XVth
The Crying of the Duke of Berry
The weeping, the poignant and moving statues that watch alongside the girsers in many churches, cathedrals and burial places, have a profound symbolism and their religious and spiritual significance transcends the material they are made to touch the soul of those who contemplate them.
Derived from European medieval funerary art, weeping people are often portrayed in a dark and melancholic way, with their heads bent in a sign of sadness or their hands joined in prayer. Their posture evokes pain and sorrow at the loss of a loved one, but it also expresses deep reflection on the ephemeral nature of earthly life and the promise of the Hereafter.
Religiously, weeping people recall the vanity of material goods and the need to prepare spiritually for death.
In Christian tradition, weeping can be interpreted as symbols of compassion and divine consolation. They recall Christ's compassion for human suffering and resurrection hope.
Their presence in places of worship invites the faithful to turn to God in times of mourning and despair, finding comfort in faith in eternal life.
Illustration
Work from the album:
«The Great Hours of Bourges» – Promo-Cher Edition – 1989 ®
Reproduction rights authorized for the event by the author
By Bernard Capo
And in memory of which Charles VII, king of France, his nepve and heir, prince very chrestian and victorious had made this burial
«And in memory of which Charles VII, king of France, his nephew and heir, very Christian and victorious prince had this burial done»
Exceptional exhibition in 2028
Jean de Berry is the third son of King John II the Good of France and Bonne of Luxembourg.
Married in 1360 with Jeanne d'Armagnac, the couple will have seven children. In 1389, a widower, he married Jeanne de Boulogne, a union without descendants.
The two couples represented in kneeling statues are to be admired at Saint Etienne Cathedral in Bourges.
Jean de Berry exercised considerable influence in the political affairs of his time.
He is famous for having been an art and culture enthusiast and his most famous command The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry, directed by the Limburg brothers.
Jean de Berry died in Paris on 15 June 1416. Charles VII will complete his tomb in 1439, which consists of the statue of the Duke carved by Jean de Cambrai and the 40 weeping men who form the base of the ensemble, works by Jean de Cambrai, by Etienne Bobillet and Paul Mosselman.
Some are carved in marble, others in alabaster.
The whole is exposed to the Holy Chapel until its destruction in the 18th century.
In 1756, the monument was placed in the crypt of Saint Etienne Cathedral in Bourges.
The Revolution disperses the weeping.
To date, it is officially listed 27 weeping, 10 are exhibited at the Berry Museum in Bourges. The other 17 statuettes are owned by the Louvre Museum, Foundations, or individuals.
Extract
« The Holy Chapel of Bourges »
A missing foundation of Jean de France, Duke of Berry
Somogy Edition – Art Editions
By Beatrice de Chancel-Bardelot
The Tomb of the Duke Jean
The Duke of Berry hesitated for a long time on the choice of his burial place: Poitiers, the Chartreuse de Vauvert, near Paris, or the cathedral of Bourges were successively evoked. According to a document from his brother Philippe le Hardi, he finally decided on the Sainte-Chapelle de Bourges no later than 1403. For his funerary monument, he is likely, but not assured, that he was commissioned, during his lifetime, by the sculptor Jean de Cambrai. However, on the death of the Duke in 1416, there was no indication of progress in the work. It was only in 1449 that Charles VII paid the heirs of Jean de Cambrai (died 1438) for the duke's seat, and the following year he was concerned to complete the burial. In 1453 King René, passing through Bourges, offered a gratuity to two sculptors who worked at the burial of the Duke of Berry, Étienne Bobillet and Paul Mosselman.
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Some 40 years later, Paul Gauchery accompanied his publications on the Duke of Berry with a plaster reconstruction of the tomb, which he announced as early as 1893 that it was finished, with the exception of the casting of the gissant, and that he wished to see it take place in a room of the Palais Jacques-Coeur. This vow was to be fulfilled only in the 1920s.
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In 1957 P. Pradel's decisive article appeared, bringing together twenty-six weeping people – and not only eighteen – around the marble gisser, and drawing up a beautiful synthesis, based on texts and works. P. Quarré's exhibition in Dijon in 1971 was a continuation of P. Pradel's work: the following year, in 1972, the Louvre Museum acquired a new mourning from the ducal tomb, bringing the number of known mourners to twenty-seven.
The remains of the tomb
Jean de Berry's gissant, made of white marble inlaid with black marble to imitate the hermine fur, still retains some traces of polychromy and gilding, especially in the crown. It is located in the crypt of Saint-Étienne de Bourges Cathedral, placed on its black marble slab, whose chamfer is decorated with the funeral inscription, mentioning the completion of the tomb by Charles VII.
The Berry Museum has collected about fifteen remains of the tomb: ten weeping, two of them in marble, a mess from the dais, also in marble, three fragments from the lateral niches in alabaster (the gable and two of these niche fragments have been exposed, since 1936, to the Jacques-Coeur Palace). The relief of the Sleep of the Apostles, traditionally interpreted as a fragment of the reverse of the dais, could have another origin.
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The authors of the tomb
Jean de Cambrai
The seat of the Duke of Berry is the only work documented by a text, from the corpus of Jean de Cambrai. A. Erlande Brandenburg and S. K. Scher highlighted the artistic qualities revealed by this effigy: treatment of drapes, polished marble, sense of portrait, but also simplification of the volumes of the face, where there are ruptures of plan » and « surface summary treatment», with wrinkles indicated by simple incisions.
The sculptor executed at least five weeping, in sober style, such as the weeping face hidden behind his veiled hands, preserved at the Berry Museum. He probably stopped working for lack of payment after the death of the Duke of Berry.
These first weeping have as a common characteristic to have, at the rear, a smooth face, staked at the pin, to make them adhere by a mortar to the wall of the niche.
The mid-15th team
When Charles VII returned to work, he began, as we saw, by paying the heirs of John of Cambrai in 1449. Then, from 1450, he called upon new sculptors; the name of one of these imaginers is left blank in the royal accounts, The end date of the project is not known, since in 1459 the people of the Chamber of Accounts of Angers did not obey the order of King René to inquire about the presence in Bourges of Paul Mosselmann and of Stephen Bobillet. Next P. Pradel, we think that Bobillet and Mosselmann, the only two that appear in the payments of King René, could be part of a team of artists « Flemish », attracted to Bourges by the opulence of the orders, at the time of the magnificence of Jacques Coeur, and not having been the only two sculptors to work then at the ducal tomb. This would help to understand the stylistic differences between preserved statuettes.
From this second team, we know today twenty-one weeping, all carved in round-bosse, and in the alabaster. It was generally considered that this material had been used, on the order of Charles VII, for the sake of economy, because it was less expensive than marble, but other reasons, which escape us today, could be taken into account.
The authors of these « grieving pictures », very varied in clothes as in attitudes, clearly sought their inspiration in recent works, and especially among the weeping of Jean de Cambrai and those of the tombs of the first two Dukes of Burgundy, Philippe le Hardi and Jean sans Peur, then erected at the Chartreuse de Champmol
Two remarks on the tomb
Ducal bear
The most common animal, at the feet of the male gisers of the Middle Ages, is the lion, symbol of strength, but also of the resurrection. The presence of a bear at the feet of Jean de Berry is a unicumwhich refers to the prince's emblem. The bear appears early as bearing the banner of Jean de Berry. It is then omnipresent, especially in the decoration of manuscripts (see the lectionary and evangelical of the Holy Chapel). The scholars have long emphasized the onomastic rapprochement between the bear and one of the patron saint of the diocese of Bourges SAint Ursin. Mr Pastoureau, for his part, recently drew attention to another possible origin of the adoption of the bear by Jean de Berry: a pun of words on « bear » and « Berry », which dates from the young Duke's captivity in England.
The black marble slab and its inscription
It was apparently Charles VII who commanded the black marble slab with the ducal effigy. The inscription engraved around the slab ends with the formula: and in memory of which Charles VII, king of France, his nepve and heir, prince very chrestian and victorious made this burial. We will be able to reconcile this inscription with another, just as famous, which Charles VII had done for his portrait by Jean Fouquet, a portrait of which we know he decorated the Sainte-Chapelle de Bourges until its destruction. In the picture, we read: The very victorious King of France / Charles Septiesme of this name.
Could this portrait, which is now preserved at the Louvre Museum, not have been executed, on the orders of Charles VII, to serve as a memorial of the royal generosity towards the Sainte-Chapelle de Bourges, and to do so in some way « during » Ducal effigy? If that were the case, it would be an additional argument in favour of dating the portrait in the 1450s, that is precisely those during which Charles VII had completed the tomb of his great uncle, with a concern both political and family piety.
