Tomb of Philippe Pot

Donor portrait of Philip Pot, unknow artist, Church of Notre-Dame of Dijon

Philippe Pot was born in 1428 near Beaune in eastern France, as a godson of Philip the Bold.[2] He was raised and educated at the Burgundian court. He became a seigneur of La Roche and Thorey-sur-Ouche, a Knight of the Golden Fleece, and a Grand Seneschal of Burgundy. He served under the two last Dukes of Burgundy: Philip the Good and Charles the Bold. After the latter's defeat by his long term enemy Louis XI at the Battle of Nancy in 1477, the dynasty died out. Philippe was expelled from the Citadel of Lille in 1477, having been tried for perjury amongst other charges, but thereafter served under two French kings: Louis and Charles VIII.[3]

Philip the Bold's tomb was commissioned in the late 14th century as the first of the Burgundian style tombs. He hired the Dutch sculptor Claus Sluter, whose distinctive style in placing mourners around effigy was often copied over the following centuries. The tomb follows the style of Philip the Bold's, which was commissioned in the late 14th century as the first of the now well-known Burgundian style tombs.[4][5] Philippe Pot's monument was the last major tomb of the Burgundians,[6] and was designed in a style that reaches back to the tomb of Philippe Dagobert (d. 1235).[7]

Tomb of Philip Dagobert of France, Basilica of Saint-Denis

The tomb is first recorded on 28 August 1480 when Philippe paid the abbot of Cîteaux Abbey, Jean de Cirey, one thousand livres for a burial place. Although the dates of its construction are unknown, it is generally assumed to have been between 1480 and 1483 given the inscriptions mention events after the January 1477 death of Charles the Bold at the battle of Nancy, and mention Louis XI as king.[8] It was placed in the chapel of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, at the corner of the south arm of the transept.[8][9] Philippe's motto "Tant L. vaut, était" was painted in several locations within his chapel. The tomb was positioned to the left of the altar so that his feet would point towards the east, as was customary for a secular burial.[8] The date of death would have been left blank during its construction. The current date was probably added in the 19th century, but erroneously gives the year of death 1494 (rather than 1493), and does not give the month.[8]

Pleurant from the Mourners of Dijon

Philippe' commissioned his tomb in 1477 some 14 years before his death 1493, reflects his desire to convey to prosperity his change in allegiance from the Duke of Burgundy to Louis XI after the battle of Nancy that year. His wish was for a monument to stand over his grave at Cîteaux Abbey. It is probable that he would have first worked with an artist, likely a painter, to agree an overall design, and then hired stonemasons, sculptors and craftsmen to build the tomb.[10]

Art historians have not identified the artists or craftsmen responsible for designing and building the tomb. Moiturier (active 1482–1502) is often suggested as likely to have designed the pleurants, given the similarity of their facial types and the solid and rigid rendering of their clothing to the Mourners of Dijon.[11][12] Guillaume Chandelier has been suggested as involved, although with little supporting evidence.[13]

Art historians generally between distinguish the conventional design of the effigy, the expressive form of the mourners, and the inventive placing of the slab on narrow points above each of their shoulders.[10][14] While it is possible that a single artist, who was both a painter and sculptor, oversaw the tomb's completion, the variation of degree in the quality of sculpture indicates a number of hands. The art historian Robert Marcoux notes variabilities in skill, and believed that parts of the sculpture are so vaguely described that it they were likely completed by workshop members.[15]

Lithograph after a c. 1857–1870 photograph by Armand de Vesvrotte in Beire-le-Châtel[33]

The tomb's passed though a number of owners and locations over the centuries, and its complex history was only fully pieced together in the mid-20th century.[2] It was first mentioned as completed in 1649 by Pierre Palliot, a bookseller and printer in Dijon, when he described the coats of arms and the inscriptions. The antiquarian and collector François Roger de Gaignières made a number of drawings between 1699 and 1700, which are lost and known only from copies by Louis Boudan (fl. 1687–1709), that are uninformative as they contain a number of inaccuracies.[34] The tomb was nationalised during the French Revolution when all church property was transferred to the French State.[2]

Sometime between 1791 and 1793 François Devosge, an artist and director of the Dijon School of Drawing, was charged with moving it to the Benedictine abbey in Saint-Bénigne.[35] It is next mentioned in September 1808 when it was acquired for fifty-three livres by count Richard de Vesvrotte, lord of Ruffey-lès-Beaune, following a legal case against the French state.[35] He placed it in the garden of the Hôtel de Ruffey, under trees at his townhouse on 33 rue Berbisey, Dijon.[35][36]

Au Solei, Charles Edouard de Beaumont, 1875. Metropolitan Museum of Art<.[37]

Richard's son Pierre sold the townhouse in 1850 and relocated the tomb to the Château de Vesvrotte in Beire-le-Châtel, Côte-d'Or,[38] where it was again placed in an outdoor garden. It was photographed for the first time in a series of photolithographs commissioned by Pierre's son Alphonse Richard de Vesvrotte. They were published in 1863, and inspired Charles Édouard de Beaumont's 1875 painting Au solei (or At the Tomb of Philippe Pot), which shows a couple laying at the foot of the tomb in a meadow surrounded by trees.[36][39]

The Vesvrotte's tried to sell the tomb after Richard's death in 1873. The French state attempted to block this by claiming that the tomb was by now public property, a claim rejected in 1886 by a Dijon court in a decision that gave full ownership to Pierre's son, Armand de Vesvrotte.[33][39] In August that year the French state claimed ownership as an object of national historical importance.[40] It was acquired for the Louvre in 1899 by the intermediator Charles Mannheim.[36]

Replica in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow

The tomb has been cleaned and restored number of times in the 19th century, as evidenced by comparison to contemporary reproductions, including an engraving that shows Philippe's fingers as badly damaged.[36] Early drawings show Philippe's feet and the animal in very poor condition until c. 1816. Some the letters and words on the inscription were restored before 1880 by the archivist Jean-Baptiste Peincedé.[40]

The tomb underwent a major restoration between 2018 and 2019 in project lead by Sophie Jugie, director of the Department of Sculptures at the Louvre.[41] It had been in poor condition, covered by accumulated layers of brown dirt around the heraldry and layers of gloss and polyvinyl alcohol from earlier cleanings. The restoration was preceded by an in-depth technical analysis conducted between 2016 and 2017 by the Center for Research and Restoration of Museums of France (C2RMF).[42] Surface layers of bleach, gloss and brown fouling of the blazons were removed, and the bare stone was cleaned, and additions from earlier restorations were removed.[42]

The monuments's innovations had a significant influence on later funerary tombs. It transformed the conventional size and placement of pleurants, which since the tomb of Philip the Good had been relatively small figures standing in niches. The motif of eight mourners carrying an effigy's slab can be seen on the tombs of Louis de Savoisy (d. 1515) and Jacques de Mâlain (d. 1527).[23][43]

The tomb was photographed a number of times in the mid-19th century before it was acquired by the Louvre,[35] It was depicted in the late 19th century by the German Expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker,[44] and in 2010 by the sculptor Matthew Day Jackson in a wood and plastic installation showing astronauts carrying a glass containing a human skeleton.[45][46]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tomb of Philippe Pot.

• Louvre catalog entry
• 19th century photograph, unidentified artist, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston