmen collaborated in the construction of an altarpiece: joiners and cabinetmakers who devised the shrine, sculptors, painters and gilders who were responsible for the polychromy. The statutes of the craft guslds to which they belonged laid down precise conditions of work and production. Each town’s hallmark was affixed to its works as a guarantee of their origin and quality. The varieties of wood most frequently used were oak, walnut and some fruit trees.
In Brussels the mark of the cabinetmaker was stamped on the outer panels of the oak shrine and depicted his tools: a plane between the branches of an open compass. It was often accompanied by the wooden mallet, the mark of the Brussels sculptors, which was carved on the wood, generally out of sight: on the head or back, or beneath the base, of the figures. On the other hand, the rectangular mark bearing the word B5tvE5EL, which was impressed in the still fresh preparatory coat before the application of the gold, and guaranteed the quahty of the polychromy, was placed in evidence on the front of the shrine (Saluzzo altarpiece) or on the pedestals of free—standing statuettes. Some workshops might also use their own hallmarks, and sometimes the sculptors, hke the famous Jan Borreman, even signed their works (altarpiece of St George, t493, Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels).

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INTERNATIONAL GOTHIC STYLE

At the dawn of the fifteenth century, the international Gothic style opened the last chapter in thc history of medieval sculpture—a chapter too often underrated by criticism and overshadowed by the great creators of northern pasnting and of the Italian Renaissance. It might be said in defence of this final flowering that Claus Sluter and Nicholas of Leyden are as great as Jan van Eyck, that Miehel Colombe is the equal of Jean Fouquet or Hans Leinberger of Altdorfer, and lastly that Vasari, who despises the barbarous manner of the “Goths,” nevertheless extols the beauty of the St Roch by Veit Stoss. But above all these works undertook to arouse the attention of the indifferent. Thus, to take two examples of the purest emanations of the international Gothic style, the contemplation of a “Beautiful Madonna” from Bohemia delights us quite as much as that of an illumination by the Limbourg brothers.
This vast movement, which flourished around 1400 for several decades, is called international, in the phrase of Louis Courajod, in order to express its dissemination on a European scale, from northern Italy and Spain to Germany and the Netherlands, and from England and France to Bohemia and Hungary. The exceptional unity of artistic language forged at that time was the fruit of constant exchanges between different European courts, particularly those of Prague, Paris, Avignon, Milan, London and Dijon.Works, ideas and styles travelled just as much as did people, artists and patrons, so that the place of origin of some works is still doubtful.
The crowning achievement of fourteenth-century court art, international Gothic enjoyed the favour of princes and their entourage, fulfilhng the aspirations of that ostentatious clientele which sought refuge in its own chivalrous dreams by providing it with an unreal vision of the world, an extreme elegance of forms and a remarkable fluidity of lines. Yet, undulating silhouettes, draperies with melodious rhythms, soft and dreamy expressions or delicate gestures are nonetheless accompanied by descriptive details: touches of the familiar and picturesque. Rehgsnus art was thereby humanized as secular subjects were developed alongside it. Preciousness of language and artificiality oflinear rhythms, moreover, posed no obstacle to the increasing taste for a faithful rendering of facial lineaments or studies of movement and plastic density reflected in the amphfication of volumes set out in a three-dimensional space. Those tendencies, already present at the end of the fourteenth century, had a great future in store for them. Through them, international Gothic also paved the way for the subsequent renewal of style in the fifteenth century.

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DIVERSITY OF FUNCTIONS

One of the trends in monumental sculpture aronnd 1400, continuing a development begun dnring the fonrteenth century, lay in an emphasis on small fine forms, anecdotal details and a profusion of decorative elements. Carved by Madern Gertener around 1420, the Adoration of the Magi on the small tympanum of the Liebfrauenkirche in Frankfurt is like an enlarged illumination in which the figures are clustered in a picturesque landscape. At the cathedral of Mdan, the portal of the south sacristy was carved around 1393 by Hans Fernach and his workshop. It presents a hsghly dense composition, setting out the three scenes in tsers wsthin an elongated tympanum inserted in an elaborate frame. The style of these reliefs, and of numerous statues executed around 1400 for the adornment of the cathedral, is typical of international Gothic, partscularly esteemed in the court circles of northern Italy.
On the worksite of Mdan Cathedral, artists of all nationalities mingled freely. The presence of German sculptors like Hans Fernach (who is also said to be a native ofComo) helped to introduce the new styles of expression, which were also adopted by Italian artists like Jacobello and Pierpaolo dalle Masegne or Jacopino da Tradate.
In all buildings, civic or religious, the innumerable brackets and consoles were choice locations for sculptors. who there displayed a freedom of snvention and a zest for secular subjects at times carried to the posnt of caricature. Images full of life and picturesque details are also carved on the misericords of choir stalls. Those of the cathedral of Barcelona, executed from 1394 to 1399 by Pere a Anglada, one of the first representatsves of international Gothic in Catalonta, present a varied repertory of subjects borrowed from fable, satire or mythology.
Carved church furniture thus continued to be enriched, enlivened, diversified. The altarpieces exhibited new designs that flowered in the course of the fifteenth century, and the number of statues independent of a supporting wall thereafter never ceased to grow.
Nevertheless, indoors and out, pride of place was still reserved for monumental statuary, which revealed by turns the general tendencies of late Gothic art towards amplification of volumes, dynamic effects and refinements of form. The programmes were worked out under the princely patronage; they made much of the new ideas instituted at the beginning of the fifteenth century in France and taken up in Prague m the days of the Parlers. Thus, in parallel with traditional religious statuary (prophets of Bourges by Andre Beauneveu and Jean de Cambrai) and with effigies of contemporary donors introduced into church decoration (the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy at Champmol by Claus Sluter), sculptured groups celebrating the power of a ruler and the glory of a dynasty increased in number. 

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THE MASTER OF THE RIMINI ALTARPIECE

international Gothic style also brought with it a growing taste for small—sized sculptures, mainly in terra— cotta and alabaster. Isolated devotional images or elements of altarpiece decoration, these statuettes and rehefs, easily transportable because of their reduced format, ate sometimes difficult to attribute precisely to any particular rejion in the absence of signatures or docnments.
Such is the case with the alabaster sculptures carved by the mysterious Master of the Rimini Altarpieee, the creator of the Crucifixion altarpieee formerly io the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie near Rimini.
A large group of alabaster carvings from the first half of the fifteenth century, very consistent in style, are ascribed to this master and his workshop or to the sculptors who followed iu his wake. They are to be found widely dispersed over Italy, France, Silesia, the Rhine valley, the Netherlands and elsewhere. The extent of this diffusion can be explained by the mobility of the artists and the importance of commercial exchanges, as confirmed, for these sculptures, ou two occasions. In i43 t the abbot of the monastery of Sand at Wroelaw (Breslau) purchased from a Parisian trader a Crucifixion in alabaster (preserved fragment: the Holy Women in the Silesian Museum, Wroclaw); and in 1432 the abbot of the Saiut—Vaast monastery at Arras acquired from a German merchant some alabaster statuettes portraying the twelve apostles and the Coronation of the Virgin, which were painted in i434 by Jacques Daret at the same time as he paiuted the wing panels of the altarpiece for which the statuettes were intended. The dearth of details about the makers of these sculptures, the geographical distances separating the places where they were commissioned and the different nationahties of the merchants show how difficult it is to locate the produetiou of these alabaster statues with precision.
Proposed by Georg Swarzenski, the identification of the Master of the Rimini Altarpiece with Master Gusmin of Cologne, a goldsmith active in Italy and extolled by Lorenzo Ghiberti in his Commeotarii, is rejected today. Nevertheless, the hypothesis of itinerant werkshops, poss bly originating iu the Rhineland, has since been often adopted. On the other hand, a certain styhstie kinship with the Flemish painters of the first half of the fifteenth century has also led to consideration of the southern Netherlands as a possible source for the art of the Rimini Master.
Alabaster, a choice material, was handled with a subtle blend of dryness and extreme deheacy. The typical method of ehiselhng thin and angular forms, the minute rendering of anatomical details, garments, hairstyles and deeply undercut beards, sets off the precious appearance of the material enlivened by a few polyehrome highlights. The draperies with tight folds, fluid but breaking over the ground, adopt the formulas of international Gothic. Attitudes and expressions help to create a strong dramatic tension, yet one that is softened by refinements of style, especially in the finest creations hke the figures of the Rimini altarpiece or the Entombment in Leningrad. Indeed, despite similarities of form and the repetition of set themes (Virgin of Pity, Apostohe College, Annunciation), within that abundant output of small alabaster carvings, there exist notable differences of quality.

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