International Medieval Society, Paris
Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris

Symposium 2005 Abstracts

The image of the Burgundian duke, Philip the Bold, mirrored by his wife, Margaret of Flanders, kneeling before the yawning jambs of the portal of the Chartreuse de Champmol, represents a radical breach with the past. No longer is the sculpted figure subservient to the architecture, nor is the donor relegated to the foot of a devotional image. The kneeling duke and duchess, accompanied by Saints John the Baptist and Catherine, pay homage not only to the Virgin and Child on the trumeau, but also to the royal past they symbolically prolong and the statesmanship of the future they embody.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the length the mantle cords stretched between the sainted Capetian ruler, Louis IX, and the Burgundian duke, Philip the Bold, whose artistic emulation of the French king reflects a conscious re-casting of royal visual programs. I have demonstrated elsewhere the affinity between the so-called Well of Moses and the Montjoies erected by Louis IX’s son, (also dubbed Philippe le Hardi), to mark the path of his father’s funereal cortege. Similarly, the tomb of the Burgundian duke, sustained emotionally if not physically by the pleurants below the effigy, are anticipated by the mourners that surround the tomb of Louis IX’s youngest son who died in c. 1260. Indeed, the entire funeral chapel for the Valois dukes planned by Philip the Bold was an attempt to simulate the necropolis of French rulers established in the abbey of Saint-Denis.
But what was the inspiration for the dramatic portal design? I would suggest that Philip and his artists also had a prototype emanating from the Capetian court for this design. However, beyond the symbolism of royal figures in perpetual prayer, an impression engendered not only by their stone medium, but also by their unrelenting realism, is the notion of “biotypology.” The latter could best be defined as the conflation of genetic typology and visual destiny. In the pivoting lazy-susan of Old Testament prophets, the life-like funeral dirge of the alabaster pleurants, and the dynamic petition enacted by Philip and Margaret on the portal to the chapel at Champmol, there is a tie that connects the living and the dead, the present with the past and the pictorial memory invoked by that memory. In short, Philip the Bold, not able to wield a royal scepter, could still command an artistic campaign that was formerly reserved for monarchs only.