Stone, Flesh, Spirit: the Entombment of Christ in Late Medieval Burgundy and Champagne [1 ed.] 9789004293144, 9789004264113

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Stone, Flesh, Spirit

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004278523_001

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Art and Material Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe Edited by Sarah Blick Laura D. Gelfand

VOLUME 2

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/amce



Stone, Flesh, Spirit The Entombment of Christ in Late Medieval Burgundy and Champagne By

Donna L. Sadler

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Cover illustration: Detail of the Entombment/Pietà in St.-Jean-au-Marché, Troyes, stone, early 16th century, photo: Pascale L-R. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sadler, Donna L. Stone, flesh, spirit : the entombment of Christ in late medieval Burgundy and Champagne / by Donna L. Sadler. pages cm. -- (Art and material culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, ISSN 2212-4187 ; VOLUME 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-26411-3 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-29314-4 (e-book) 1. Jesus Christ-Burial--Art. 2. Stone carving--France--Burgundy. 3. Stone carving--France--Champagne-Ardenne. 4. Art and society--France--Burgundy--History--To 1500. 5. Art and society--France--Burgundy--History--16th century. 6. Art and society--France--Champagne-Ardenne--History--To 1500. 7. Art and society--France-Champagne-Ardenne--History--16th century. I. Title. NB1912.J47S228 2015 730.944’0902--dc23 2015005778

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2212-4187 isbn 978-90-04-26411-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-29314-4 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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Ce livre est dédié à Jacques Noël, dont la grandeur d’âme n’a d’égale que son erudition, sa bonté et sa courtoisie. Sa passion pour l’art médiéval a été pour moi, et donc pour ce livre, une source inestimable d’inspiration

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Contents

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Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Illustrations xi Introduction 1 1 The Origins of the Entombment of Christ 7 2 The Entombment of Christ: Echoes of the Performative Piety of the Sculpture at the Chartreuse de Champmol 25 3 The Entombment of Christ: The Absent Presence of the Resurrected Christ and the Holy Sepulcher 72 4 Hocus Pocus: The Entombment of Christ and Medieval ­Performance 111 5 Conclusion: The Entombments in the Context of Late Medieval ­Sculpture 149 Bibliography 199 Index 229

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Contents vii Acknowledgements ix List of illustrations xi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 7 The Origins of the Entombment of Christ 7 Chapter 2 25 The Entombment of Christ: Echoes of the Performative Piety of the Sculpture at the Chartreuse de Champmol Chapter 3 72 The Entombment of Christ: The Absent Presence of the Resurrected Christ and the Holy Sepulcher Chapter 4 111 Hocus Pocus: The Entombment of Christ and Medieval Performance 111 Chapter 5 149 Conclusion: The Entombments in the Context of Late Medieval Sculpture 149 Bibliography 199 Index 229



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Acknowledgements Acknowledgements

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Acknowledgements The Entombments from Burgundy and Champagne are not only the subject of this book; they are also its guiding inspiration. Captivated by the presence of these monuments, I embarked upon a virtual journey back to the Middle Ages in an attempt to understand how they performed during that period. This quest was facilitated by the generosity of grants from Agnes Scott College and the Holder Research Foundation. I am very grateful for their support. It has been an honor to work with my colleagues and the administration at Agnes Scott College. Searching for these monuments in the countryside of Burgundy and Champagne, listening to a GPS constantly “recalculating,” would not have been possible without Terryl Kinder, whose familiarity with and tolerance for “just one more” Mise au tombeau merit a purple heart. Her munificence in the realms of hearth and travel exceeded the limits of friendship. Pascale Leprince-Ringuet was also extremely kind and resourceful in opening her heart, home, and camera lens to me. I deeply mourn her death. Marie Odile Bougoud-Rolland introduced me to the wonders of the region of Jura and was most generous with her time: my deepest thanks. I would also like to thank Guy Fromonot for his passion for Burgundy, and the members of Asteria, Sylvia Rhyne and Eric Redlinger for their music and the dream we share in Dijon. The personnel at the Inventaire des Monuments historiques of the Côte d’Or in Dijon, especially Mme. Elsabeth Reveillon, and the helpful librarians at the Bibliothèque nationale de France have my deepest gratitude. A special thank you goes to the librarians at Agnes Scott College and to Calvin Burgamy for his ability to walk me through my daily technological quagmires. Leah Owenby and Drew Homa kept my margins justified, while my colleagues in the Art Department fueled my passion for this project with their different perspectives and their unflagging enthusiasm for the importance of research in a small Liberal Arts setting. Anne Beidler, Nell Ruby, and Katherine Smith, long live process! Colleagues in the field have enriched this work and my life. I would like to thank Anne Harris, Laura Gelfand, Janet Snyder, Michael Cothren, Christine Verzar, Elizabeth Pastan, Stephen Murray, Elina Gertsman, Janet Marquardt, Linda Neagley, and Nancy Wu. Friends who have endured much more than they should have had to—Edmund Sheehey, Terry McGehee, Peggy Thompson, Rosemary Cunningham, Rosemary Levy Zumwalt, Maureen Nolan, Paula Leveto, and Barbara Kopelman, my gratitude and affection. Lucinda Alwa,

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Acknowledgements

whatever happened to the floating academy off the coast of Rhodes? You, dear friend, have been there from the alpha through the omega. The students who make all of this worthwhile are too numerous to name, however, their insightful questions and spirited presence have meant the world to me. Nancy Thebaut (absent presence!), Lola Clairmont (editor par excellence), Jenna Liuzzi (dreaming of Baudelaire), Shan Shan (math and art history do go together), Mia Jones-Walker, Jessica Lajoie (we’ll always have Shirley Valentine), Merry Kicha, Hannah Plank—thank you all so much! Finally, I would like to acknowledge my lovely daughter, whose goodness and compassion as well as her wisdom and wit remind me that medieval art did not garner all the beauty in creation.

List Of Illustrations

List of illustrations

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List of Illustrations 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Entombment of Christ, Church of the Nativity, Semur-en-Auxois (originally from priory church of Carmelites), polychromed stone, c. 1490 2 Holy Grave from Church of Peter and Paul, Neuwiller-lès-Saverne, polychromed stone, 1478 12 Passion Altarpiece, Jacques de Baerze, Dijon Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv CA 1420 A, gilded wood and polychromy, end of 14th century 13 Entombment of Christ, Church of St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaumont-en-Bassigny, poly­chromed stone, late 15th century 19 Tomb of Philip the Bold, Dijon, Jean de Marville, Claus Sluter, and Claus de Werve, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv CA 1416, black and white marble, partially polychromed and gilded alabaster, 1384–1410 22 Tomb of Philippe Pot, Paris Musée du Louvre, RF 795, originally from the abbey of Cîteaux, polychromed stone, c. 1480 23 Entombment of Christ, Hospital of Notre-Dame-des Fontenilles, Tonnerre, Jean Michel and Georges de la Sonnette (whitewashed stone), 1453–1454 26 Entrance to chapel that houses Entombment in Hospital at Tonnerre 28 Entombment in Hospital at Tonnerre, detail of sleeve of Nicodemus 29 Entombment in Hospital at Tonnerre, detail of Holy Women 29 Well of Moses, Chartreuse de Champmol, Dijon, Moses, Claus Sluter and workshop. polychromed stone, 1395–1404 31 Well of Moses, detail of weeping angel 33 Holy Trinity tondo, Jean Malouel, Musée du Louvre, tempera on panel, late 14th century 35 Well of Moses, detail of David 37 Well of Moses, detail of Jeremiah 39 Well of Moses, detail of Daniel and Isaiah 40 Well of Moses, detail of Zachariah 41 Tomb of Philip the Bold, detail of pleurants (mourners), alabaster, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon 47 Entombment from the Retable of Bessey-les-Cîteaux, polychrome stone relief, made by “Claus,” c. 1426–1430 48 Portal of the Chartreuse de Champmol, Jean de Marville, Claus Sluter, and ­workshops, overview of portal, stone, 1385–1401 50 Portal of the Chartreuse de Champmol, Jean de Marville, Claus Sluter, and ­workshops, view of left jamb, stone, 1385–1401 51 Entombment from St.-Mammès Cathedral, Langres, effigy of Christ, Claus de Werve (?) stone, c. 1420 54

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List Of Illustrations

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Jacques de Baerze, Passion Altarpiece, detail of Entombment, Musée des BeauxArts, Dijon 56 Christ from Saint Bénigne, Dijon Musée archéologique, Inv. 63.5, Claus de Werve (?), stone, c. 1420 57 Entombment in St.-Michel, Dijon, stone, c. 1435–1445 58 Entombment in St.-Michel, Dijon, detail of Mary Magdalene 60 Entombment from the Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem of the Hospital of St.-Esprit in Dijon, polychromed stone, c. 1459 61 Trinity and Entombment from Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem 62 Pietà from Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem, stone, c. 1460 64 Entombment/Pietà from St.-Désiré, Lons-le-Saunier, stone, mid-15th ­century 67 Entombment from Froidefontaine in Dole Musée des Beaux-Arts, polychromed stone, second half of 15th century 70 Entombment from Froidefontaine, detail of Mary Magdalene 70 Entombment in St.-Nicolas, Troyes, stone, early 16th century 75 Entombment of Christ, Church of the Nativity, Semur-en-Auxois, detail of ­Joseph of Arimathea and Christ 76 Entombment from Talant, stone, c. 1520–1530 79 Entombment from Talant, detail of Christ 80 Chapel containing Entombment, St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaumont-en-Bassigny 85 Entombment/Pietà in St.-Jean-au-Marché, Troyes, stone, early 16th century 94 Entombment/Pietà in St.-Jean-au-Marché, Troyes, detail of Mary ­Magdalene 95 Entombment from Villeneuve-L’Archevêque, originally from the Abbey of ­Vauluisant, polychromed stone, 1528 97 Entombment from Villeneuve-L’Archevêque, detail of Holy Woman 98 Entombment from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, polychromed stone, Master of Chaource, 1515 99 Miniature Entombment from the Musée de l’Hôtel Dieu, Beaune, polychromed stone, 1450–1475 101 Passion Retable from Montlay-en-Auxois, detail of Entombment, polychromed relief, 1512 102 Passion Retable from Montlay-en-Auxois, overall view 102 Passion Retable from Bessey-les-Cîteaux, polychromed relief, signed “Claus,” c. 1430 104 Passion Retable from Bessey-les-Cîteaux, detail of Crucifixion 105 Passion Retable from Bessey-les-Cîteaux, detail of Arrest/Betrayal of Christ,  106 Passion Retable from Bessey-les-Cîteaux, Christ before Caiaphas and Scourging of Christ 107

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

List Of Illustrations 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

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Passion Retable from Bessey-les-Cîeaux, Deposition from the Cross 108 Entombment from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, detail of guard 116 Entombment from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, detail of other guard 117 Entombment from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, detail of Holy Women 120 Entombment from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, detail of donors 121 Entombment from St.-Vorles, Châtillon-sur-Seine, from former Franciscan church, polychromed stone, c. 1527 125 Entombment from St.-Vorles, Châtillon-sur-Seine, detail of Mary Magdalene 126 Entombment from St.-Remi, Reims, polychromed stone, c. 1525–1545 127 Entombment from St.-Vorles, Châtillon-sur-Seine, detail of donors 128 Entombment from St.-Remi, Reims, detail of Mary Magdalene 132 Entombment from St.-Georges, Vesoul, polychromed stone, mid-16th ­century 136 Entombment from St.-Georges, Vesoul, detail of Joseph of Arimathea 137 Entombment from St.-Georges, Vesoul, detail of Nicodemus 138 Entombment from St.-Georges, Vesoul, detail of Holy Woman 139 Entombment from Chapel of Notre-Dame-Trouvée in Pouilly-en-Auxois, stone, 1521 141 Entombment from Chapel of Notre-Dame-Trouvée in Pouilly-en-Auxois, detail of soldier 142 Entombment from Chapel of Notre-Dame-Trouvée in Pouilly-en-Auxois, detail of angels above 143 Entombment from Chapel of Notre-Dame-Trouvée in Pouilly-en-Auxois, detail of swooning Virgin and Holy Woman 143 Entombment from Baume-les-Dames, Cemetery Chapel, polychromed stone, c. 1545 145 Entombment from Baume-les-Dames, Cemetery Chapel, detail of front of sarcophagus 145 Entombment from Baume-les-Dames, Cemetery Chapel, detail of ­mourners 146 Passion Altarpiece, Jacques de Baerze, detail of Adoration of the Magi, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, CA 1420A 151 Passion Altarpiece, Jacques de Baerze, detail of the Crucifixion, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, CA 1420A 152 Passion Retable, Dijon Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv 2028, gilded and ­polychromed wood, 16th century 153 Passion Retable, detail of Way to Calvary 154 Passion Retable, Maître de la Vue de Sainte Gudule, Paris Musée des Arts ­Décoratifs, Inv. PE 156, gilded and polychromed wood, late 15th century 155

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List Of Illustrations

Passion Retable, Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs, detail of Deposition from the Cross 157 77 Passion Retable, Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs, limestone from Champagne, c. 1522 158 78 Passion Retable, Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs, detail of the Crucifixion 159 79 Passion Altarpiece from St.-Remi, Echannay, limestone, 16th century 160 80 Passion Altarpiece from St.-Remi, Echannay, detail of the Descent into ­Limbo 161 81 Passion Altarpiece from St.-Remi, Echannay, detail of the Entombment 162 82 Pietà from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, stone, 15th century 163 83 Pietà from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, stone, 15th century 164 84 Pietà from St.-Jean-au-Marché, Troyes, stone, 16th century 165 85 Pietà from St.-Nizier, Troyes, stone, 16th century 166 86 Pietà from the Musée de Vauluisant, Troyes, polychromed stone, 16th ­century 167 87 Entombment from the Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem of the Hospital of St.-Esprit in Dijon, detail of the mourners 169 88 Pietà from Lons-le-Saunier, polychromed stone, 16th century 170 89 Pietà from Seine-l’Abbaye, stone, 16th century 171 90 Nativity, Dijon Musée archéologique, Inv.Arb. 1329, polychromed stone, late 15th century 172 91 Nativity, Dijon Musée archéologique, detail of Virgin and Christ Child 173 92 St. Theobald from St.-Hippolyte, Poligny, polychromed stone, early 15th century 174 93 St. Michael from Baume-les-Messieurs, attributed to Claus de Werve, polychromed stone, c. 1415–1430 176 94 St. Mary Magdalene from Baume-les-Messieurs, polychromed stone, early 15th century 178 95 St. John the Evangelist from Baume-les-Messieurs, polychromed stone, early 15th century 179 96 Angel (15th century) and Entombment (1515) from Baume-les-Messieurs, stone 180 97 St. Luke and his ox, Dijon Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv. 2820, workshop of Claus de Werve, polychromed stone, early 15th century 182 98 Female Saint Reading, Dijon Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv. 3928 bis, polychromed stone, 15th century 183 99 Altarpiece of the Lamentation, Musée de Cluny, Inv. CL 23311, workshop of Claus de Werve, polychromed and gilded wood, 15th century 185 100 Entombment Altar in Puligny-Montrachet, stone, 1539 190 101 Entombment Altar from Petit-Jailly, stone, 1512 192

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102 Entombment from the Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher in the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Jouarre, stone, 16th century 193 103 Entombment from St.-Maurice, from Chapel of Holy Sepulcher, Epinal, polychromed stone, early 16th century 195 104 Entombment from St.-Maurice, from Chapel of Holy Sepulcher, Epinal, detail of Virgin and St. John the Evangelist 196

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List Of Illustrations

Introduction Introduction

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Introduction Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus carefully place the dead body of Christ upon his sarcophagus; mourning figures of Mary, John the Evangelist, and the other Marys collectively respond to the sight of the mortal Savior suspended before them (fig. 1). Theirs is a rhetoric of immediacy as grief binds the onlookers together in an adagio of sorrow. The body of Christ is the object of their piteous glances, and Joseph and Nicodemus, separated by the shroud between them, form the alpha and omega of this tableau vivant of the Passion. Located in funerary chapels, parish churches, cemeteries, and hospitals, these works were found throughout Europe, with a large concentration in France.1 They were often commissioned by private donors, for burial near an Entombment promised resurrection with Christ at the end of time.2 Are we to find the origins of these sculptural representations within the late medieval devotion to the Passion of Christ? Piety in the later Middle Ages gravitated towards the suffering and death of Christ as a model for the faithful to emulate; indeed, details of the cruelty of Christ’s torturers contributed to one’s affective experience.3 The first chapter of this book (The Origins of the Entombment of Christ) deals with the evolution of this iconographic theme within the framework of late medieval piety. Did the iconographic extrapolation of the Entombment from the Passion narrative derive directly from the Holy Graves in Germany, or were there mediating factors that affected the Entomb­ment formula adopted in France?4 What role did the liturgy play in this develop­­1

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Elsa Karsallah, “Mises au Tombeau du Christ réalisée pour les dignitaires religieux: particularitiés et fonctions” in L’artisté et le clerc. La commande artistique des grands ecclésiastiques à la fin du moyen âge (XIVe–XVIe siècles), ed. Fabienne Joubert (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2006), 283, states that 460 Entombments dating after 1420 are found in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. Karsallah, “Mises au Tombeau,” 293. This tendency is discussed by many scholars of this period. See, for example, James H. Marrow, Passion Iconography in North European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (Kortrijki: Van Ghemmert, 1979), 13–20; Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), esp. 46–63; David Areford, “The Passion Measured: A Late Medieval Diagram of the Body of Christ,” in The Broken Body. Passion Devotion in Late Medieval Culture, ed. A.A. MacDonald, H.N.B. Ritterbos, and R.M. Schlusemann (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998), 211–238. The major study of these works is by William H. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ: French Sculptures of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004293144_002

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Introduction

Figure 1

Entombment of Christ, Church of the Nativity, Semur-en-Auxois (originally from priory church of Carmelites), polychromed stone, c. 1490. photo: author.

ment, and what other factors influenced the French Mise au tombeau?5 The interplay of the liturgy of Easter week, the Passion plays, and the contemporary tomb monuments that led to the genesis of the Entombment sculptures will be traced in the first chapter. The following chapter (The Entombment of Christ: Echoes of the Performative Piety of the Sculpture at the Chartreuse de Champmol) considers the shift in worship to a more embodied mode of identification with religious monuments. Imagery of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries began to assume a mimetic character that functioned in a commemorative and collective fashion.6 By meditating on an image of the suffering Christ, the worshiper entered

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1970), 2–21; Forsyth traces the iconographic type from the ninth-century Byzantine Psalter through the Holy Graves, noting the role the liturgy has played in the development of the latter. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 14–15. The presence of angels versus soldiers at the tomb; the absence of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea; and the allusion to the Depositio, Elevatio, and Visitatio Sepulchri are the various permutations of the iconographic theme. This emphasis on embodiment is true of medieval drama as well as imagery. See, for example, Jill Stevenson, “The Material Bodies of Medieval Religious Performance in England,” Material Religion 2/2 (2006), 204–232, esp. 211–212. See also Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 134–140; see also Hans Belting, “Saint Francis and the Body as Image: An Anthropological Approach”

Introduction

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the realm of the holy and became a participant in the biblical event.7 The powerful interaction between the worshiper and the object of worship is reminiscent of the effect of a Passion play upon the spectator.8 This quest for engaging the worshiper in the devotional experience reaches a new level in the works produced for the Chartreuse de Champmol under the patronage of Philip the Bold.9 It is my conviction that the gesticulating prophets that man the Well of Moses and the mourners beneath the effigy of the Valois duke in the tomb of Philip the Bold hold the key to the pathos-provoking capacity of the Entombments found in Burgundy. Works such as these implicate the worshiper in a dance of devotion that requires a physical as well as visceral response to the work of art.10 When the Marys approach the tomb of Christ three days after the Crucifixion, it is only to find the empty tomb (Matthew 28.1–10; Mark 16.1–8; Luke 24.1– 12; John 20.1–18); indeed, their very presence conjures the Resurrection of Christ.11 The Entombment, then, with its focus on the tortured body of the

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in Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art and History, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Princeton University and Pennsylvania State Press, 2010), 3–14. Gary Vikan, “Pilgrims in Magi’s Clothing: The Impact of Mimesis in Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art” in The Blessings of Pilgrimage, ed. Robert Ousterhout (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 97. This phenomenon has been studied by numerous scholars; see for example Martin Stevens, “The Intertextuality of Late Medieval Art and Drama,” New Literary History 22/2 (1991), 317–337; Pamela Scheingorn, “Medieval Drama Studies and the New Art History,” Mediaevalia 18 (1995), 143–162; R.W. Scribner, “Popular Piety and Modes of Visual Perception in Late-Medieval and Reformation Germany,” Journal of Religious History 15 (1989), 448–469; Elina Gertsman, “The Loci of Performance: Art, Theater, Memory,” Mediaevalia 28/1 (2007), 119–135; Carolyn Muessig, “Performance of the Passion: the Enactment of Devotion in the later Middle Ages” in Visualizing Medieval Performance: Perspectives, Histories, Contexts, ed. Elina Gertsman (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), 129–142. See Sherry C.M. Lindquist, Agency, Visuality and Society at the Chartreuse de Champmol (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2008); Art from the Court of Burgundy: The Patronage of Philip the Bold and John the Fearless 1364–1419. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2004). I have related the effect of the Well of Moses upon the viewer to Roland Barthes’ idea of punctum or the part of the work of art that pierces the viewer; see Donna Sadler, “The Well of Moses: Roland Barthes’ Punctum of Piety” in Push me Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, eds. Laura Gelfand and Sarah Blick (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 383–414. This connotation is reflected in the liturgy as well in the Visit to the Sepulcher and the Quem Quaeritis trope. See Götz Pochat, “Liturgical Aspects of the Visitatio Sepulchri Scene,” Atti del XXIV Congresso internazionale di Storia dell’Arte 10–18 Settembre 1979, vol. 1 “Riforma religiosa e arti nell’epoca carolingiai” (Bologna, 1983), 151–156.

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Introduction

Savior, is a paradox. By conflating two moments of the Passion—the burial and visit to the tomb, the artists have taken poetic license with a theological premise: the absent presence of the resurrected Christ. The absent divinity of Christ is the subject of chapter three (The Entombment of Christ: The Absent Presence of the Resurrected Christ and the Holy Sepulcher). Nowhere is Christ’s mortality more poignantly expressed than in these moving tableaux vivants: the material presence of Christ throws into relief not only Christ’s humanity, but also the magnitude of his sacrifice for mankind. Simultaneously, his corporeal presence highlights the spiritual absence of Christ’s divinity. In a similar vein, during the Easter liturgy, the Host, concealed in a sepulchrum on Maundy Thursday (Depositio), is nowhere to be seen on Easter Sunday during the Visitatio Sepulchri.12 The Marys reminded the worshiper of Christ’s true nature just as the Eucharist was a metonym for the essence of Christ. In other words, the presence of the Marys connoted the absence of Christ just as the Host signified his presence. The second part of chapter three focuses on the other absent presence at the ersatz tomb of Christ, namely the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The crusades and pilgrimages provided firsthand experience for people to see the holy sites and follow the entire itinerary of Christ’s Passion.13 The sculptural representations of the Entombment of Christ, often commissioned by the Franciscans, Hospitallers, Order of the Holy Sepulcher, etc. , and found in various religious contexts, engendered a pilgrimage experience for the worshiper.14 12

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“Liturgical Aspects of the Visitatio Sepulchri,” 152; Pochat stresses the liturgical identification of the visit to the sepulcher by the Holy Women with the triumph of the resurrection and salvation of mankind by the fact that the two events are combined. See also Karl Young, The Dramatic Associations of the Easter Sepulchre. University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, no. 10 (Madison, 1920). The liturgical exception to this case will be discussed below in chapter one, see pp. 18–19. The later medieval period saw a flourishing of both crusading and pilgrimage activity. See for example A.R. Leopold, “Crusading Proposals in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History, ed. Robert N. Swanson (Oxford: Boydell Press, 1999), 216–227; Aziz Suryal Atiya, The Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1938); Nine Miedema, “Following in the Footsteps of Christ: Pilgrimage and Passion Devotion,” The Broken Body, 73–92; Béatrice Dansette, “Les Pèlerins occidentaux du Moyen Age Tardif au retour de la Terre Sainte: confréries du S.-Sépulcre et paumiers parisiens,” in Dei gesta per Francos, Études sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard, eds. Michel Baland, Benjamin Z. Kedar, and Jonathan Riley Smith (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2001), 301–314. Many types of artworks, ranging from panel paintings to manuscripts to sculpture, have been viewed through the lens of pilgrimage in recent scholarship. For example, Vida J. Hull, “Spiritual Pilgrimage in the Paintings of Hans Memling,” in Art and Architecture of

Introduction

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I­ ndeed, fifteen Entombments were Indulgenced.15 The worshiper was able to enter into a devotional experience with the image, so that the past historical moment of the Passion happened again in the present, creating a repository of sacred memory. The fourth chapter (Hocus Pocus: The Entombment of Christ and Medieval Performance) discusses the intersection of these sculptural works with medieval drama, from the liturgy to Passion plays, and performance theory. The Holy Sepulcher itself was sacred, because it witnessed the burial and Resurrection of Christ.16 It functioned as a holy relic. Did the Entombment also function amuletically? The intense verisimilitude of the sculpture transfixes the worshipers: they are not able to escape the eternal present of the Passion. The worshipers, sharing the same space as Christ’s mourners, become a part of the devotional tableau. Thus the audience becomes a community of suffering in compassio.17 The final chapter (Conclusion: The Entombments in the Context of Late Medieval Sculpture) considers the Entombment of Christ in the context of fifteenthand sixteenth-century sculpture in France and suggests why this moment from the Passion captured the late medieval imagination. The importance of material presence, both in a literal and figurative sense, plays a vital role in the popularity of this sculptural representation.18 What factors contribute to the growing predilection for carved retables and the abandonment of monumental Entombment groups? Why do individual saints and sculptures of the Pietà remain popular subjects of devotion? Does the Renaissance then spell the end of the Entombment as a site of devotion?

15 16 17

18

Late Medieval Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and British Isles, eds. Sarah Blick and Rita Tekippe (Leiden: Brill, 2005), I, 29–50; or Anne F. Harris, “Pilgrimage, Performance, and Stained Glass at Canterbury Cathedral” in Art and Architecture, I, 243–281; Elsa Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau monumentales du Christ en France (XVe–XVIe siècles): enjeux iconographique, funéraire et dévotionnel (Paris, 2009, 238–272) discusses Entombments functioning as pilgrimage sites. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 257; one scholar suggested forty-six Entombments merited Indulgences, however, Karsallah (n.763) is skeptical of this tally. Robert Ousterhout, “Loca Sancta and the Architectural Response to Pilgrimage,” The Blessings of Pilgrimage, 113. This was the Passion that Mary experienced at the Crucifixion of Jesus. See Amy Neff, “The Pain of Compassio: Mary’s Labor at the Foot of the Cross,” The Art Bulletin 80/2 (1998), 254–273. See Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011), 125–176.

6

Introduction

It is striking that late medieval derivatives of the planctus, according to Pamela King, gravitate toward stasis and a tenor of rhetorical sorrow rather than discursive dialogue.19 The same iconic moment is captured in the Entombments: it is the devotional gaze of the beholder that connects the narrative tissue into an animated scene from Christ’s Passion. The artist of the Renaissance, it would seem, was less inclined to give the viewer the power to make mute stones speak. The story that follows, then, is one contingent upon the late medieval period when faith, ritual, art, and spectacle conspired to illuminate the Entombment of Christ in the realm of stone, flesh, and spirit. 19

Pamela King, “Lament and Elegy in Scriptural Drama: Englishing the Planctus Mariae,” in Performance, Drama and Spectacle in the Medieval City. Essays in Honour of Alan Hindley, eds. Catherine Emerson, Mario Longtin and Adrian P. Tudor (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 251– 252.

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Chapter 1

The Origins of the Entombment of Christ

Biblical Basis

The narrative scene of the Entombment of Christ is recorded in all four Gospels in a rather cryptic fashion; the story is fleshed out in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, which is generally believed to have been composed sometime in the fourth century.1 The Synoptic Gospels feature different aspects of the burial of Christ, including the participants who witnessed the event. Indeed, the burial of Christ seems a minor event in the history of the Passion: after Christ is crucified, Joseph of Arimathea, alone or in the company of Nicodemus, carries the body of Christ wrapped in a shroud for burial to a rocky cave. Mark (15.40–47) records that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, Salome, and many other women look on from afar. Joseph asks Pilate for the body of Christ and then wraps his body in fine linen and lays him in a sepulcher as Mary Magdalene and Mary mother of Joses look on: And there were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalen, and Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses, and Salome: Who also when in Galilee followed him, and ministered to him, and many other women that came up with him to Jerusalem. And when evening was now come, because it was the Parasceve, that is, the day before the Sabbath,  Joseph of Arimathea, a noble counselor, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, came and went in boldly to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. 1

Mark 15.40–47; Matthew 27.55–66; Luke 23. 49–56; and John 19. 25, 38–42; See James E. Cross, Denis G. Brearley, Julia Crick, Thomas Hall and Andy Orchard, Two Old English Apocrypha and their Manuscript Source: The Gospel of Nicodemus and the Avenging of the Saviour (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 19, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Karsallah (Mises au tombeau, 25–27) feels that the textual source of the Entombments is version M of the Gospel of Nicodemus that dates to the late ninth century. This version is notable because it includes Christ’s descent into hell. The Gospel of Nicodemus was once dubbed the Acts of Pilate in Greek (the Acta Pilati) and incorporated into the Evangelium Nichodemi.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004293144_003

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But Pilate wondered that he should be already dead. And sending for the centurion, he asked him if he were already dead.  And when he had understood it by the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph.  And Joseph buying fine linen, and taking him down, wrapped him up in the fine linen, and laid him in a sepulcher, which was hewed out of a rock. And he rolled a stone to the door of the sepulcher.  And Mary Magdalen, and Mary the mother of Joses, beheld where he was laid.2 Matthew (27.55–66) recounts a similar tale; but in his account, Pilate, reminded by the Priests and Pharisees of Christ’s promise to rise after three days, adds the guard to watch the tomb. Luke (23.49–56) embellishes the burial by recounting how the Holy Women prepare the spices and ointments for Christ’s body and then rest the Sabbath day. John (19. 25 and 38–42) relays how Nicodemus brings the spices, a mixture of myrrh and aloes, and prepares the body of Christ according to the Jewish tradition. It is the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus that includes Mary the mother of Christ and John the Evangelist among those assembled at the tomb of Jesus.3 Joseph begs for and finally procures the body of Christ from Pilate and returns to Nicodemus and discloses to him all that occurred. They (Joseph and Nicodemus) with Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Salome, along with John, and the rest of the women on the road to Calvary did what was customary by wrapping the body in white linen and placing it in a tomb.4 According to Forsyth, this text explains the extended group of onlookers found in the later medieval sculptural representations of the Entombment.5 There is another variant of the text that is closer to the Synoptic Gospels (Greek recension A) in which Nicode2 3

4

5

Mark 15.40–47 Douay Rheims version of Holy Bible (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc. , 1971). As Karsallah (Mises au tombeau, 28–29) points out, it is only logical that Mary and John would leave the scene of the Crucifixion to follow the body of Christ to the site of his entombment. The apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus thus fills the gap left by the Synoptic Gospels’ account of the entombment. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 7 citing “The Gospel of Nicodemus (The Acts of Pilate), Second Greek Form,” trans. Alexander Walker in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1903), VIII. Ch. II, 431–432. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 6–7; Karsallah (Mises au tombeau, 26–27) notes that it is primarily variation M of the text that includes all of these people and that this version stems from a Byzantine text, which was in turn a tributary of a Latin text that was widely diffused in the Middle Ages, even in the west. See also L’Évangile de Nicodème ou les actes

The Origins of the Entombment of Christ

9

mus, the Holy Women, John, and the Virgin Mary are all omitted from the narrative.6 The more inclusive version, which was influenced by Byzantine sensibilities, helped promote devotion to the Passion and the Marian cult and was diffused by the spiritual writings of Pseudo-Bonaventure, Ludolph of Saxony, and Jacobus da Voragine.7 By fleshing out the scene at the tomb of Christ, the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus helped feed the late medieval imagination’s hunger for details of the suffering endured by Christ and the compassio of the Virgin.8

Iconographic and Formal Precursors

Threnos The burial appears in Byzantine Psalters from the ninth century, which Weitzmann traces back to Early Christian lectionaries.9 The “mature” formulation of the Entombment found in monumental sculpture features Joseph at the head of Christ, Nicodemus at his feet, the Virgin Mary, John the Evangelist, Mary Magdalene, and one or more of the following additional figures: mourning women (usually dubbed Mary), soldiers, angels, donors.10 Indeed, the participants in an Entombment may range from the standard eight up to the twelve figures that compose the tableau vivant at Châtillon-sur-Seine. As Forsyth has demonstrated, the theme of the Threnos in Byzantine art definitely had an impact on Western art, though it is somewhat less apparent in the French monumental Entombments.11 The essence of the Threnos, the

6 7 8

9 10

11

faits sous Ponce Pilate: recension latine A. Suivi de la Lettre de Pilate à l’empereur Claude, trans. Remi Gounelle and Zbigniew Izydorcyk (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 280. L’Évangile de Nicodème, IX, 3, 1–2. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 28. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 29; indeed, Karsallah suggests that the moment certain passages of this Gospel declined in popularity, such as the Descent into Hell, corresponded to a parallel moment for the sculptural entombments of Christ in the mid-sixteenth century. Kurt Weitzmann On the Origin of the Threnos (New York: New York University, 1961), 477), as cited in Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 5. The placement of Joseph and Nicodemus at Christ’s head and feet (respectively) seems to stem from Nicodemus’ position by the feet of Christ during the Deposition from the Cross. All four Gospels identify one of the mourning women as Mary (either mother of James and Joses, the other Mary, or wife of Cleophas), whereas the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus identifies the mourners as Mary Magdalene, Salome, the Virgin, and Martha. See Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 7. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 7.

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moment when the Virgin swoons over the dead body of Christ, underlies the formulation of the Pietà and Lamentation found in Italian art.12 The Threnos evolved from the narrative scene of moving the body of Christ for burial to an iconic moment of devotion.13 The emphasis in the Byzantine iconographic formulation is the pathos of Mary that by the end of the eleventh century constituted the separate scene of the Lamentation.14 By the fourteenth century, the anointing stone where the Threnos was expressed was transformed into a sarcophagus and the Lamentation merged with the Entombment of Christ in Italian art.15 French sculptors would have been familiar with these iconographic formulae, and were not immune to the charms of Italian Trecento art. Indeed, French artists also represented the theme of the Pietà during this period.16 The somber and restrained tenor of the French Entombments, however, seems to draw its inspiration from a number of different sources.17 Holy Graves Perhaps the most salient influence on the French Entombments is that of the Holy Graves (Heiligen Gräber) found in Germany in the fourteenth century.18 Strictly speaking, these sculptures do not represent the burial of Christ, although many of the participants found at the Entombment are assembled around the effigy of the dead Christ. Situated in an autonomous aedicule or architectural space, these works are usually characterized by the Holy Women 12

13 14 15 16

17

18

Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 8. The Lamentation is the more discursive narrative scene following the Deposition from the Cross, whereas the Pietà is the distillation of this tragic moment shared by the Virgin and Christ as she mourns the dead son in her lap. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 31. Sandro Sticca, “Officium Passionis Domini: An Unpublished Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century,” Franciscan Studies 34, XII (1974), 180. Sticca, “Officium Passionis,” 180. William H. Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture: Regional Variations (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995). In several paintings from c.  1400–1415, the Lamentation over the body of Christ is conflated with elements of the Mise au tombeau; these works may have been created in Dijon or Paris. See Paris 1400: Les Arts sous Charles VI Louvre Exhibition (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2004), catalog entries 114–116 (pp. 198–200). Émile Mâle, Religious Art in France: The Late Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Iconography and its Source, ed. Harry Bober and trans. Marthiel Mathews (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 129; Mâle compares the mood of the Entombments to that of a lyric poem and points out that, in the theater, the Entombment was enacted without words. We will consider the impact of the medieval mystery plays on these sculptures below pp. 20–21; and ch. 4, 111–123. Mâle, Religious Art in France, 8, 13; cf. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 32.

The Origins of the Entombment of Christ

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standing behind Christ’s body, an angel at his head and feet, and sleeping soldiers propped up against the sarcophagus. The Church of Saints Peter and Paul at Neuwiller-lès-Saverne (1478) has a wonderful example of a Holy Grave (fig. 2); its function was inextricably linked to the Easter liturgy, as is evident by the cavity in Christ’s chest for the placement of the Host on Maundy Thursday. On Sunday after the Easter Mass was said, the Host would have vanished.19 The Holy Graves developed in tandem with the Easter liturgy, when the Host was deposited either on an altar, in a grave, or in some type of sepulchrum during the Depositio on Good Friday.20 The tomb was the most elaborate of these “containers,” all of which signified the tomb as locus for this ceremony.21 The Holy Graves often feature an effigy of Christ with a hole in his chest to receive the Host. Tabernacles and Retables What were the other formal forerunners to the French Entombments? For example, repositories for the body of Christ in the shape of a tabernacle were often placed in close proximity to the altar and used during the Easter service.22 From the later part of the fifteenth century, these tabernacles became independent cult objects and acquired a more monumental character.23 The tabernacles found in central Europe, for example that of St. Sebald’s in Nuremberg (c. 1361–1379), were associated with housing the real presence of Christ in the form of the Eucharist, which seems to be iconographically incongruent with the representation of the dead body of Christ.24 Yet, this conflation of the liv19

20

21

22 23 24

The use of the Holy Graves for paraliturgical purposes is charted by Sylvie Aballéa, Les saints sépulcres monumentaux du Rhin supérieur et de la Souabe (1340–1400) (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2003), 304 and Victor Beyer, La sculpture strasbourgeoise au quatorzième siècle (Strasbourg and Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1955), 27. The Depositio may consist of the Host, the Cross, or both. See Neil C. Brooks, The Sepulchre of Christ in Art and Liturgy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1921), 30; cf. Alfred Heales, “Easter Sepulchres.Their Object, Nature and History,” Archaeologia 42 (1869), 263–308; Karl Young, “Sepulchrum Christi and its Ceremonies in Late Medieval and Modern Times,” Journal of English and German Philology 27 (1928), 147–161. The altar was always identified with Christ’s sacrifice, or here his Descent from the Cross in the Depositio crucis et hostiae. See Barbara Lane, “‘Depositio et Elevatio’: The Symbolism of the Seilern Triptych,” Art Bulletin 57/1 (1975), 21–30, esp. 27. Justin E.A. Kroesen, The Sepulchrum Domini Through the Ages (Leuven, Paris, and Sterling, VA: Peeters, 2000), 108–109. Kroesen, The Sepulchrum Domini, 108–109; cf. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 34–35. Achim Timmerman’s study of the sacramental houses (“Two Parlerian Sacrament Houses and their Micro-architectural Context,” Umeni 48 (1999), 400–412) reconciles this dilemma

12

Figure 2

Chapter 1

Holy Grave from Church of Peter and Paul, Neuwiller-lès-Saverne, polychromed stone, 1478. photo: Janet Snyder.

The Origins of the Entombment of Christ

Figure 3

13

Passion Altarpiece, Jacques de Baerze, Dijon Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv CA 1420 A, gilded wood and polychromy, end of 14th century. photo: François Jay, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.

ing Christ in the upper part of the tabernacle and the dead Christ below, upheld by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus and mourned by the Marys, is clearly the point of departure for the French Entombments.25 Michel Martin has proposed that the origin of the monumental Entombment sculptural groups lies in the carved retables that originated in Flanders.26 He feels that the creators of the Entombments culled that one scene from these Passion cycles, such as that of Jacques de Baerze in the Chartreuse de Champmol, and “enlarged” it to become a devotional object for worshipers (fig. 3). Though there is certainly a dialogue between the sculptors of the retables and the Entombments, the ethos of the Holy Graves, alone or in tandem with the tombs created for the Valois dukes, seems a more dominant influence upon the formulation of the monumental Entombments.

25

26

by seeing the living Christ in the upper part of the tabernacle as a counterpoint to the dead Christ below. See Kroesen, The Sepulchrum Domini, pl. XI for an illustration of the sepulcher at St. Sebald’s in Nuremberg. Timmerman, “Two Parlerian Sacrament Houses,” 400–412; see also Kroesen, The Sepulchrum Domini, 109; Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 34; The other examples like this include St. Jacob’s in Rothenburg ob der Tauber (1390–1400) and St. Mary’s in Bamberg (1392). Achim Timmerman’s larger study of these works (“Staging the Eucharist: Late Gothic Sacrament Houses in Swabia and the Upper Rhine, Architecture and Iconography, ” PhD Thesis Courtauld Institute of Art, 1996) cited in Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 34–35, n. 81–83 supports that they are a formal precedent for the later Entombment sculptures. See Achim Timmerman, Real Presence: Sacrament Houses and the Body of Christ, c. 1270–1600. Series Architectura Medii Aevi, vol. IV (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009). Michel Martin, La statuaire de la Mise au Tombeau du Christ: des XVe et XVIe siècles en Europe occidentale (Paris: Picard, 1987), 48–49.

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Easter Sepulchres England’s Easter Sepulchres often used existing tombs as the site of the liturgy, or separate recesses with tabernacles in the wall, and developed along their own trajectory, one that has been charted by Pamela Sheingorn.27 By the fourteenth century, the Easter Sepulchres were close to the high altar, often on the north side of the chancel.28 There were two different types of Easter Sepulchres, a temporary and permanent type: both, however, had receptacles for the Cross and Host that were symbolically buried therein on Good Friday.29 The permanent type took the form of a large arched recess, which could accommodate a life-sized effigy or sculptures that related to the Resurrection.30 A particularly beautiful example survives at Lincoln Cathedral (c. 1300), where individual trilobed arches frame the sleeping soldiers.31 The presence of the Holy Women or the guards at the tomb underscored the historicity of the Resurrection;32 however, it was the empty tomb that asserted the promise of the Resurrection and which fostered popular devotion by the rites performed there.33

Liturgy and Liturgical Drama

The Easter Sepulchres were usually financed or commissioned by guilds dedicated either to the Resurrection (as in the case of Chesterton in Cambridge) or to the Lord’s Sepulchre, as in Northamptonshire. For example, the guild of the Holy Sepulchre is mentioned in relation to the Easter Sepulchres in numerous churches of the latter county, such at those at Kettering, Lowick, Northampton (Holy Sepulchre), Orlingbury, Ringstead, Sudborough, and Weekley, to name a

27

28

29 30 31 32 33

Pamela Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, Early Drama, Art and Music Reference Series, 5 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1987). Cf. Kroesen, The Sepulchrum Domini, 108; Colin Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West From the Beginning to 1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 356–357. Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre, 34; cf. Neil C. Brooks, The Sepulchre of Christ in Art and Liturgy with Special Reference to the Liturgic Drama (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1921), 91. Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre, 34. Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ, 356. These statues could be the guards, angels, or women at the tomb. Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre, pls. 37–38. Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre, 47. Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre, 51.

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few.34 Again, the appearance of these monuments varies considerably, from a full-blown Passion cycle at All Saints, Hawton in Nottinghamshire (c. 1330) to a simple wall recess at St. Swithin, Merton, Oxfordshire (fourteenth century).35 At Hawton four sleeping soldiers are found below the image of the risen Christ, who is flanked by a kneeling figure of the Magdalen and the other two Marys behind, and an angel to the far right. The uppermost zone is reserved for the Ascension of Christ, where one sees his feet and hem of his garment and a choir of angels floating above the disciples and the Virgin Mary. The most significant difference between the French Entombment and the Easter Sepulchres is one of function, for the latter were always utilized in the Easter liturgy, whereas those on the Continent were not. At the center of the Easter liturgy was the burial of the Cross and Host, which remained concealed until the Resurrection of Christ on Sunday.36 This ceremony was known as the Depositio and symbolized the burial of Christ; the Host, consecrated on Maundy Thursday, was preserved in a place known as a paradise or tomb (sepul­ chrum).37 Even at this early date, the lines that separated the liturgy and liturgical drama began to blur, and, by the twelfth century, the latter flourished.38 Easter became a time when the Passion was both symbolically recreated in the Mass and historically reconstituted by the liturgical drama of the Depositio, Elevatio, and Visitatio sepulchri.39 The confusion of the liturgy and liturgical drama may be traced back to a lack of agreement about the very nature of drama itself: for example, Young believes that drama must involve impersonation and thus does not characterize the Mass as drama.40 Sticca and 34

35 36

37

38 39 40

Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ, 356. Cf. Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre, 268–285. The brotherhood of the Sepulchre and the brotherhood of the Resurrection were also invoked in association with the Easter Sepulchres in Northamptonshire. Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre, pls. 29 and 39–42 for Merton and Hawton, respectively. Elizabeth C. Parker, The Descent from the Cross: Its Relation to the Extra-Liturgical Depositio Drama (New York: Garland Publisher, 1978), 87; the earliest account of the reservation of the Host following the Good Friday Mass comes from Ulrich of Augsburg c. 950. Cf. O.B. Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages: Essays in the Origin and Early History of Modern Drama (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), 136. Solange Corbin, La Déposition liturgique du Christ au Vendredi Saint. Sa place dans l’histoire des rites et du théâtre religieux (Analyse de documents portugais) (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1960), 17. Corbin dates this ceremony to the eighth century. Corbin, La Déposition liturgique, 18–20; Parker, The Descent from the Cross, 83. Corbin, La Déposition liturgique, 103–107; and Parker, The Descent from the Cross, 85–90. Diane Dolan, Le drame liturgique de Pâcques en Normandie et Angleterre au Moyen Âge (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1975), 13; Dolan untangles this liturgical knot by citing the major scholars who have weighed in on this semantic debate, namely Young,

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Hardison, on the other hand, see the Mass as a form of drama, despite the absence of impersonation.41 This distinction is particularly germane for the Visitatio sepulchri, for that was the first “embodied” part of the liturgy. The visit to the grave of Christ derives from the historical trope of the Quem quaeritis (a quote from John 18.4), which is used in the introit of the Easter Mass and has its origins in the fifth or sixth century.42 The Quem quaeritis was probably used continuously from the tenth century onwards, with the earliest examples hailing from St. Gall, St. Martial-de-Limoges, and Mainz.43 Young, who does not see the source of this drama in the liturgy, traces its origins to the trope recited until Matins the night before Easter and feels that it only reaches its full dramatic potential when completely divorced from the Mass and reborn as the Visitatio sepulchri in the Easter play.44 It is important to point out that the purest use of this liturgical trope was not to be confused with theatrical illusions, rather, the Quem quaeritis was ceremonial and constituted the real approach of the three Marys to the tomb, an event that was fixed in eternal time.45 The significance of the Visitatio

41

42 43

44

45

Sticca, and Hardison. Cf. Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford: The Claren­don Press, 1933), I, 231 ff. Dolan, Le drame liturgique, 14; cf. Sandro Sticca, The Latin Passion Play: Its Origins and Development (Albany: State University of New York, 1970), 17–18 and Hardison, Christian Rite, 44. Dolan, Le drame liturgique, 10. Cf. Heales, “Easter Sepulchres,” 263–308. Dolan, Le drame liturgique, 11. Cf. Young, “Sepulchrum Christi,” 147–161. Though these examples are sometimes dated as early as the 9th century, most scholars prefer a tenthcentury date. Helmut de Boor (Die Textgeschichte der lateinischen Osterfeiern (Hermaea Germanistische Forschungen Neue Folge, 22) (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1967), 67–68) paints a much more complex picture of these early Quem quaeritis sources and finds five distinct variants: the Italian, French, Spanish, Lotharingian, and St. Gall, giving precedence to the Italian. He further feels that the Regulis Concordia is a conflation of the French and Lotharingian traditions. For a summary of the various scholarly views on the Quem quaeritis and the Visitatio sepulchri see David A. Bjork, “On the Dissemination of “Quem quaeritis” and the “Visitatio sepulchri” and the Chronology of Their Early Sources,” Comparative Drama 14/1 (1980), 46–69. Young, The Drama, I, 231. Young is the only scholar who sees the Visitatio sepulchri arising ex nihilo. Cf. Thomas P. Campbell, “Liturgical Drama and Community Discourse,” in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, eds. Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001), 619–644 for a very clear explanation of this issue. This important distinction is made by Glynne Wickham in “Drama and Religion in the Middle Ages,” in Shakespeare’s Dramatic Heritage: Collected Studies in Mediaeval, Tudor and Shakespearean drama, ed. Glynne Wickham (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1969), 3–23; see Martin Stevens, “Illusion and Reality in the Medieval Drama,” College English 32/4 (1971), 448–464, esp. 460.

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17

sepulchri for the creation of the Entombment of Christ lies not only in the mise en scène of a tableau vivant of figures around the tomb of the Savior, but also in the temporal framework: the figures simulate the scene at the tomb in a commemorative fashion, at once historical and eschatological in time. In the liturgy, the Host, which was sanctified on Maundy Thursday in preparation for the Depositio on Good Friday, culminated in the Elevatio on Easter morning, when Christ was symbolically resurrected.46 This was essential for the subsequent scene at the tomb of Christ later on Easter morning, when the Holy Women announce that Christ has risen in the Visitatio sepulchri.47 The sequence is: the Quem quaeritis; a trope at the end of Easter Matins; the Resurrexi, just before the Te Deum, and in this position known as the Visitatio sepulchri.48 By the tenth century, there already existed a trope, a processional dialogue, and a dramatic ceremony associated with the Quem quaeritis.49 For example, the latter was enacted by four clerics representing the three Marys and the angel grouped around the empty sarcophagus.50 The sarcophagus was

46 47 48

49 50

Brooks, The Sepulchre of Christ, 7–30. Geneviève Bresc-Bautier,“Les imitations du saint-sépulcre de Jérusalem (IVe–XVe siècles) Archéologie d’une dévotion,” Revue d’histoire de la spiritualité 50 (1974), 327. Bjork, “On the Dissemination of ‘Quem quaeritis’,” 47–49 for a discussion of the viewpoint that the Quem quaeritis was not originally a trope at all. Bjork demonstrates that the relationship between the Quem quaeritis and the Visitatio sepulchri was not one of evolution. The complexity of this issue, however, does not diminish the impact of the liturgy or drama on the representation of the Entombment of Christ. Bjork, “On the Dissemination of the ‘Quem quaeritis’,” 63. Brooks, The Sepulchre of Christ, 46–60; cf. Heales, “Easter Sepulchres,” 278–279; Corbin, La deposition liturgique, 199; Rainer Warning and Marshall Brown, “On the Alterity of Medieval Religious Drama,” New Literary History 10/2 (1979), 265–292, esp. 268–270; Warning and Brown see in the Visitatio sepulchri the height of liturgical allegoresis, in that from its sacramental nucleus evolved a dramatic tradition, in which clerics performed at the sepulcher without rupturing the liturgical framework. In other words, no costumes were worn to convert the congregation into an audience. Of the four hundred texts of the Visitatio sepulchri, first analyzed by Karl Young (“Sepulchrum Christi,” 147–161) only eighty contain textual additions, such as the race of the apostles to the tomb; most versions adhere to the simple visit of the Holy Women to the tomb. It was the vernacular tradition that exploded with details, such as Unguentarius, who sells spices to the three Marys on the way to the tomb, transforming the Visit to the Sepulchre into a reenactment of the event and converting the church into the ideal stage setting. See Stevens, “Illusion and Reality,” 461–462.

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often the altar, or in the case of the Entombment at Saint-Pierre at Solesmes, Christ’s tomb was the site of the Depositio, Elevatio, and Visitatio sepulchri.51 Although Solesmes lies outside the geographic boundaries of this study, the use of its Entombment in a paraliturgical manner is quite striking. On Maundy Thursday the priest placed the reserved Host upon Christ in his sarcophagus and covered the Host with the altar cloth for the duration of Holy Week.52 The same ceremony was observed in Germany and Alsace with the Holy Graves, where on Easter morning the priest removed the altar cloth only to reveal the missing Host, signifying that Christ had risen.53 Scholars may never agree on the placement of the Quem quaeritis, whether it was performed in the Mass or before it, nor whether the chant was originally a trope, a dialogue in a processional ceremony, or part of a fully developed ritual for the Easter Vigil.54 What is apparent is that Easter week provided irrefutable proof that there was a strong dialogue between the visual arts and the liturgy! In light of the above interchange, let us consider the Soissons version of the Quem quaeritis a little more closely.55 A combination of the Elevatio and the Visitatio sepulchri were enacted early on Easter Sunday when two deacons representing angels uttered the Quem quaeritis as the procession reached the sepulchrum.56 The dialogue continued as two priests dressed in copes elevated the Host and handed it to the deacons (angels) while the choir sang the Christus resurgens.57 Once the Host was deposited on the main altar, the Te Deum was sung; yet, in the Soissons version of this liturgy, the Host was still present in the sepulchrum, even as the famous line of the Quem quaeritis was recited: “Non est hic (Matthew 28.6).”58 What is striking about this liturgical lapse in 51

52

53 54 55 56 57 58

Dunbar H. Ogden, “The Use of Architectural Space in Medieval Music-Drama,” Comparative Drama 8/1 (1974), 63–76. For Solesmes, see Karsallah, “Mises au Tombeau,” 298; the problem with Solesmes is that one doesn’t know the venerability of this tradition. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 230; cf. Brooks (The Sepulchre of Christ, 46) notes that there was a stripping of all the altars of crosses, candles, and reliquaries after Mass on Maundy Thursday to express the collective grief of the people. See Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 13–19. Cf. Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre, 33–34, 38. For the most recent study of the Holy Graves, see Aballéa, Les saints sépulcres, passim. Bjork, “On the Dissemination of ‘Quem quaeritis’,” 59; Bjork proceeds to analyze the trope according to its geographical occurrences, rather than from a chronological perspective. Rituale seu Mandatum insignis ecclesiae Suessiononsis (Soissons: 1856), 68–69 cited in Young, Dramatic Associations, 46, n. 66. Young, Dramatic Associations, 48. Ibid. Young, Dramatic Associations, 49; this inconsistency is also true of the liturgy from Laon, St. Quentin in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and that of Constance, Rheinau, and St. Gall in the sixteenth century. Cf. John Caldwell, Review of Le drame liturgique de

The Origins of the Entombment of Christ

Figure 4

19

Entombment of Christ, Church of St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaumont-en-Bassigny, polychromed stone, late 15th century. photo: Pascale L-R.

logic is that the late medieval Entombment sculptures similarly feature the presence of both the Marys at the tomb and the body of Christ, even though the former implies the absence of the latter. We will return to this dilemma below, however, it is interesting to speculate as to whether this could be a liturgical harbinger of the sculptural treatment of this subject. What role, if any, did the monumental Entombments play in the liturgy of Easter week or the liturgical drama and vernacular plays that had as their nucleus the Quem quaeritis? There is one Entombment in the church of St. JeanBaptiste at Chaumont-en-Bassigny in a family chapel that served as the repository for the reserved Host during Easter week and performed this function from 1492 until the middle of the nineteenth century (fig. 4).59 On Maundy Thursday the Host was placed in this chapel, “amidst a thousand sparkling candles and the crowd pressed closer to adore Christ and see the life-like statues that speak to the heart.”60 Though the other Entombments are not directly

59 60

Pâques en Normandie et en Angleterre au moyen âge, by Diane Dolan, Music & Letters 57/3 (1976), 323–326. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 227–228. Godard, Histoire et tableau de l’eglise Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Chaumont (Chaumont, 1848), 44 as cited in Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, n. 734, 228.

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implicated in the liturgical rites of Easter week, we shall consider their theatrical nature and the idea of performative piety in the following chapter.

Contemporary Passion Plays

It was Émile Mâle who first proposed a connection between the Entombment sculptures and the contemporary Passion plays.61 The latter explained the vivid character of a tableau vivant of the sculptural recreations of the Entombment, as well as the exotic costumes, the number of Holy Women, and the solemn mood of the participants.62 This theory, which was based on the premise that France had no fourteenth-century monumental examples of this subject in the visual arts and was thus inspired by the mystery plays, was widely accepted until Forsyth’s study of the Entombments.63 Forsyth points to the influence of a number of important fourteenth-century precursors in different media, such as retables, architectural representations of the Holy Sepulcher, as well as the Passion plays; above all, he foregrounds the significance of the German Holy Graves.64 Mary Magdalene, he further notes, plays a different role in drama than in the sculptural representations of the Entombments: in the Passion plays she actively mourns Christ in a role second only to the Virgin.65 The Passion plays would have certainly helped popularize the theme of the Entombment, and, indeed, the latter may have in turn influenced the mise en scène of the drama.66 Martin feels that the exotic garb of the figures, notably that of Joseph and Nicodemus, which he identifies with that of the Jewish ghetto, was an attempt to temporally displace the worshiper.67 Karsallah, rightly in my opinion, counters that the sculptors of the Entombments sought contemporary costumes, so that worshipers could identify with the dramatic event transpiring before them.68 According to Karsallah, the costumes of the sculpted witnesses to the Entombments bear the imprint of Italian art, initially they 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68

Mâle, Religious Art in France, 124–131. Mâle, Religious Art in France, 128; Mâle singles out the Entombment at Saint-Laurent d’Eu where there are four Holy Women and invokes the Passion by Jean Michel (published c. 1490), in which there are four women: Mary Salomé, Mary Jacobi, Martha, and Mary Magdalene placed beside the Virgin and St. John at the tomb of Christ. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 19–21. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 21. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 19. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 37; cf. Stevens, “Intertextuality,” 317–337. Martin, La statuaire, 121. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 38.

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are dressed in the antique manner, then mirroring the dress of the mid-fifteenth century in later sculptural examples.69 Exposure to Ottoman garb during the crusades waged during this period may be another source of inspiration for the robes, hats, and purses worn by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. But does the Entombment unfold in the Passion plays in a fashion parallel to that scripted by the sculptors of this vignette? In the Passion Saint-Geneviève, written in the mid-fourteenth century, only Joseph and Nicodemus lower Christ into his tomb; Mary and John the Evangelist are not present.70 Two other plays, both written in the fifteenth century, do feature Mary and John, but lack the Holy Women at the tomb.71 The influence then would seem to be one of mood rather than a literal borrowing of elements; the sculptors, drawing from a number of different sources, ultimately created their own Passion plays in stone: drama distilled into an object lesson in devotion to Christ.

Contemporary Funerary Monuments

Another important influence on the development of the Entombment group, particularly in Burgundy, was the evolution of the private tomb and the rites of personal commemoration. The tomb of Philip the Bold, the Valois duke, begun by Jean de Marville in 1384, continued by Claus Sluter until 1404, and completed by Claus de Werve in 1410 after Sluter’s death, introduced a new type of tomb effigy borne aloft by a procession of Carthusian monks beneath a pierced arcade (fig. 5).72 Because the duke died in Halle, his corpse had to be carried back to Champmol by the monks and other dignitaries; thus, the carved procession reflects the real event that transpired over a six-week period of time.73 The tomb, once delivered to the funerary chapel at the Chartreuse de Champmol, would have been visited by the monks, for, the monastic community in 69 70 71

72 73

Ibid. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 40. Karsallah, Mises au tombeau, 40–41. Arras, manuscript 697 and the Mystery of the Passion by Arnoul Greban, the latter of which was recently studied by Robert Clark and Pamela Sheingorn, “Performative Reading: The Illustrated MSS. of Arnoul Gréban’s Mystère de la Passion,” European Medieval Drama 6 (2002), 129–154. Lindquist, Agency, 143–146, 155–156, 160; cf. Sophie Jugie, “Tomb of Philip the Bold,” in Art from the Court of Burgundy, 223–235. Lindquist, Agency, 142. The funeral cortege consisted of the duke’s sons, nobles, and sixty torchbearers; it made twelve stops whereby the duke’s body, laid in state at local churches, received a golden cloth at each stop! Upon reaching Dijon, prominent townspeople and a hundred poor people joined the funeral procession.

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Figure 5

Tomb of Philip the Bold, Dijon, Jean de Marville, Claus Sluter, and Claus de Werve, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv CA 1416, black and white marble, partially polychromed and gilded alabaster, 1384–1410. photo: François Jay, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.

exchange for Philip’s beneficence, had agreed to pray for the salvation of the duke’s soul.74 Did the monks process around the tomb as they prayed in mimetic reflection of their carved alabaster doppelgängers? Performative piety seems to have been Sluter’s forte, as he made the pleurants come to life beneath their cowls by yawning, pinching back the tears, singing, and lifting or bowing their covered heads. This tomb formula was to become the Valois trademark and influence such effigies as that of Philippe Pot, who once served in the Valois court (fig. 6).75 Here, the pleurants have taken steroids and become life-sized, bearing the effigy upon their shoulders. Carved in the last quarter of the fifteenth century by

74 75

Lindquist, Agency, 191–193. Philippe Pot (1428–1493) was educated in the court of Philip the Bold. He went on to become grand sénéchal of Burgundy. His tomb was originally in the chapel of Saint-JeanBaptiste in the abbey of Citeaux and is now in the Louvre museum.

The Origins of the Entombment of Christ

Figure 6

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Tomb of Philippe Pot, Paris Musée du Louvre, RF 795, originally from the abbey of Cîteaux, polychromed stone, c. 1480. photo: Raphael Chipault, Musée du Louvre, RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.

the sculptor Le Moiturier (?), the eight large-scale pleurants were imitated by the tombs of Jacques de Mâlain (d. 1527) and Louise de Savoisy (d. 1515).76 But, what about medieval death and the act of commemoration? In an interesting tomb relief of Friar Jehen Fiefvés (d. 1425) from Tournai, the monks surround the effigy as if tending to the body and preparing it for interment. It strikes me that there is something quite human about the examples of the Entombment of Christ from Burgundy that seems to stem from the secular domain, where real bodies were prepared for burial and mourning reflects the various emotions of the human spectrum. The performance of this ritual of interment does not simply remember the dead in a social matrix—it actively constitutes that matrix. In other words, memoria creates community. Pierre Nora felt that collective memory was opposed to historical memory, in that the former remained in the past as a lived experience of groups and evolved with these groups as an inalienable possession. Historical memory, on the other hand, “is the fruit of a 76

For a general discussion of pleurants in tomb sculpture, see Pierre Quarré, Les pleurants dans l’art du Moyen Age en Europe (Dijon: Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1971).

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learned, scientific tradition. Historical memory, analytic and critical, precise and distinct, arises from reason which instructs without convincing.”77 All memory, collective, historical, and personal, is selective and remains an active, creative process (according to psychologists).78 The immediacy of Burgundian tombs, the interjection of the effigy of the deceased directly into an architectural space of a funerary chapel, engages the community in an act of comme­ moration. There were no barriers to impede the performance of remembrance.79 Similarly, the Entombment group is the visual embodiment of the finality of Christ’s death: the liturgical, narrative, transformative, and liminal dimensions of the scene relegate its meaning to the collective memory of the community. As the Holy Sepulcher of Christ, it is the site of both Christ’s most pathetic mortality and His Divinity made manifest. Yet, the latter remains the absent presence in these sculptural monuments. It is by virtue of the performed liturgy of the Visitatio sepulchri, the Passion plays, and the aesthetic power of the sculpture that the aftermath of the Entombment is invoked. The mortified flesh of Christ promises not only the resurrected Savior, but also salvation for mankind. 77

78 79

Pierre Nora, “Mémoire collective, “ in La nouvelle histoire, eds. Jacques LeGoff, Roger Chartier, and Jacques Revel (Paris: Retz-C.E.P.L., 1978), 398–399 cited in Patrick Geary, “The Historical Material of Memory,” in Art, Memory and Family in Renaissance Florence, eds. Giovanni Ciappelli and Patricia Lee Rubin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 19. Geary, “The Historical Material,” 20. More will be said about this subject in chapter 5, pp. 184–189.

Echoes of the Performative Piety of the Sculpture

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The Entombment of Christ: Echoes of the Performative Piety of the Sculpture at the Chartreuse de Champmol The objective of this chapter is to introduce several examples of the sculptural Entombment of Christ and to consider them in light of the impulse towards performative piety. The latter term refers to the active quality of pathos engendered by these sculptural tableaux vivants that triggers a sympathetic response in the worshiper, at times cerebral, and at other times visceral. Christopher Tilley has demonstrated how we need material objects to negotiate our perceptions of the world; in other words, all humans think metaphorically as we objectify culture in order to fully comprehend it.1 Linguistic metaphors unfold in time and sequence, whereas solid metaphors are spatial.2 We ­respond to the Entombment precisely because its power resides in a non-linguistic, non-discursive level of consciousness. In this sense, the sculpted Entombment functions as a solid metaphor for the Holy Sepulcher: it foregrounds the tomb as the most poignant relic of the death of Christ. And since vision is not passive, the worshiper reconstructs this scene from the Passion from the details of the image before him.3 The power of the Entombment is vividly inscribed in the heart and mind of the worshiper, and thus it transpires not in the historical past, but in the eternal present.

Entombment of Notre-Dame-des-Fontenilles, Tonnerre

One of the most well known Entombments in Burgundy is found in the Hospital of Notre-Dame-des-Fontenilles at Tonnerre (fig. 7).4 The two master 1 2 3 4

Christopher Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 262. Tilley, Metaphor, 263. Sara Lipton, “‘The Sweet Lean of his Head’: Writing about Looking at the Crucifix in the High Middle Ages,” Speculum 80/4 (2005), 1172–1208, esp. 1200. The hospital was founded by Louis IX’s sister-in-law, Margaret of Burgundy, Queen of Jerusalem and Sicily and Countess of Tonnerre, in 1293; Forsyth, The Entombment, 65; the sculpture of the Entombment is well documented and these records are published by Bernard Prost, “Le Saint Sépulcre de l’hôpital de Tonnerre,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, IX, 3rd per. (1893), 492–501. See Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 143–144 for the history of the documentation of this Entombment. The Entombment was restored by Eugenie Thierry

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004293144_004

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Figure 7

Entombment of Christ, Hospital of Notre-Dame-des Fontenilles, Tonnerre, Jean Michel and Georges de la Sonnette (whitewashed stone), 1453–1454. photo: author.

sculptors, Jean Michel and Georges de la Sonnette, in the company of their workshop, were commissioned by Lancelot de Buronfosse to carve a “holy sepulcher, which is placed and set in a chapel of our said church … which holy sepulcher is and will be for the time to come a thing of very great profit and great revenue for our said church, and which has cost a great sum of money to the said Lancelot.”5 The Entombment, created 1453–1454, is enacted by eight figures with Joseph of Arimathea at the head of Christ and Nicodemus at his feet. There was formerly a guard installed in a niche at the entrance to the chap­el representing a Saracen, one of the guards sent by Pilate to watch the

5

in 1861 and restored to its present condition in 1983, according to the Inventaire of the Côte-d’Or in Dijon. Also, see Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz, “Des Oeuvres d’art com­man­ditées pour un hôpital: L’exemple de Notre-Dame-des-Fontenilles à Tonnerre,” in Hôpitaux au Moyen Âge et au Temps modernes. France, Allemagne et Italie, une histoire comparée, ed. Gisela Drossbach (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007), 175–198; Francis Salet, “L’hôpital Notre-Dame de Fontenilles à Tonnerre,” Congrès archéologique Auxerre 116 (1958 a), 225–239; Romain de Seze, “Les Imagiers du Tonnerois et l’école de Dijon au quinzième siècle,” Bulletin de la société des sciences historiques et naturelles de l’Yonne 66 (1912), 5–21. Forsyth, The Entombment, 65; the architects, “Jehan Michiel and Gorge de la Sonnecte” each had a valet and it is presumed from the large allowances of cheese and wine granted by the hospital that they were accompanied by a full complement of workers.

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tomb of Christ.6 Though starkly whitewashed, the carved assembly of figures still possesses a quiet air of intense mourning that is slowly revealed to the worshiper by its setting. Located at the far east end of the huge hospital church, a small door in the furthermost corner of the wall opens onto a staircase that descends nine steps into a narrow vaulted room made especially to house the Sepulcher sculpture (fig. 8).7 This descent into a darker space would have evoked the idea of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, though clearly not its historical form. A document accompanying another, now lost, Entombment from Douai specified, “this place must not be large and light, but small and dark, for devotion.”8 At Tonnerre the viewer is gradually exposed to the whole scene as one moves to the center of the chapel, and at that point one sees the inscription on Nicodemus’ robe split across the sleeves of both arms: “Worship him (right arm) O you who see (left arm).”9 (fig. 9) The porters of Christ, Joseph and Nicodemus, seem to tower over the body of Christ, an effect engendered by their slightly larger scale and voluminous robes. Close to the head of Christ, the Virgin Mary bows in tears as John the Evangelist supports her in his arms. To the right is Mary Magdalene with upraised arms, juxtaposed with two other Holy Women, each holding a jar used to anoint the body of Christ (fig. 10). One is immediately struck by the somber state of suspended animation captured by the sculptors: despite the palpable weight of Christ’s dead body, the shoulders and feet form a delicate arc in the hands of Joseph and Nicodemus. Similarly, the Virgin seems to be carved in an arrested swoon, and Mary Magdalene’s gesture of despair is framed at its most poignant moment. It is perhaps these qualities that led Forsyth to trace Jean Michel and Georges de la Sonnette to the workshop of Claus Sluter.10 The extensive documents for this monument not only shed light on the nature of the commission and its execution, but also on the function of the Entombment sculpture for the patron, Lancelot de Buronfosse. In return for the 6

7 8 9

10

This guard is mentioned in the documents (“Item paye a Jehan Le Chambrileur demorant aud. Tonnerre, pour avoir fait la fermeté ou est le Sarazain qui montre led. Sepulcre”), Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 143, n. 441, citing Archives de l’hôpital, E8 for the year 1454, fol. 38 v. Susie Nash, Northern Renaissance Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 251. Nash, Northern Renaissance, 251. Ibid.; the sleeves read: “Adorate eum” on the right arm and “O vos vide(te)” on the left arm. Forsyth (The Entombment, 68–69) suggests that the text is from Jeremiah and corresponds to that found on the Well of Moses prophet’s scroll: “O vos omnes qui transits per viam attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus.” Forsyth, The Entombment, 67–69.

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Figure 8

Chapter 2

Entrance to chapel that houses Entombment in Hospital at Tonnerre. photo: Terryl Kinder.

Echoes of the Performative Piety of the Sculpture

Figure 9

Entombment in Hospital at Tonnerre, detail of sleeve of Nicodemus. photo: author.

Figure 10 Entombment in Hospital at Tonnerre, detail of Holy Women. photo: author.

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gift of this sculptural Entombment, the Hospital at Tonnerre agreed to say several Masses for the safety and cure of the soul of Lancelot and of all his friends and benefactors who had died. Further, if he died in Tonnerre, the body of Lancelot de Buronfosse would be brought in procession to the church and buried in the chapel with the Entombment group, accompanied by three sung Masses (for all his relatives, friends, and heirs—if they wished to be buried in this chapel). Additional services were held on the anniversary of the Invention of the True Cross, revealing Lancelot’s special devotion to the Passion.11 What is unusual in the case of Tonnerre is that the hospital assumed the financial responsibility for the perpetuation of these religious rites for the family, and not the donor himself.12 Indeed, the Entombment was somewhat of a financial wager on the part of the hospital, whose economic footing was far from stable!13 The results of this devotional investment were happily positive for both the donor and the hospital of Tonnerre, for by 1459 the latter had generated one hundred sous from visitors to the sepulcher.14 The Entombment elicits a sympathetic response in the viewer, one that is fostered in part by the dramatic mise en scène and in part by the poignant subject itself. Michel Martin felt that the figures gathered around the tomb of Christ offered the worshiper an array of personae upon which to project one’s feelings about Christ’s sacrifice, a mirror of human destiny reflected by the ­social roles fulfilled by the Virgin, John, the Marys, Joseph, and Nicodemus (fig. 7).15 Though identifying one’s counterpart amidst the sculptural Entombment group may seem reductive to say the least, it does seem that a mimetic impulse underlies the efficacy of these works of art. It is this engagement of the viewer that is reminiscent of the art of Claus Sluter, particularly in a work such as the Well of Moses, once situated in the large cloister of the Chartreuse de Champmol (fig. 11).

11

12 13 14 15

Forsyth, The Entombment, 65–66; cf. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 143–148, n. 451. It is thought that at least two members of the Buronfosse family are buried in this chapel: Guillaume de Buronfosse and a daughter of Jean de Buronfosse. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 145, n. 454. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 146–147. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 147, n. 462: Archives de l’hôpital, E9, fol. 65 v. comptes du 1 octobre 1458 au 30 septembre 1459. Martin, La statuaire, 45. This is not to be confused with the phenomenon of guising wherein the sculptor appears in the role of Nicodemus. See also Corine Schleif, ”Nico­ demus and Sculptors: Self-Reflexivity in Works by Adam Kraft and Tilman Riemen­ schneider,” Art Bulletin 75/4 (1993), 599–626.

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Figure 11 Well of Moses, Chartreuse de Champmol, Dijon, Moses, Claus Sluter and workshop. polychromed stone, 1395–1404. photo: author.

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Performative Piety at the Chartreuse de Champmol: Well of Moses

Before considering further examples of Entombments found in Burgundy, it is instructive to examine the works of art commissioned by Philip the Bold for the double Carthusian monastery at Champmol. It is my contention that the Entombments are influenced by the visual art that emanated from this monastery, not only in terms of style but, perhaps more importantly, in terms of “spirit.” How to capture the ethos of the Well of Moses? The fountain that graced the grand cloister of the Chartreuse de Champmol was truly unique, for it not only linked the prophecies of Christ’s Passion with the Calvary, but also functioned as a fountain. Claus Sluter was given authority “pour faire une croix” by the Valois duke in 1395.16 Though no longer extant, a Calvary group twenty-five feet from the ground once crowned the monument. Rising from a pool of water that symbolized the Fountain of Life, stood six prophets, who foretold the Passion, attached to a hexagonal base, and six angels, clad in liturgical garments, marked the angles of the hexagon and supported the statue group of the Calvary (fig. 11). The Crucifixion group consisted of Christ on the Cross with Mary Magdalene clinging to the feet of the Savior; the Virgin and John the Evangelist may or may not have been to either side of Christ.17 The Great Cross, in either form, served as a public vehicle for salvation, as it objectified the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. Despite the eleven-foot distance of the prophets from the ground, the viewer cannot escape the lively interchange initiated by the statues as they gesture, scowl, and turn as if to speak to the neighboring figure. The prophets that man the base of the Well of Moses command the viewer’s movement around the monument and, in the process, set the iconographic message in motion. As if attached to a medieval Lazy Susan, the prophets seem to obey the dictates of the Cult of the Passion. Renate Prochno, citing Ludolph of Saxony’s Life of Jesus Christ, conjures the action of the pilgrim confronting the fountain at Champmol: “the Cross remains constant while the world turns.”18 It was the worshiper’s passage that generated the dialogue between the prophets, which inspired 16

17

18

Lindquist, Agency, 56–60 and Prochno, “The Well of Moses,” in Ludolphus of Saxony. Vita Jesu Christi, ed. I.M. Rigollot, 4 vols. (Paris and Brussels: Societate Generali Librariae Catho­licae, 1878), 213–221. See also Sadler, “The Well of Moses,” 383–414. Lindquist (Agency, 56) argues for a fuller representation of the Calvary, whereas Susie Nash (“Claus Sluter’s ‘Well of Moses’ for the Chartreuse de Champmol reconsidered: Part I,” Burlington Magazine 147 (2005), 798–809) believes that only Mary Magdalene was depicted in Sluter’s Calvary. Prochno, “The Well of Moses,” 219.

Echoes of the Performative Piety of the Sculpture

Figure 12 Well of Moses, detail of weeping angel. photo: author.

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the tears of the empathetic angels that relayed the fulfillment of the Old Law in the Crucifixion above (fig. 12). Then the blood from Christ’s wounds propelled the believer back towards the Old Testament witnesses to forge a symbolic union between the Passion of the Lord and the everlasting water of salvation of the fons vitae.19 It was in this way that the Well of Moses remained in the center of the monks’ lives, both metaphorically and in reality.20 The Well of Moses both conforms to the ideals of Carthusian contemplation as well as engages the viewer in the act of performative piety. Laura Gelfand has explored various artifacts from Champmol in light of their ability to trigger prayer in both the resident monks and visiting pilgrims.21 If we consider the Lamentation of the Holy Trinity tondo (Louvre Museum) attributed to Jean Malouel, a work commissioned by Philip the Bold for Champmol, the blood that flows from the wounds of Christ follows a trajectory that would culminate in the very laps of the monastic viewers (fig. 13). Indeed, the angels on the Well of Moses may have inspired the six angels that weep and gesticulate on the left side of the tondo.22 The presentation of Christ’s lifeless and bleeding body in this work emphasizes both his humanity and the sacrifice he made for mankind. The visceral response it provokes in the monks engenders a devotional dialogue, which is a spiritual exercise in contemplation.23 In a similar vein, Lindquist views the Well of Moses in terms of Carthusian prayer and reading practices: the prophets’ introspective glances, their conspicuous scrolls and books that emphasize the significance of the word and acts of devotion.24 There is, however, more to this monumental Cross. The Well of Moses not only reflects the ideology of the Christian faith, but also creates a fusion of patron, participant, and political event. Philip the Bold commissioned the Well of Moses during his crusade to Nicopolis, an effort that would end in total defeat. But, his hopes were fastened on regaining the Holy Land, as this was the objective of both his spiritual and political ambitions. Just as the prophets testified to the destiny of Christ on the Cross, so could they 19 20 21

22 23

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Prochno, “The Well of Moses,” 213. Prochno, “The Well of Moses,” 219. Laura Gelfand, “‘Y Me Tarde’: The Valois, Pilgrimage and the Chartreuse de Champmol,” in The Art and Architecture of Late Medieval Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and the British Isles, eds. Sarah Blick and Rita Tekippe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 567–586. Prochno, “The Well of Moses,” 217; cf. Philippe Lorentz, “Jean Malouel et les frères de Limbourg,” Paris 1400: Les arts sous Charles VI (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 94–99. Cf. Prochno, “The Well of Moses,” 219; Lindquist, Agency, 164. As Lindquist points out in regard to another altarpiece, the blood would have the added Eucharistic significance for the monks at Champmol where Eucharistic themes are abundant. Lindquist, Agency, 164–175.

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Figure 13 Holy Trinity tondo, Jean Malouel, Musée du Louvre, tempera on panel, late 14th century. photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

witness the terrestrial redemption the Valois duke might secure for the duchy of Burgundy. The pilgrim’s journey through the meaning of the Well of Moses was thus an encounter with a complex blend of spiritual, political, and ideological associations.25

25

See Sadler, “The Well of Moses,” 397–400. The formal precursor of the Well of Moses was the series of Montjoies erected by Philippe le Hardi to mark the stops of Saint Louis’ funeral cortege. The Montjoies were identified with the Capetian ruler’s martyrdom on crusade in Tunis and therefore provided the Valois duke with a highly charged symbolic prototype!

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The Cross was a constant reminder of the centrality of Christ’s sacrifice in the monks’ lives.26 By identifying with the penitent Mary Magdalene at the feet of Christ, the pilgrims could reap the grace conferred on the fountain by Christ’s sacrifice.27 For it was Christ’s blood, according to Ludolph of Saxony, that was the source of life.28 Papal Indulgences were granted in 1418, 1432, and 1445 to visit the Well of Moses.29 How did the pilgrims participate in the reenactment of the sacraments embodied in Sluter’s fountain? And was the spiritual beneficence meted out according to one’s standing in the community? Lindquist has demonstrated how the position of the Well of Moses in the large cloister served to control the degree of salvation available to the royal patrons, the pilgrims, and the monks. Pilgrims were routed from the gatehouse directly to the Great Cross, so they did not penetrate the other monastic spaces.30 The Carthusians thus orchestrated the degree of spiritual and contemplative devotion accessible to the lay population in their encounter with the Well of Moses: the highest level of piety and access to the sacraments of the Church were granted to the monastic community alone. Did Philip the Bold and his wife, Margaret of Flanders, also enjoy a privileged relationship with the Great Cross?31 Surrounding the plinth upon which the prophets stand is the duke’s coat of arms, reminding both monks and pilgrims that Philip the Bold financed the Passion recreated by the Great Cross.32 The latter was a symbol of the duke’s rulership and presence on Burgundian soil. Indeed, if we view the Well of Mos­ es with late medieval eyes, we would see King David in the central position rather than Moses (fig. 14). Flanked by Moses and Jeremiah, David is the precursor of Christ and link to the three races of kings of France who all traced 26 27

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Prochno, “The Well of Moses,” 219; again, the Carthusian order’s motto: “Stat crux dum volvitur orbis.” It is particularly the pose of Mary Magdalene, prone and embracing the feet of Christ, that provided the model for worshipers. See Lindquist, Agency, 56, 172, figure 2.22; cf. Nash, “… Champmol reconsidered,” 807–809. Prochno, “The Well of Moses,” 219; cf. Ludolph of Saxony, Vita Christi as cited in Kathleen Morand, Claus Sluter: Artist at the Court of Burgundy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), I, 106. Morand, Claus Sluter, I, 107–110. Lindquist, Agency, 196–197. Ibid. Lindquist, Agency, 167; Lindquist underlines the identification of the duke with King David on the Well of Moses, for the latter combined both ducal and monastic status ­by authoring the Psalms that figured in the daily performance of the Divine Office. Cf. ­Gelfand, “‘Y Me Tarde,’” 567–586.

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Figure 14 Well of Moses, detail of David. photo: author.

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their legitimacy to David.33 The two angels that buttress David both turn to acknowledge him, whereas the other angels follow the hexagonal movement of the pier to which they are attached. Finally, David’s mantle is decorated with the golden suns and harps denoting his kingship and authorship of the Psalms, respectively, but the P’s and M’s of the ducal couple are inscribed in the large suns above the statue of David.34 David’s position on the fountain was also on axis to the church, which underscores his role as Christ’s precursor as well as genealogical forebear of the Capetians, the new house of the Valois. Moses, to David’s right, holds the tablets of law and the scroll that identifies this as a miraculous fountain (fig. 11).35 Jeremiah, on David’s left, holds an amazingly rendered book and once wore copper spectacles that were identical to those worn by Philip the Bold (fig. 15).36 Daniel accusingly points to his scroll and glares at Isaiah, while the latter seems invincible by virtue of his venerability (fig. 16).37 Zachariah, with pen and open inkwell, proffers his written scroll and seems the most self-contained of the prophets (fig. 17).38 The verisimilitude that characterizes the depiction of the prophets underscores the present tense of Sluter’s art, just as the Entombment at Tonnerre seemed to be a moment caught on film (fig. 7). Lindquist points out that the word “effigiem” is used to describe the Great Cross in contemporary documents, a term that is much more emphatic than “image” in conveying liveliness.39 Further, it is this quality that may account for the wondrous, innovative “strangeness” that so impressed the public about the statues that comprise the Well of Moses.40 Not only did the Burgundian court delight in machines that were “rigged to move and talk,” but the latter corresponded to imagines agentes that medieval treatises endorsed for their mne-

33 34 35 36 37

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Lindquist, Agency, 167; Philip the Bold naturally wished to ride on the coattails of the French kings, as well as their biblical precursor. Lindquist, Agency, 55–60, 167; Lindquist, Agency, 167, 170, 187, n. 178 for the Latin inscriptions found on the prophets’ scrolls; cf. Morand, Claus Sluter, I, 104–105. Lindquist, Agency, 170. Lindquist, Agency, 167; Lindquist points out the contrast between the reading and speaking prophets, however, one might also see them as the contemplative versus the active ways of knowing God. Cf. Morand, Claus Sluter, I, 102–106. Lindquist, Agency, 170–172; Morand, Claus Sluter, I, 105. Lindquist, Agency, 124. Ibid.

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Figure 15 Well of Moses, detail of Jeremiah. photo: author.

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Figure 16 Well of Moses, detail of Daniel and Isaiah. photo: author.

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Figure 17 Well of Moses, detail of Zachariah. photo: author.

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monic utility.41 Recognition of this monument’s ability to “sting … prick, bruise, and be poignant” conforms to Roland Barthes’ recognition that certain monuments were to be contemplated alone, with prayers uttered under the breath, realized in the regime of the spectatio.42 The Well of Moses delivered perpetual salvation to the faithful. Worshipers visited the Great Cross throughout the fifteenth century: how did the pilgrims view the Well of Moses? Did they circle the fountain as the reenactment of the sacraments unfolded before them as in a diorama? Previous scholars have stressed the interdependence of medieval drama and this sculptural tour de force.43 Rather than proposing a direct influence between drama, thaumaturgy, and the sculpture found at the Chartreuse de Champmol, I would suggest that they share the ability to capture the ”quick” in dramatic terms of their respective audiences.44 The dramatic nature of the Well of Moses depends on Sluter’s ability to transform the prophecy of Christ’s death and its execution above into a poignant, perpetual mise en scène. As Holly Johnson demonstrated with late medieval sermons, the audience was invited to enter into the events of the Passion as participants. The preacher, or in this instance, the artist, fashioned the devotion of the audience, creating an intimacy between the spectators and the suffering of Christ during the Passion.45 Just as Sluter reveals the tragedy of the vision of the prophets and the depth of the angels’ sorrowful reaction to the Passion, so the worshiper performs his response to the drama of the Great Cross. The Well of Moses, in objectifying the sacraments, marks the intersection of faith, liturgy, and ritual. Sluter created, in Lerud’s terms, a simulacrum designed to move the viewer.46 Simulacra played a role analogous to that of visual tableaux and religious plays, 41

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Lindquist, Agency, 123–126. Lindquist cites Thomas Bradwardine’s fourteenth-century treatise on memory and its partiality toward imagines agentes to evoke wonder and hence retention. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 81, 97. Morand, Claus Sluter, I, 102–106. One writer even suggested that Zacharias’s beard is false and that David’s hair is modeled on a theatrical wig. See Sadler, “The Well of Moses,” 403, n. 44. This framework has been used by Theodore K. Lerud in “Quick Images: Memory and the English Corpus Christi Drama,” in Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eds. Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 2001), 213–237. Holly Johnson, “Fashioning Devotion: The Art of Good Friday: Preaching in Chaucerian England,” in Speculum Sermonis: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Medieval Sermon, eds. Georgiana Donavin, Cary J. Nederman, and Richard J. Utz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 325. Lerud, “Quick Images,” 213.

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and constituted, in Thomas Aquinas’s view, phantasmata, which served as a link between body and soul, sense, and understanding.47 Just as Christ’s blood filled the basin of the Well of Moses, linking the Passion and Baptism through the words of the prophets, so did the cross mark the presence of Philip the Bold in the cloister of the Carthusian monastery. Peter Arnade has demonstrated that triumphal entries into medieval cities often reflected a number of the same characteristics found in late medieval art, such as scaffolding, personifications who “speak” the meaning of the tableau, and the incorporation of various “extras” to perform the ritual on display.48 The result of this conflation of city and spectacle was to inculcate the members of the culture in the meaning of the civic entry. Knowing the Burgundian court’s love of ephemeral art and processions in the fifteenth century, it is not surprising that Sluter sought to imbue the Well of Moses with both the immediacy and permanence of a Passion play “mimed in stone.” Barthes, in his analysis of the medium of photography in Camera Lucida, refers to the viewer’s experience of the work as a tableau vivant.49 By focusing on the emotional and psychological effect of detail, according to Barthes, a reciprocal process of projection on the part of the viewer takes place.50 What Barthes dubs punctum depends both on the viewer and on the work of art; the punctum is the detail in the image that opens it to the depths of our fully embodied subjectivity by pricking our memory.51 The punctum is opposed to the studium of the work, which would be the conventional depiction of the subject—in this case, the Passion of Christ.52 Barthes defines the punctum as the “sting, speck, cut, little hole—and also a cast of the dice. A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me, but also bruises me, is poignant to me.”53 47

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50 51 52

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Thomas Aquinas toys with the definition of images in several different works, notably in his Summa theologica. See Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 54–60, esp. 57. See Peter J. Arnade, Realms of Ritual: Burgundian Ceremony and Civic Life in Late Medieval Ghent (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 127–158, for an insightful overview of the role of processions in the neighboring city of Ghent. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 31–32; 55–59; 91. For an analysis of the relationship between Barthes’ use of tableau vivant and punctum, see Michael Fried, “Barthes’s Punctum,” Critical Inquiry 31 (Spring, 2005), 539–574. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 53–55; Barthes, Camera Lucida, 26–27; Barthes refines his definition of punctum throughout Camera Lucida. Cf. Sadler, “The Well of Moses,” 407, n. 51. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 26; I am extrapolating here by looking at the Well of Moses through Barthes’ lens: the studium consists of the general human interest of the photograph, its “figures, the faces, the gestures, the settings, the actions.” Barthes, Camera Lucida, 27.

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The punctum emanates from the object and is realized in the eye of the beholder, a system of perception that operates on a principle familiar to the medie­val optical theory of intromission. In ruminating about the art of photography, Barthes says: The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From the real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star. A sort of umbilical cord links the body of the photographed thing to my gaze: light, though impalpable, is here a carnal medium, a skin I share with anyone who has been photographed.54 As Katherine Tachau has shown in the equation of Grosseteste’s system of perception, both the object and the corporeal eye emit rays of light that illuminate the punctum, if you will.55 The language of punctum resonates with late medieval spirituality and its admonition to dwell in the wounds of Christ in order to know the suffering he endured on behalf of mankind. It was this embodied understanding of the Passion that characterized late medieval piety.56 By re-forming the object, the 54 55

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Barthes, Camera Lucida, 80–81. Katherine Tachau, “Seeing as Action and Passion in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” in The Mind’s Eye Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, eds. Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Anne-Marie Bouché (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 336– 359. See Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) for medieval optics in general and Grosseteste in particular (67–73). Cf. Hans Henrik Lohfert Jorgensen, “Cultic Vision—Seeing as Ritual: Visual and Liturgical Experience in the Early Christian and Medieval Church,” in The Appearances of Medieval Rituals: The Play of Construction and Modification, eds. Nils Holger Petersen, Mette Birkedal Bruun, Jeremy Llewellyn, Eyolf Ostrem (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 173–197, esp. 179 where the active role of the eye is explored. The bibliography on late medieval piety is extensive and particular to geographic regions. For a general overview of the topic, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). The development and spread of the Mass of the Five Wounds did much to propagate this exclusive devotion to the wounds of Christ. See Dom Louis Gougaud, Devotional and Ascetic Practices in the Middle Ages, trans. G.C. Bateman (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1927), 80–91; James F. Burke, Desire against the Law: The Juxtaposition of Contraries in Early Medieval Spanish Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 265–68, n.21–39; 1–19 evokes the scholarship of L. Scanlon, R. Trexler, S.H. González, and N. Morgan, who explore the metaphorical nature of Christ’s wounds.

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viewer achieves a type of immortality, yet, at the same time, dies. “I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then experience a micro-version of death … I am truly becoming a specter.”57 If we try to simulate the pilgrim’s experience of the Well of Moses, would the verisimilitude not have conditioned the very response to the pivoting prophets, the emotive angels, and the towering figure of Christ on the Cross above (fig. 11)? The expressive nature of Sluter’s work, so often compared to living theater, triggers a devotional experience that engages the soul of the viewer, in other words, punctum. For Barthes, photography most resembled theater because of the latter’s original association with the cult of the Dead: The first actors separated themselves from the community by playing the role of the Dead; to make oneself up was to designate oneself as a body simultaneously living and dead …. Photography is a kind of primitive theater, a kind of Tableau Vivant, as figuration of the motionless and madeup face beneath which we see the dead.58 In Claus Sluter’s Well of Moses, Christ’s blood symbolically flows into the Fountain of Life into which all men are baptized into a new life, one sanctified by the prophecies of the Old Testament figures and punctuated by the angels dressed in liturgical robes (figs. 12 and 15). The punctum is the wound in Christ’s side that binds all pilgrims to the Passion and to the promise of salvation it confers. The life promised by the Well of Moses is like the life of a photograph that is supplanted by the memory of the now lifeless image. This is

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J. Wirth, M. Camille, and S. Beckwith address the wounds as the entrance site through which the faithful gain access to participate in Christ’s physical and mystical body. Donna Spivey Ellington, “Impassioned Mother or Passive Icon: The Virgin’s role in late medieval and early modern Passion Sermons,” Renaissance Quarterly 48/2 (1995), 227–61, explores the sermons surrounding the Virgin’s devotion to the Passion of Christ. Also, see Kathleen Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England 1350–1500 (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 166–75, n. 38–55; Douglas Gray, “The Five Wounds of Our Lord,” Notes and Queries 208 (1963), 50–51; 82–89; 127–34; 163–68. Eamon Duffy, Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 238–48, correlates the wounds of Christ to particular human sins, yet, at the same time, they are antidotes to particular vices. Thus, the cult of the wounds rendered the stigmata the means for entering into Christ’s heart and thus became a symbol of the refuge of his love. For embodiment as a way of knowing/perceiving medieval art, see Hans Belting, “Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology,” Critical Inquiry 31/2 (Winter 2005), 302–319. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 14. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 31–32; 55–56.

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the reciprocity engendered by the gaze of the worshiper as he perceives the message of the Well of Moses. Indeed, both the Well of Moses and the photograph demand a type of death of the worshiper/viewer: that is the cost of salvation.

Tomb of Philip the Bold

The tomb designed and executed for Philip the Bold by Jean de Marville, Claus Sluter, and Claus de Werve between 1384 and 1410 inspires an even greater degree of visual immediacy (fig. 5).59 When the Valois duke died in Halle in 1384, his corpse had to be carried back by monks and other dignitaries over a period of almost two months to the Chartreuse de Champmol, where he was buried. The funeral cortege that carried the duke from Halle to Champmol is commemorated on the tomb by forty-two alabaster pleurants, who, dressed in Carthusian robes with heads beneath cowls, perpetually reenact this very human funerary dirge (fig. 18).60 In their varied attitudes of grief, these mourners reinforced the liminal experience of moving from life to death: with open books and heads bowed in sorrow, they typologized the mourning experienced on behalf of the Valois duke, as well as serving to remind the living monks to say prayers for the duke’s soul.61 Echoing the liturgy of the Carthusians in disposition and demeanor, the carved pleurants mirrored the devotion performed by the monks. In a very real sense, the monks’ prayers were transformed into the act of commemoration, just as the Well of Moses conferred perpetual salvation to the faithful who visited it. Gazing at the mourners who meander beneath the effigy of Philip the Bold, the audience has become the subject. The more palpable the grief of the ersatz mourners, the more sorrow we feel as spectators. One aspect of this tomb that is innovative is the three-dimensional arcade through which the monks roam: delicate double-trefled arcades crowned by tracery ogee arches form a mise en abyme for the viewer whose gaze is returned by the continuous parade of 59

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The commission for the tomb of the Valois duke was given to Jean de Marville’s workshop in 1381–1384 and was continued by Sluter until his death in 1404, when Claus de Werve picked up the project until its completion in 1410. See Morand, Claus Sluter, I, 121–132; Lindquist, Agency, 139–148; Jugie, “The Tomb of Philip the Bold,” 222–236. It should be noted that the prototype for the tomb with mourners filing along the sides was created for Louis IX’s youngest son, Louis, who died in c. 1260. Cf. Lindquist, Agency, 142. See above, ch. 1, pp. 21–22, n.73–74;

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Figure 18 Tomb of Philip the Bold, detail of pleurants (mourners), alabaster, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon. photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

mourners.62 The perpetual performance of the pleurants is accentuated by the apertures of the arcade, while the permanence of the duke above is announced by the scale of his effigy, the material from which it is carved, the dominant color, and the insignia of his power. The mise en abyme shifts the role of the viewer to that of performer, mirroring the mourners in the micro-architecture of the tomb. Lindquist has perceptively cautioned the viewer not to confuse this arcade with either the cloister or the nave of Champmol, for tiny angels once perched atop the pilasters of this arcade, underscoring its “heavenly bias.”63 As discussed in the first chapter, this tomb type was to become identified with the Valois dynasty and influence such effigies as that of Philippe Pot, who once served in the Valois court (fig. 6). The pleurants of the latter’s tomb are life-sized and their presence as both mourners and pallbearers casts a shadow 62

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My thinking about the tomb of Philip the Bold was inspired by the brilliant work of a student in my Gothic seminar: Lola Clairmont, “Monumentality and the Hierarchy of Importance in the Tombs of Valois Burgundian Dukes and Duchesses” (paper presented at SpARC: Spring Annual Research Conference, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA, April 26, 2012). Lindquist, Agency, 144.

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Figure 19 Entombment from the Retable of Bessey-les-Cîteaux, polychrome stone relief, made by “Claus,” c. 1426–1430. photo: author.

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over the soul of the viewer. But did the artists working at Champmol also inspire the performative element that implicates the worshiper in the Entombments of this period? Followers of Claus de Werve have been identified by some scholars as the artists of the altar relief found in Bessey-les-Cîteaux near Dijon which features a poignant version of Christ’s Entombment (fig. 19); an inscription names Claus as the sculptor and Jehan de Noys, the confessor of the wife of John the Fearless, as the donor.64 Here the progression of the arcade demarcates the inexorable stages of the Passion of Christ, creating a syncopated counterpart to the blue sky that forms the basso continuo of the background of the altarpiece. The Imitatio Christi is parsed for the worshiper by the arches that comprise the late Gothic arcade and balustrade.

Portal of the Ducal Oratory and Valois Necropolis at Champmol

Before leaving Chartreuse de Champmol, one must consider the portal to the ducal oratory and necropolis of the Valois dynasty where Philip the Bold and Margaret of Flanders kneel piously before the commanding image of the Virgin and Child on the trumeau (figs. 20 and 21). Flanked by their patron saints, John the Baptist and Catherine, the kneeling patrons buttress the entrance to the chapel in the act of perpetual supplication. Their stalwart presence on this threshold has been linked to the behavior of other sculptural couples, such as Charles V and Jeanne de Bourbon in Paris. The portraits of Philip and Margaret, however, differ in significant ways from this species of royal donors. The Duke of Burgundy holds no model of the chapel, nor does the duchess. They are the only two static figures in a dynamic portal scheme, where the Virgin pivots on the trumeau and the Baptist and Catherine are depicted mid-sentence, kneeling yet standing, actively imploring the Virgin’s mercy on behalf of their mortal patrons. Again the comparison with a tableau vivant comes to mind as the Gothic formula of architectonic jamb statues is converted into a vignette of performative ducal piety. Though scholars have debated the chronology and authorship of the portal sculpture, it seems that Jean de Marville conceived of the portal

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Forsyth, The Entombment, 64, n. 9; Claus de Werve was the only other Claus besides Sluter in the Valois court. Because of the uneven quality of the work, the attribution to Claus de Werve is doubtful. Cf. Véronique Boucherat (“A New Approach to the Sculpture of Claus de Werve,” in Art from the Court of Burgundy, 320–321) who, following Pierre Camp, suggests that mention of their master’s name would enhance the prestige of the work.

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Figure 20 Portal of the Chartreuse de Champmol, Jean de Marville, Claus Sluter, and workshops, overview of portal, stone, 1385–1401. photo: author.

c. 1389 and that Claus Sluter completed the sculpture c. 1397.65 The installation of the statues proceeded piecemeal, and the disparity in size of the patrons and their divine escorts has suggested to some authors the unhappy campaign change from Marville to Sluter.66 Yet the leap in scale between the diminutive duke and duchess and their looming intercessors also betrays an ingenious conflation of size hierarchy and the simulation of private devotion promoted by the Carthusians. Lindquist has further suggested that the patrons’ attitude of prayer corresponds to the silent devotion practiced by the Carthusians. In a masterful analysis, Lindquist demonstrates how the ducal portraits have their 65

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Lindquist, Agency, 124–126; 134–138; Morand, Claus Sluter, I, 79–89; Renate Prochno, “The Portal,” in Art from the Court of Burgundy, 175–178. Prochno feels that the model for this portal was that of the Celestine church in Paris (1365–1370) with Charles V and Jeanne de Bourbon, whereas Sluter drew models for the donors from Flanders from a portal, such as that of Saint-Claire in Saint-Omer (1322–1325). Philip and Margaret also bear resemblance to funerary monuments such as that by André Beauneveu for John II the Good (d. 1364) and Philip VI (d. 1350) in Saint-Denis. Prochno, “The Portal,” 175–178.

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Figure 21 Portal of the Chartreuse de Champmol, Jean de Marville, Claus Sluter, and workshops, view of left jamb, stone, 1385–1401. photo: author.

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attention fixed on the divine realm inhabited by the Virgin and Child, the latter of whom once pointed to the Heavenly Jerusalem conjured in the baldachin above.67 The P’s and M’s on the plinth of the trumeau underscore the ownership of this heavenly vision, and the spiritual hierarchy is reinforced throughout the portal—from the inhabitants of the sculptural consoles, to the patron saints, to the elusive architectural scale with its absence of a “visual foothold” for the viewer.68

Langres Entombment and the Chartreuse de Champmol

The monuments at the Chartreuse de Champmol dwell in the realm of imagines agentes where the rhetoric is one of immediacy and where images are impressed on the mind like wax seals. What did the sculptors of the Entombments of Burgundy learn from these impressive works? One aspect of the sculptural representations of the Entombments that remains rather elusive is their mise en scène.69 The monumental Entombments are approached through the nave of a church, an aisle bay, a separate funereal chapel in a crypt, hospital, or cemetery: the architectural space varies; however, the worshiper’s penetration of the sacred space is marked by crossing a threshold to join the sacrosanct assembly of figures. Just as the alabaster monks beneath Philip the Bold’s effigy mirrored the ongoing remembrance of the duke’s soul by their living counterparts, the grieving figures at Christ’s tomb signaled the attitude the worshiper was to assume in this encounter with the dead Christ. As Gertsman has demonstrated with the intersection of art, theater, and memory, different media share the spatial dialogue of platea and locus: the spectators and actors share the former, while the latter consists of the iconic disposition of the narrative.70 In the staging of the Resurrection play, the three lamenting Marys were placed in the audience to “incite emotion;” in the same way, the locus of the sculptural Entombment is the dead body of Christ, while the surrounding figures serve as the physical conduit through which the spectator perceives the ripple effect of this death. Like a Passion play, the embodiment of this religious “still-life” foregrounds the devotional experience of the worshiper, situating the viewer’s 67 68 69 70

Lindquist, Agency, 130. Prochno, “The Portal,” 126–138. This is a difficult terrain since many of the Entombments have been moved from their original locations, however, enough are in situ to make this assertion. Elina Gertsman, “The Loci of Performance: Art, Theater, Memory,” Mediaevalia 28/1 (2007), 120. See below, ch. 4, pp. 111–148.

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body as its agent. Just as the doctrine of Salvation is transmitted to the spectator in a Passion play through the suffering Christ, so the sculptural recreation of Christ’s entombment connects the worshiper to the wounded and dying body of the Savior and thus the weight of this loss for humanity.71 I believe the effect of this tableau vivant was akin to what Scribner dubbed the “sacramental gaze” in describing the viewer’s encounter with the imago pietatis: that is, a prolonged, contemplative encounter with the dead Christ “through a combination of eye contact and gestural appeal.”72 This pantomime of piety emerges from the atelier of Claus Sluter. Indeed, as discussed above, Nash sees in the pose of both Mary Magdalene at the foot of the Cross and the emotive angels on the Well of Moses the postures of devotion to be assumed by the monks of Champmol (fig. 11).73 One of the earliest and most eloquent Entombments to emanate from the sculptural workshop of Champmol is found in the Cathedral of Saint-Mammès, Langres, dated c. 1419–1420 (fig. 22).74 Though only the figure of Christ survives from this Entombment, we know that the canon and sacrist Jean Marchand “constructed and erected a representation of the sepulcher of our Lord Jesus Christ in stone figures, painted with great care.”75 In 1421 the Bishop of Langres, Charles de Poitiers, granted Indulgences of forty days to those who took part in the daily Mass at Marchand’s altar praying for the salvation of the latter’s soul and visited the sepulcher with devotion on Fridays.76 The body of Christ serves as the mediator between the visible and the invisible, because Christ’s sacrifice exists in the eternal present, he continues to suffer and die every day. His body reasserts the historical presence of Christ, the living Sacra-

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Friedemann Kreuder, “Flagellation of the Son of God and divine flagellation: Flagellator ceremonies and flagellation scenes in the medieval passion play,” Theatre Research International 33/2 (2008), 184. Scribner, “Popular Piety”, 459–461. Nash, “New Remarks,” 3; see above, pp. 32–36, n. 27. Forsyth, The Entombment, 25–30. The Entombment was originally destined for a chapel in the south cloister of the cathedral of Langres; cf. Karsallah, Les mises au tombeau, 74–76. See Pierre Quarré, “Le Christ au Mise au Tombeau de Langres,” Revue de l’art 13 (1971), 68–71; Henry Ronot, “Une statue provenant vraisemblablement de l’ancien ‘sépulcre’ de Langres (1470),” Bulletin de la société de l’art français (1953), 15–17. Forsyth, The Entombment, 27, n. 19 and Karsallah, Les mises au tombeau, 75, n. 202 notes Pierre Quarré’s attribution of the figure of Christ to Claus de Werve (Quarré, “Le Christ,” 68–71). Forsyth, The Entombment, 28; cf. AD Haute-Marne, 2G, 189 as cited in Karsallah, Les mises au tombeau, 75, n. 204.

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Figure 22 Entombment from St.-Mammès Cathedral, Langres, effigy of Christ, Claus de Werve (?) stone, c. 1420. photo: Pascale L-R.

ment, yet it also functions as a relic. We enter the sanctuary by the blood of Christ, just as we enter heaven through his sacrifice for mankind. What emerges through this bifocal awareness of Christ’s humanity and divinity is a Christian understanding of time, one that is both historical and based on the events in Christ’s life and one that is eschatological based on the events that transcend time.77 This temporal fluidity is the hallmark of the tomb of Philip the Bold: the effigy of the duke asserts his royal rank in the heavenly realm that is beyond time, while the Carthusian cortege below weaves between the past, present, and future articulated by the three-dimensional Gothic arcade (fig. 5). By inviting the spectator to cross this spatial-temporal boundary, the mourners embody the very act of mourning. The Entombment at Langres occupied the same space where the donor Jean Marchand was to be buried, and, by June of 1421, this came to pass.78 The Entombment was thereby multivalent: at once a funerary monument and testament of personal piety, an object of public piety for the cathedral and subject 77 78

F. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship. The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy (Rome: Orientalia Christiana analecta, 1987), 103. Karsallah (Les mises au tombeau, 75–76) posits that the donor died on May 12, 1421.

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to indulgences, and finally a source of financial gain.79 From an eighteenthcentury description, we know that the body of Christ was once surrounded by seven figures: Joseph and Nicodemus, the Virgin, St. John, the Magdalen, and two other Holy Women (fig. 22).80 There is something hauntingly beautiful about this solitary figure of Christ; the absence of mourners perhaps heightens his vulnerability. His arms are crossed over the front of his body, but they do not conceal the blood that flows from his wounds; the crimson blood constitutes the only contrast to Christ’s stony, white flesh. His open mouth, furrowed brow, and aquiline nose create a foil for the curly texture of his beard and hair, and the head is made more poignant by the prominent presence of the crown of thorns. Though clearly out of its original context and stripped of its supporting cast of mourners, this early example of an Entombment still conveys the pathos of the Passion to the viewer. Because of it its early date, the Langres Entombment naturally raises the question of artistic sources.81 One intriguing, if elusive, model may have been the now lost Entombment recorded in the monastery of the Chartreuse de Champmol: a sculpture by Hennequin Prindale and/or possibly a painting by Jean Malouel which once stood near the parlor door leading from the large cloister.82 Forsyth suggests that this lost work may have depended on a design of an Entombment by Claus Sluter, however, there simply is not enough evidence to reconstruct either of these precursors. What does still remain is the carved wood and gilded Crucifixion altarpiece by Jacques de Baerze (1399) that once resided in the Chartreuse de Champmol and is now in the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts (figs. 3 and 23).83 Though Forsyth sees no relationship between the 79

80 81 82

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Forsyth, The Entombment, 27; Karsallah, Les mises au tombeau, 75; in order to guarantee his foundation, the donor assumed the rent of 160 livres tournois, plus instituted a Mass of the Dead that was repeated four times a day, and finally he left the chapter 160 livres with a house valued at 120 écus d’or. Xavier de Régel, “Histoire de Langres,” manuscript copy E, 768 in Société historique et archéologique at Langres cited in Forsyth, The Entombment, 28, n. 22. Quarré. “Le Christ,” 69 dates the creation of the Langres Christ to 1415–1419. The Entombment is mentioned in 46 H R/1901 Débris des Comptes Générales de Chartreux, 1405–1415, fol. 30v as cited in Lindquist, Agency, 81, n. 248. Whether this Entombment was a relief or freestanding is unknown, and its early date, c. 1408, would make it the earliest representation of this subject in France. Cf. Forsyth, The Entombment, 23. The Crucifixion altarpiece and its pendant, Saints and Martyrs, were commissioned by Philip the Bold in 1392 (it bears the P and M initials for Philip and his wife Margaret of Flanders); the works were begun in 1393 and completed in 1399. The verso of the altarpiece was painted by Melchior Broederlam from Ypres. See Sophie Jugie, “The Altarpiece of the Crucifixion,” in Art from the Court of Burgundy, 194. See below, ch. 5, pp. 149–153.

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Figure 23 Jacques de Baerze, Passion Altarpiece, detail of Entombment, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon. photo: François Jay, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.

altarpiece and the monumental Entombments, I feel that there is a common spirit in the parsing of the dramatic moment.84 Although the composition of the Entombment by Jacques de Baerze is unrelentingly symmetrical and overly precise in its dramatic pitch, the centralization of the swooning Virgin and John the Evangelist, and the parenthetical postures of Joseph and Nicodemus characterize many of the Burgundian Entombment sculptural groups. The work closest in style and spirit to the Langres Christ is a Christ on the Cross found at Saint-Bénigne in Dijon, now in the Archaeological Museum of that city (fig. 24).85 Attributed to Claus de Werve, this Christ resembles the transcendent guise of the Langres figure in its open mouth, firmly closed eyes, and similar hair and beard treatment. Whether or not we can attribute the Langres Christ to Claus de Werve must remain an open question, however, we are certainly within the radius of his sculptural influence and thus under the spell of the monuments created for the Chartreuse de Champmol.

84 85

Forsyth, The Entombment, 23. Véronique Boucherat, “A New Approach,” 330–331. Pierre Quarré discovered this statue in 1963 and proposed that it was the Benedictine abbey’s response to Sluter’s Great Cross at Champmol. Boucherat attributes it to the hand of Claus de Werve, dates it to the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and notes its impact on subsequent Burgundian works.

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Figure 24 Christ from Saint Bénigne, Dijon Musée archéologique, Inv. 63.5, Claus de Werve (?), stone, c. 1420. photo: F. Perrodin.



Entombments of St.-Michel at Dijon and the Hospital of St.-Esprit, Dijon

Dijon also houses another very powerful fragmentary Entombment in the south aisle of the Church of St.-Michel (fig. 25).86 Carved from a porous limestone, a modern, empty, rectangular sarcophagus forms the barrier between the viewer and Christ’s mourners, from left to right: the Virgin held by John the Evangelist, Mary Magdalene whose long hair falls into the tomb, and two Holy Women. The bowed head of the Magdalen that breaks the isocephaly of the group, while throwing into relief the lavish locks of hair so redolent with 86

This Entombment was once located in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher in the former church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, called the Jacobins, and is now in the first western bay of the south aisle of St.-Michel. Forsyth, The Entombment, 69–75, 176.

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Figure 25 Entombment in St.-Michel, Dijon, stone, c. 1435–1445. photo: author.

the task of anointing the feet of Christ, heightening the poignancy of this work (fig. 26). Mary Magdalene clasps her hands in a gesture of prayer: in lieu of the ointment jars held by the other two women, the Magdalen’s hair is her attribute, her offering of solace to the once present body of Christ. Emotions run high in this work as the Virgin, grief-stricken, stands with her hands crossed over her bosom, while John looks on with an empathetic sorrow that is palpable. The other two Holy Women are similarly somber: one is occupied with her unguent jar and the other fingers the end of the shroud. A work of the fifteenth century, the St.-Michel Entombment reveals the sculptors’ ability to economize, without sacrificing emotional potency. The sarcophagus conceals the lower half of the mourners, whose bodies are actually only half-carved. This sleight of hand is practiced in a number of Entombments, where the only fulllength figures carved are those of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.87 Forsyth feels that the St.-Michel Entombment bears the imprint of both that of Tonnerre and the Well of Moses from the Chartreuse de Champmol (figs. 7 and 11).88 The former governs the disposition of mourners with Mary Magdalene in the center, whereas the latter may be the source of the crossed arms of 87

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This abbreviation of the background figures can be seen in the Entombment of St.-Jean at Joigny, originally from Folleville, commissioned by Raoul de Lannoy and Jeanne de Poix, c. 1515. An example of all half-length figures may now be seen in the Dole Archaeological Museum, originally from Froidefontaine from the second half of the fifteenth century. Forsyth, The Entombment, 69–75.

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the Virgin, a pose that mirrors that once assumed by the Magdalen at the foot of Sluter’s Great Cross.89 The closest stylistic parallel for the St.-Michel Entombment may be found in the neighboring hospital of Saint-Esprit, which is both chronologically and geographically compelling, and to which we will now turn. Yet, the Mary Magdalene from the Entombment of St.-Michel beckons one more time: like the mourners beneath the tomb of Philip the Bold, her grief is distinctive, her flowing hair almost like a benchmark of the pain she endures (fig. 26). One internalizes Mary Magdalene’s gesture, and one’s response is visceral; in Barthes’ terms, one encounters here the punctum of this Entombment. In a chapel dedicated to Sainte-Croix-de-Jérusalem, once located in the cemetery on the grounds of the hospital of Saint-Esprit in Dijon, is an Entombment within a niche above the no longer present altar (fig. 27).90 The chapel was founded by Brother Simon Albosset in 1459, and an inscription to this effect is located right by the entrance to the chapel.91 Eight figures, slightly under life-size, surround the body of Christ, who is suspended in a copious shroud; two angels occupy the corners of the niche and above two angels flank a sculpture of the Holy Trinity.92 The Trinity is accompanied by an inscription: “Frere Simon Albosset me fist faire 1459.” (fig. 28) Flanking the Entombment on either side are two heavily restored mural paintings: on the left, Brother Crapillet, the head of the order of the Saint-Esprit, who ran the hospital, beside Guy Bernard, the bishop of Langres. The latter dedicated the chapel on behalf of the donor and head of the order on July 1, 1459. On the right wall kneels Brother Simon

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Forsyth, The Entombment, 70; Forsyth identifies the cross-armed fragment from Champmol with the Virgin, however, there may be more compelling evidence to suggest a Mary Magdalene identification. Cf. Lindquist, Agency, 56–57, fig. 2.22. Forsyth, The Entombment, 70–75; Cf. Karsallah, Les mises au tombeau, 114–119; 192–194. See also Robert Bultot, “Pierre Crapillet, Philippe le Bon et le manuscript à peinture A4 de l’Hôpital du Saint-Esprit de Dijon: remarques de méthode à propos d’une étude récente,” Le moyen âge. Revue d’histoire et de philologie 102/2 (1996), 245–287. This Entombment is very well-documented, Forsyth, The Entombment, 70, n. 27 and Karsallah, Les mises au tombeau, 115, 367. The Trinity rests on the rock of Calvary and is 175 cm high. This sculpture has been studied by several scholars, see Karsallah, Les mises au.tombeau, 115, n. 368. See François Boespflug, La Trinité dans l’art d’Occident (1400–1460): sept chefs-d’oeuvre de la peinture (Strasbourg : Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2000). The angels in the corners of the Entombment do not seem well integrated into the composition and could have been intended for another position in the original design of the altar wall. Similarly, scholars doubt that the Trinity was originally intended for its current position.

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Figure 26 Entombment in St.-Michel, Dijon, detail of Mary Magdalene. photo: author.

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Figure 27 Entombment from the Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem of the Hospital of St.-Esprit in Dijon, polychromed stone, c. 1459. photo: author.

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Figure 28 Trinity and Entombment from Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem. photo: author.

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Albosset with a model of the chapel in hand, flanked by his patron saint, the Apostle Simon.93 This elaborate mise en scène was accompanied by Albosset’s sustained interest in the chapel, for in 1461 he founded a weekly Mass and in 1479 was buried in the place of honor in front of the altar.94 It is noteworthy that although this chapel served as a private funerary chapel, it also contained the remains of numerous others.95 Thus the Dijon chapel, though privately financed, was for the repose of the souls of the departed “whose number is so great that one could not make number or estimate.” The chapel would have been used to hold Masses for those who died in the hospital, and in 1452 a confraternity was established for that sole purpose.96 The Pietà found in the chapel once occupied the altar area, and its style is close to that of the Virgin and Christ of the Entombment; the sculptors, according to Forsyth, emanated from the workshop of Jean de la Huerta and thus Champmol (fig. 29).97 Certainly the rugged faces of Joseph and Nicodemus draw their inspiration from the prophets on the Well of Moses; however, one must also consider the influence of the sculptors of Tonnerre upon the Dijon work, seen in the prominence of the shroud, the larger scale of the porters, and the way John supports the Virgin (figs. 7, 11, and 27).98 One of the most striking features of the Entombment in the Chapel of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem is the manner in which painting and sculpture conspire to create an Andachtsbild for the worshiper (fig. 28). Framed by painted patrons kneeling on either side and announced by the broad ogee arched recess, the Entombment exudes a devotional aura. The postures of the bishop of Langres and Brother Simon Albosset foster an attitude of prayer and the shroud foregrounds the lifeless body of Christ by the volume of the cloth, the angle that tips Christ toward the viewer, and its contrasting white color. The manner in which Joseph, Nicodemus, and one of the Holy Women hold the shroud actually echoes the ostension of the relic of the Holy Shroud, which was believed to be in Besançon during the later Middle Ages and was particularly venerated 93

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Forsyth, The Entombment, 70 and Karsallah, Les mises au tombeau, 115–116. The paintings were restored in the eighteenth century, and in the twentieth century under the direction of Pierre Quarré. Forsyth, The Entombment.70, and Karsallah, Les mises au tombeau, 116. Forsyth, The Entombment, 73. Even after the cemetery was abandoned, the chapel served as a mortuary depository up until the twentieth century. Forsyth, The Entombment, 73, n. 34. Forsyth, The Entombment, 71. The original location of the Pietà is unknown, as it would have been too large to be placed on the altar itself. Forsyth, The Entombment, 72.

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Figure 29 Pietà from Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem, stone, c. 1460. photo: author.

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in this region of France.99 The ostension of the Shroud was always lengthwise and by three to five people, just as it is in many Entombments. The Shroud symbolized the Resurrection of Christ in the Quem quaeritis in the Regularis Concordia as the text demonstrates: When (the Quem queritis) had been said (the angel) … shall rise and lift up the veil (of the sepulcher) and shall show them (ostendat) the place void of the Cross and with only the linen in which the Cross had been wrapped. Seeing this the Maries shall lay down their thuribles in that same sepulcher and, taking the linen, shall hold it up before the clergy; and as though showing (ostendentes) that the Lord was risen and no long­er wrapped in it, they shall sing this antiphon: “The Lord has arisen from the sepulcher.” They shall then lay the linen upon the altar.100 As Campbell points out, in the performance of this dialogue, ostensive actions demonstrate meaning. The actors point to the empty tomb and hold up the grave linens.101 The mourners in the Dijon Entombment similarly display the body of Christ upon the shroud to the worshipers (fig. 27). In the context of this communal funereal chapel, the prominence of the shroud may stand for the resurrection of all the believers who died with Christ. Just as all the deceased were buried with their hands crossed before their bodies to imitate Christ before Pilate, the shroud erased the distinctions between rich and poor.102 The shroud in the Entombment and its symbolic counterpart on the altar below would have certainly been reinforced for the worshiper as the Mass of the Dead was repeatedly recited in this chapel. Touching the shroud in this Entombment, as well as that of Tonnerre, may reflect on the

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Forsyth, The Entombment, 63, n. 3. The Shroud was kept in Besançon, Bourg-en-Bresse, Saint-Hippolyte, Chambéry, Lirey, and Savoy before making its way to Turin. There are of course other Holy Shrouds recorded in Cadouin, Compiègne, and elsewhere. Campbell, “Liturgical Drama,” 627, quoting from the tenth-century Regularis Concordia. Campbell, “Liturgical Drama”, 628. Daniele Alexandre-Didon, À Réveiller les morts. Le mort au quotidian dans l’occident médiéval, ed. Cécile Treffont (Lyon: Presses Universitaire de Lyon, 1993), 194. Crossed hands also signified modesty, prayer, resignation, supplication, and shame. The aristocrats would be buried in their clothes in contrast to the unclothed poor; however, the shrouds would conceal this distinction. Of course the tomb would undoubtedly reveal the status of the deceased.

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patron’s beneficence, as one of the Seven Acts of Mercy was the burying of the unburied.103 The other aspect of burial that seems curiously acknowledged in this Entombment is the role of the spices used to prepare Christ’s body for interment. The Holy Woman to the right of Joseph of Arimathea holds her open jar in one hand and reaches toward it with her other hand; the Holy Woman standing by her side prominently displays her respective vessel, while lifting the shroud with her free hand (fig. 27). This practice of embalming joined the faithful to Christ as it enhanced the sanctity of the body.104 In short, it would seem that this theatrical Entombment is rather topographically charged to compliment the commemorative funerary function of the chapel in which it is located.

Lons-le-Saunier and the Embodiment of Perception

Located in Franche-Comté in the Jura in the Church of St.-Désiré of Lons-leSaunier is an Entombment in the guise of a Pietà (fig. 30).105 Closely related to the sculpture in the Chapel of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem in the hospital at Dijon and also found above an altar, this under life-size group features a semicircle of mourners around the Virgin with Christ’s limp body on her lap. Indeed, the centerpiece of this work is exceedingly close in style to the Pietà from the chapel at the hospital of Dijon (fig. 29). The shroud held down in front of their bodies constitutes the connective tissue that links Nicodemus on the left, the Holy Women, and Joseph on the right together as the human foil to this

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Karsallah, “Mises au Tombeau,” 295 and n. 52. Karsallah, Les mises au tombeau, 186–189. Embalming either with mercury and spices or with salt was reserved for the privileged. Although it was used for different purposes (to prepare to face God, to prove one’s enemies are dead, to place saints and other important people on display), there are records of embalming failures, such as that of Charles the Bald! Forsyth, The Entombment, 75. The Entombment in this church was originally either from the abbey of Gigny, which was once under the auspices of Baume-les-Messieurs; or it may have been associated with the tomb of Jeanne de Montbéliard, who died in 1445; she was the first wife of the wealthy Louis de Chalon, and the work may have once been in the church of the Cordeliers of Lons. See Franck Bourdier, La sculpture en Savoie au XVe siècle et la mise au tombeau d’Annecy, couvent du Saint-Sépulcre, Annesci 21 (Annecy : Société des Amis du vieil Annecy, 1978), 45. Forsyth also speculates that the wealthy Chalon family may have donated the Entombment.

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Figure 30 Entombment/Pietà from St.-Désiré, Lons-le-Saunier, stone, mid-15th century. photo: author.

iconic moment between the Virgin and Christ.106 Not only does the shroud unify the five figures that hold a portion of it, but it also serves as a powerful boundary line excluding the two soldiers that occupy the left and right corners of the enclosing niche (fig. 30). The soldiers’ presence as outsiders is further distinguished by the angled pose of the guard on the right, who seems to be looking over his shoulder at the Entombment, and the oblique position of the guard on the left.107 Is it possible for a work of smaller stature to impart as much emotional force upon the viewer as a life-size sculptural Entombment? The artists of the Lonsle-Saunier Entombment-Pietà seemed to invest a lot in the role of body language and particularly the potency of gesture; the impossible arc of Christ’s body is accentuated by the weight of his head and made doable by the expan106

107

Forsyth, The Entombment, 75; Forsyth suggests that the position of Joseph and Nicodemus has been switched in this monument, because the former has a longer beard and appears more venerable. The inclusion of the guards at the tomb seems to be a more sophisticated compositional maneuver than the diminutive angels that occupy the corners of the Dijon hospital Entombment. Forsyth (The Entombment, 75–76) feels that the Lons Entombment derives from that of Dijon for stylistic reasons and he dates it to the 1470s to 1480s because of the style of the guards’ armor.

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siveness of the Virgin’s skirt and her left arm, which echoes Christ’s left arm, and anchors his body to her lap. Joseph and Nicodemus, like bookends, hold the slack shroud in both hands like a jump rope. The Holy Women expressively hold their hands before or upon their bodies, while grasping a part of the shroud that flows between them. Their collective pantomime of grief inspires a similar response from the worshiper; the scale almost personalizes the character of this religious experience, as it has truly become an Andachtsbild. Maurice Merleau-Ponty conceives of the perception of a work of art as an embodied experience, that is we need our bodies to apprehend the significance of objects. Vision itself is spatial.108 Our knowledge of the world is composed of a series of “carnal formulae” that are perceived by all the senses and interact with our “intentional arc” that conditions what we see.109 What strikes me as compelling about Merleau-Ponty’s observations about art is his belief about art’s function: “it gives visible existence to what profane vision believes to be invisible.”110 On a very visceral level, the Entombment brings into focus a knowledge of Christ’s death that shows the coalescence of the past, present, and future. Merleau-Ponty’s conception of our dialectic between the body and the world elicits a similar overlapping of temporal boundaries necessary to gauge the depth of an object. The latter is not the property of the object or an intellectual construct, but rather resolved by the body’s engagement with the object.111 The Passion of Christ no longer exists in linear time: there is a fusion of history, ritual, and the sacred place in the experience of the faithful. And this liminal space lies at the very heart of the experience of the Entombment sculpture. Tilley has demonstrated how we need material objects to negotiate our perceptions of the world; in other words, all humans think metaphorically as we objectify culture in order to fully comprehend it. Unlike the linear nature of linguistic metaphors, solid metaphors are spatial: we perceive them experientially as embodied beings.112 The emphatic presence of the shroud in the Entomb­ments from Tonnerre, St.-Michel, the Dijon hospital chapel, and Lons108

109 110 111 112

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith (London: Routledge, 1982), 135–137; cf. Monika M. Langer, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. A Guide and Commentary (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1989), 47–53; 60–79. Cf. Paul Crowther, “Merleau-Ponty: Perception into Art,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 22/2 (1982), 138–149. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, 136; Crowther, “Merleau-Ponty,” 139. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” in Aesthetics, ed. Harold Osborne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 62, as cited in Crowther, “Merleau-Ponty,” 146, n. 20. Langer, A Guide, 84–85. Tilley, Metaphor, 263.

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le-Saunier alludes to the Resurrection of Christ (figs. 7, 25, 27, and 30). As Tilley points out, it is only in the performative context that material metaphors are explicitly foregrounded and become the subject of verbal discourse, say, for example, during Easter week, when the Entombment would resonate with the liturgy that was performed.113 Yet the display of Christ’s dead body surrounded by mourners within a shallow theatrical shadowbox provided the worshiper a very tangible, and I would argue, moving devotional experience.

Entombment from Froidefontaine, Dole Archaeological Museum

Originally housed in a chapel in Froidefontaine that was destroyed in 1864 and now displayed in the Museum of Fine Art and Archaeology in Dole, are the half-length figural remains from a fifteenth-century Entombment (fig. 31).114 The mourners are separated into two fragments: the Virgin, St. John, and Mary Magdalene form one half of the group and the two Holy Women form the second part, though their complicity is confirmed by the shroud that unifies them (fig. 32). Though provincial and almost rustic in comparison to the Dijonnais models that must have inspired the sculptors, a spirit of genuine originality animates these mourners. The figure of Mary Magdalene is particularly striking as she places one hand on John’s shoulder and thrusts the other rather poig­nantly into the sarcophagus, as if to draw the worshiper’s eye to the subject of the Passion. Her long hair, sorrowful expression, and penitent body enveloped in drapery create a memorable image of this enigmatic follower of Christ. The Virgin Mary, covered head and arms poetically balanced on the shroud, and the Evangelist, bareheaded and solicitous, lean into each other for support. The Holy Women, almost as if choreographed, respond to the Virgin and John, by leaning away from each other, each proffering her spice jar and lost in her own contemplation of Christ’s death (figs. 31 and 32). What would this Christ have looked like? Joseph and Nicodemus? Impossible to know and perhaps some works of art are more poetic as fragments. The Dole fragments resist easy categorization; it is easy to dismiss them as provincial. Yet, their sorrow is contagious, and, coupled with the other works by these sculptors in the same museum, a Saint Christopher and Virgin and Child, these 113 114

Tilley, Metaphor, 264. Forsyth, The Entombment, 73–74, 176. The sculpture, dating from c. 1460, was already in fragmentary condition in 1855, and its precise origins remain somewhat of a mystery. Cf. L’abbé P. Brune, “Le Musée de Dôle et les statues dijonnaises de Froidefontaine,” Réeunion des sociétés des Beaux-Arts des départments 32 (1908), 147–153.

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Figure 31 Entombment from Froidefontaine in Dole Musée des Beaux-Arts, polychromed stone, second half of 15th century. photo: author.

Figure 32 Entombment from ­Froidefontaine, detail of Mary Magdalene. photo: author.

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figures betray an original approach to late medieval sculpture. There is a certain genuine esprit de corps at work here! We began this chapter searching for the force that makes these Entombments compelling testimonies to the Passion. As vehicles to aid the worshiper in suffering in the manner that Christ did, the bleeding wounds and piercing crown of thorns were the vocabulary of pain. But, the artists of the Entombments learned their syntax from the creators of the works from the Chartreuse de Champmol. Honed by the chisel of Claus Sluter, the prophets Isaiah and Daniel on the Well of Moses heatedly discuss the Passion of Christ just as the promise of salvation flows from Christ’s wounds to the font of life below their feet (fig. 16). The present tense of this monument is insured by each worshiper’s encounter with the sculpture; the Entombment also requires the viewer to approach the mourners and join their community of sorrow. Art truly does give “visible existence to what profane vision believes to be invisible.”115 115

See note 110 above.

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Chapter 3

The Entombment of Christ: The Absent Presence of the Resurrected Christ and the Holy Sepulcher The Entombment of Christ as it is rendered in late medieval sculpture is a fiction. It is the conflation of scenes from the Passion narrative that throws into relief an image of Christ that is laden with unbearable defeat, yet also portends imminent victory over death. Inherent in the Entombment of Christ is his Resur­rection after three days in the tomb, an event that is presaged by the presence of the Holy Women at his graveside. Though the Pseudo-Gospel of Nicodemus nominally accounts for the mourners not scripted as present in the canonical Gospels, the three Marys at the tomb of Christ were synonymous with the absence of Christ, or, more precisely, his divine presence implicit in the Resurrection. Indeed, at the same moment the Quem quaeritis drama was being enacted in the tenth and eleventh century, there were a number of visual representations of the angel pointing to the empty shroud as the Holy Women gaze at the vacant tomb.1 Why then linger over the body of Christ as the mourners do in these tableaux vivants? Worshipers need what is tangible in order to grasp the meaning of ideas, particularly something as abstract as the Resurrection. Thomas Campbell notes that later vernacular playwrights dwelt very little on the scene at the tomb, but rather highlighted the many appearances of Christ after his Resurrection. “They understood that a play’s pious secular audience needed repeated demonstrations of the resurrected savior’s actual appearance among them.”2 The body of Christ was both the representation of the tortured death and the experience of that death.3 The worshipers are marshaled as witnesses to this liminal moment when Christ’s body is the locus of his suffering and transcendence. The representation of the Resurrection gradually evolved to feature a triumphant figure of Christ hovering over the lid of his tomb with a flag of victory in one hand and blessing with his other hand; this image grows out of early depictions of the Ascension and was first formulated in manuscript painting and 1 2 3

Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman (New York: Graphic Society, 1971), II, 182–186; 208–210. Campbell, “Liturgical Drama,” 625. Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 61.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/ 9789004293144 _005

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ivories.4 The Ascension, which is mentioned in the Bible, occurs forty days after the Resurrection; the latter, though not explicitly mentioned in the Gospels, is signaled by the Holy Women at the tomb, a metonym for Christ’s triumph over death.5 Depicting this moment of transcendence posed problems for medieval artists, and the presence of Christ’s tortured body satisfied the longing to know the pain he endured for mankind’s sins. Yet, I would argue that there are two absent presences in the midst of the mourners at Christ’s grave. The first unstated presence is that of the risen Christ. As Caroline Walker Bynum has noted in regard to the Man of Sorrows during the later Middle Ages, the half-dead Christ is both mournful and mourned, with the hint of the Resurrection; in the cult of the wounds of Christ, there was a simultaneity of op­ posites: life and death, glory and agony, salvation and sin.6 Similarly, the Entombment group is embedded with an image of the degradation and final death of the mortal Christ, yet the three Marys signify the Resurrection of the Lord on Easter Sunday. The site of the Entombment thereby becomes a highly charged and ambivalent one: for it is where inexpressible grief was transformed into wonder, awe, and triumph. The second absent presence to be discussed below is that of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the site of Christ’s tomb. The very attraction of the real Holy Sepulcher for pilgrims in the Middle Ages was that it symbolized redemption;7 thus to be buried in close proximity to a sculptural Entombment, a veritable prefiguration of Paradise, would be a compelling motivation for a donor contemplating the decorative scheme of his funereal chapel.8 The crusades provided men with firsthand knowledge of both the Holy Sepulcher and the 4

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This is an extremely complex subject, one that lies beyond the scope of this book. However, see Elly Cassee, Kees Berserik, and Michael Hoyle, “The Iconography of the Resurrection: A Re-Examination of the Risen Christ Hovering above the Tomb,” The Burlington Magazine 126/970 (1984), 20–24. Cf. Franz Rademacher, “Zu den frühesten Darstellungen der Auferstehung Christi,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 28/3 (1965), 195–224. The Ascension is mentioned in Acts 1.9–11 and briefly alluded to in Luke 24.50–53 and Mark 16.19. See Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 8. Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 150–151. For the iconographic permutations of the Man of Sorrows, see Colum Hourihane, “Defining Terms: Ecce Homo, Christ of Pity, Christ Mocked, and the Man of Sorrows,” in New Perspectives on the Man of Sorrows, eds. Catherine R. Puglisi and William L. Barcham (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2013), 19–47. Bresc-Bautier, “Les imitations,” 318–342, esp. 321–323; cf. Dansette, “Les pèlerins,” 301–314. Bresc-Bautier, “Les imitations,” 321.

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itinerary followed by Christ during Holy Week. These eyewitness accounts were fueled by strong devotion to the Passion, and the latter was encouraged by the religious orders, such as the Hospitaliers, the Templars, the Franciscans, and others.9 The desire to simulate the stages of Christ’s Passion was at its height when these Entombments were created.10 Though Sylvie Aballéa draws a firm distinction between the monumental evocations of the Holy Sepulcher itself and the iconography of the Entombment, both would have transported the worshiper to the time and place of Christ’s death and seem to me to have functioned symbolically in a similar way.11 Indeed, the examples of Entombments found in the abbey of Issoudun, La Prée, Bourges, and St. Nicolas in Troyes were crafted according to the very dimensions of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem; the sculptor of the example in St. Nicolas made two trips to the Holy Land for that purpose (fig. 33).12 The sculptural Entombments that conjured the absent presence of the Holy Sepulcher in the Holy Land were lieux de mémoire.13 For Pierre Nora, memory is in a sense an absent presence, for the setting of the memory has grown dim. The Entombments in their verisimilitude capture the vivid presence of Christ’s last moments as a mere mortal mourned by his most cherished followers.

Entombment of Semur-en-Auxois

One of the most beautiful Burgundian Entombments is now located in a chapel off the north side aisle of Notre-Dame in Semur-en-Auxois (fig. 1).14 It was originally commissioned by Jacotin Ogier and his wife, Pernette, in 1490 and donated to the church of the Carmelites.15 Originally punctuated by four, or possibly six, flying angels adossed to the wall behind, seven figures surround 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

Dansette, “Les pèlerins,” 303–305, 309. The confraternity of the Holy Sepulcher had a special devotion to the Entombment as a work of art to donate to churches. Cf. Bresc-Bautier, “Les imitations,” 321–322; 328–329. Dansette, “Les pèlerins,” 310; Dansette notes that between 1450–1550 preaching Pascal sermons also reached a high point. Cf. Martin, La statuaire, 23–25. Aballéa, Les saints sépulcres, 18–19. Heales, “Easter Sepulcres,” 292. Les Lieux de mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Edition Gallimard), 7 vols. 1984–1992; The Entombment was restored by Marcel Maimponte in 1963 and is made of painted limestone (Dijon, Inventaire of the Côte-d’Or). Forsyth, The Entombment, 76; the Carmelite church was confiscated as national property in 1789, and in 1791 the Entombment was moved to its present location.

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Figure 33 Entombment in St.-Nicolas, Troyes, stone, early 16th century. photo: Pascale L-R.

the body of Christ, which is suspended above his sarcophagus.16 Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, their bodies inclined toward the viewer, hold the shroud by its four corners in a manner similar to that seen in the chapel of the hospital at Dijon (fig. 34). However, the effect is quite different, as the porters, each standing on a stone step, seem to hesitate with the body of Christ hovering momentarily above his empty coffin, the latter sparsely articulated by two handles. Elevated on a higher perch stand the parenthetical Holy Women, one holding the crown of thorns and the other the nails, with the Virgin supported by John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene in the center. An air of exquisite sadness permeates the group of mourners, a mood that is subsumed by the praying angels that once surmounted the Entombment. The emotional power of this Entombment is enhanced by the full-length view of the mourners and the symmetry that governs their disposition. The arms of St. John and the Magdalen reach to steady the standing swoon of the 16

Two angels are in the Louvre and two in the municipal museum in Semur-en-Auxois; Forsyth (The Entombment, 76), following Aenne Liebreich, proposes an original tally of six angels, because that would parallel dramatic texts of the period, as well as correspond to the Well of Moses at Champmol. Françoise Baron, Sculpture Française, I. Moyen Âge, Musée du Louvre, Département des sculptures du Moyen Âge, de la Renaissance et des Temps Modernes (Paris: Éditions de la Reunion des musées nationaux, 1996), 182–183, attributes the angels to Antoine Le Moiturier.

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Figure 34 Entombment of Christ, Church of the Nativity, Semur-en-Auxois, detail of Joseph of Arimathea and Christ. photo: author.

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Virgin, and their motion mimics the outstretched arms of the porters before them. There is also a heightened awareness of the suffering endured by Christ as the Holy Women actively proffer the instruments of the Passion, and the Magdalen’s spice jar teeters on the ledge of the sarcophagus. It is not surprising that scholars have sought a name for the artist of this work, and the atelier of Antoine Le Moiturier has been suggested.17 The sculptural style, like that of Tonnerre, emanates from Champmol as evident in the sure handling of the drapery and the range of facial expressions. The other work often attributed to Le Moiturier is the tomb of Philippe Pot, who was actually from the region of Semur-en-Auxois even though he was buried at Cîteaux.18 The hooded figures that carry the effigy of the Burgundian seneschal, the deep folds of the drapery, and somber tenor to the tomb figures anticipate the Semur-en-Auxois ­mourners.19 The Entombment serves a commemorative function and as such is a souvenir of this last stage of Christ’s mortal journey. The culmination of the Via Dolorosa, begun by the Franciscans and “canonized” by William Wey‘s pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1462, was the Entombment of Christ.20 By following the steps of Christ, suffering as he did on the Cross and finally resting with him at the tomb, the worshiper participated in his death and Resurrection. The material presence of the Entombment denies the moment of death by imposing the stasis of an eternal death upon Christ.21 In other words, all souvenirs collapse the passage of time so that the distant past becomes the eternal present. The tomb possesses a commemorative and communicative function.22 John Paoletti characterizes works of art as efficacious agents of the sacral, inviting the wor17

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19 20 21 22

Forsyth, The Entombment, 76, n. 46 and Baron, Sculpture Française, 182–183. The angels both at the heads of the effigies of John the Fearless and Margaret of Burgundy and the bust of an earlier angel from Strasbourg have been attributed to that artist and bear a resemblance to the Semur-en-Auxois angels. The Inventaire of Côte-d’Or suggests that the sculptor may have been Chandelier Guillaume, also credited with the tomb of Philippe Pot. Henri David, De Sluter à Sambin. Le Fin du Moyen Age. Essai critique sur la sculpture et le décor monumental en Bourgogne au XVième et au XVI ième siècles (Paris: Libraire Ernest Leroux, 1933), 21. Forsyth, The Entombment, 77; however, David and Forsyth see a new Flemish influence in the Entombment group. Martin, La statuaire, 33. Susan Stewart, On Longing. Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 144. Hans Belting, The Image and its public in the Middle Ages: Form and function of early paintings of the Passion (New Rochelle, NY: A.D. Caratzas, 1990), 16; Belting was invoking Veronica’s veil, however, I feel that the Entombment replicates this double function.

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shiper to participate in the Passion of Christ.23 The worshiper, by virtue of his or her engagement with this tableau vivant, realizes the sting of death and the promise of life everlasting. The Resurrection is absent, but it is present in the aftermath of the story. Indeed, the imminence of heaven at Semur-en-Auxois was asserted by the presence of the praying angels that once surmounted the Entombment.

Talant: Wounds of Christ

The Church of Talant, located in the outskirts of the city of Dijon, houses two Entombments: an earlier one, under life-size, in the south aisle and a later example in the west end of the church on the north side (fig. 35).24 The eightperson composition of the earlier Entombment pays homage to its Burgundian precursors; the form of the sarcophagus hails from Semur-en-Auxois, the order of the figures conforms to that found in the chapel at the hospital in Dijon, and the drapery, though almost baroque in its swaggering folds, resembles the Dijonnais style as seen, for example, in the Entombment at Lons-le-Saunier (figs. 1, 27, and 30, respectively). Economically conceived, the five mourners behind the body of Christ are half-length and rest on a stone plinth, while Joseph and Nicodemus, striking balletic poses, man the shroud as if it were a hammock in which Christ is upheld. The drama is enhanced by the contrast of the exaggerated curve of Christ’s enshrouded body juxtaposed with the verticality of the mourners.25 The number of mourners, as well as their individual attitudes of grief, engenders pathos; John wipes the tears from his right eye, the Marys are occupied with their various unguent jars, and the Virgin clasps her hands in front of her waist as she gazes toward her dead son. The role of costume is particularly striking here, as mantles are disposed with a flourish: the loop of drapery pinned to the Virgin’s torso by her hands, the graceful flow of cloth that covers Mary Magdalene’s head, and the amazing tights, robes, and mantles worn by the porters. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, whose positions may be reversed in this Entombment, warrant further comment (fig. 35).26 Nicodemus, the figure 23 24 25 26

John T. Paoletti, “Wooden Sculpture in Italy as Sacral Presence,” Artibus et Historiae 26 (1992), 85–100. See Forsyth, The Entombment, 79, 129, 156; cf. Martin, La statuaire, 218. Martin, La statuaire, 218. Forsyth, The Entombment, 79, simply suggests that it may be Nicodemus at the head in the Talant Entombment; (Forsyth also suggests that Joseph and Nicodemus have switched

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Figure 35 Entombment from Talant, stone, c. 1520–1530. photo: author.

at Christ’s head, wears a short tunic with fur-trimmed sleeves, boots, and a copious mantle tied at the waist that vies with the shroud he holds in both hands. His hat, tied around his neck to secure it, rests on his back and resembles an inflated two-story turban with two broad tassels. Nothing spelled Jerusalem to the sculptors of the Entombments more than exotic headgear and elaborate purses worn by the porters of Christ. Joseph wears a two-layered tunic with a beautifully rendered ruffle where the sleeves emerge. A sash of cloth worn diagonally and tied at the back leads the eye to his robust turban with its corresponding train. These elaborate costumes threaten to distract the viewer from the subject of the Entombment, however, the figure of Christ is strangely moving (fig. 36). Christ’s head has rolled to the side revealing traces of the blood that was caused by the now absent crown of thorns, while the locks of his hair are splayed around his head, dramatically encroaching on the border of the shroud. The wounds from the spear and the stigmata are graphically depicted on his still muscular body. The emphatic wounds of Christ were the most transparent vehicle for worshipers to comprehend the meaning of Christ’s roles in the Entombment-Pieà at Lons-le-Saunier (75), because the former has a longer beard and seems older. See above, ch. 2, 66–69, n. 106.)

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Figure 36 Entombment from Talant, detail of Christ. photo: author.

sacrifice for mankind: when a Beguine nun by the name of Gertrude received the stigmata on Good Friday in 1340, she was dismayed, because they called attention to her and away from God. She prayed for the stigmata to go away, until she realized that they were there to edify others; so she prayed for them to return: the stigmata affirmed the belief in the crucified Christ for the whole community.27 As Muessig points out, without that audience, the stigmata lacked meaning.28 The Franciscans advocated repeated meditation on the Passion of Christ in order to approach a mystical union with the Divine. That was, after all, how St. Francis received the stigmata.29 The visible world was a sign of the invisible:

27 28 29

Muessig, “Performance of the Passion,” 133–134. Muessig, “Performance of the Passion,” 134. Henning Laugerud, “Visuality and Devotion in the Middle Ages,” in Instruments of Devotion and the Practices and Objects of Religious Piety from the Late Middle Ages to the 20th Century, eds. Henning Laugerud and Laura Katrine Skinnebach (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2007), 173–188; cf. Sandro Sticca, “Officium Passionis Domini: An Unpublished Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century,” Franciscan Studies 34, XII (1974), 153–157; cf. Jane C. Long, “Salvation through Meditation: The Tomb Frescoes in the Holy Confessors Chapel at Santa Croce in Florence,” Gesta 34/1 (1995), 84.

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a way to know the supernatural was to know the natural.30 Worship was an intensely visual experience. It was not uncommon during Easter week to have a figure of Christ with movable arms and legs, a side that could be pierced, and human hair; not only was he stabbed during the Crucifixion, letting out a quantity of pig’s blood, but a hole in the church roof allowed him to exit during the staging of the Ascension.31 The dead Christ in this Entombment was similarly a devotional text to be read by the worshiper’s body, for the latter was the door to Christ’s incarnation, suffering, death, resurrection, and thus salvation. “The body of the believer was a powerful organ of religious knowing in late medieval visual piety.”32 As Miri Rubin demonstrated, the bleeding, dying body came to be identified with the essence of Christ’s humanity.33 Preoccupation with the moment of Christ’s death and with his sufferings dominated late medieval orthodoxy and the devotion it fostered; this in turn generated the granting of Indulgences, up to 32,755 years of pardon for those who devoutly repeated before the image of the suffering Christ five Paters, five Aves, and a Creed.34 Ludolph of Saxony implored the pious to venerate each of Christ’s wounds with the Lord’s Prayer fifteen times a day in memory of his suffering; indeed, his wounds were the most widespread object of prayers, either 5,460 or 5,490 as recounted in visions and popularized by Ludolph of Saxony.35 Christ’s wounds were the opening 30 31

32 33 34 35

Scribner, “Popular Piety,” 457. Scribner, “Popular Piety,” 456–457; cf. Paoletti, “Wooden Sculpture,” 85–110; Kamil Kopania, “‘The idolle that strode there in myne opynyon a very monstrous sight’: On a number of late-medieval animated figures of Crucified Christ,” in Material of Sculpture: Between Technique and Semantics, ed. Aleksandra Lipinska (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwerytetu Wroclaskiego, 2009), 131–148. Also, see Roger E. Reynolds, “The Drama of Medieval Liturgical Processions,” Revue de Musicologie 86/1 (2000), 127–142. Richard C. Trexler, “Being and Non-Being: Parameters of the Miraculous in the Traditional Religious Image,” in The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, eds. Erik Thuno and Gerhard Wolf (Rome: Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, Suppl. XXXIII, Accademia di Danimarca, 2004), 15–27. David Morgan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 66. Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 303, n. 11. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 239–242. Thomas Lentes, “Counting Piety in the Late Middle Ages,” in Ordering Medieval Society Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, ed. Bernard Jussen and trans. Pamela Selwyn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 58–59. A similarly graphic approach to the wounds of Christ was observed on the late Medieval stage, where, for example, at the end of the York Crucifixio Christi, the figure of

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through which the worshiper entered the heavenly Jerusalem.36 What emerges in a text such as Julian of Norwich’s Showings is her twofold understanding of Christ’s blood as both real and salvific, not as an allegorical or mystical allusion.37 It is this material presence of blood, which is so palpable in many of the Entombments, that corresponds to a contemporary theological movement, which sought to quantify the blood shed by Christ.38 A focus on the wounds led to a devotion to the Arma Christi and the 547,500 drops of blood that were shed by Christ during the Passion.39 People began to speculate on the length of the nails used during the Crucifixion, how many hammer blows he received, and how deep the spear wound was in Christ’s heart; this thirst for details included picturing Christ’s body in the tomb in order to visualize the end of his human suffering. Details of the conversation between Joseph and Nicodemus and incidents that occurred during the deposition and burial of Christ were reconstructed for the faithful. The Meditationes Vitae Christi urged the worshiper to see, hear, touch, and know intimately and fondly the human Christ, for that was the portal to his divinity.40 The wounds of Christ became a primary symbol of atonement in medieval iconography

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Christ “must be seen dripping with blood from bruises and wounds that extend from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet…” See Clifford Davidson, “Sacred Blood and the Late Medieval Stage,” Comparative Drama 31/3 (1997), 436–458, esp. 443. Hebrews 10.19; Isaiah 53.5; For by his wounds, we are healed. John C. Hirsch, “Christ’s Blood,” in The Boundaries of Faith. The Development and Transmission of Medieval Spirituality (Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill, 1996), 94–95; it is the fourth chapter of Showings that dwells on Christ’s blood as a physical presence. Cf. Areford, “The Passion Measured,”, 211–238. Areford (238) in speaking about a woodcut of Christ as a Man of Sorrows, speaks of his body combining a symbolic and devotional dimension with a realistic and spatial dimension. Hirsch, “Christ’s Blood,” 98–99. Hirsch, “Christ’s Blood,” 98–102. This led to the so-called Blood Controversy in c. 1462 between the Franciscans and Dominicans; the former felt that it was Christ’s death that garnered human salvation, not his blood. The Dominicans believed that Christ’s blood was divine and that he retained all of it during the resurrection. This was only resolved by a papal bull in 1464 in favor of the Dominicans, however, Pope Pius II also insisted that the Franciscan position was not heretical. The theological conundrum with the Dominican victory was the existence of the Holy Blood relics, which proliferated during the later Middle Ages. See Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011), 33–117. Robert Worth Frank, Jr., “Meditationes Vitae Christi: The Logistics of Access to Divinity,” in Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture, eds. Patrick J. Gallacher and Helen Damico (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 42.

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and thus the object of the most intense devotion.41 In the lyrics of a Passion play, the audience was urged to meditate on the wounds and blood of Christ as a means of drawing closer to him, suggesting that the drama implicated the viewers in the action; indeed, the audience became participants in the act of collective memory that made visible the events of salvation history.42 Do the Entombments not function in a similar fashion? The sculptural reenactment of entombing the mortal flesh of the Savior prompts a bifocal awareness of Christ’s humanity and divinity, one that was vividly experienced by the worshiper.43 As Hirsch so poetically put it: Christ’s wounds show death, but also death’s failure.44 Lurking at the site of the tomb was the absent presence of the Resurrection of Christ.

Granting Indulgences: The Entombment of Chaumont-en-Bassigny

One of the most elaborate Entombments is found in a funerary chapel in the west end of the church of St.-Jean-Baptiste of Chaumont-en-Bassigny (fig. 4).45 The chapel was founded by Marguerite de Baudricourt, the widow of Geoffrey de Saint-Belin, in June of 1471.46 A letter obtained by Geoffrey de Saint-Belin from King Louis XI in 1463 guaranteed the purchase of the land for this chapel, which was to be furnished with sculptures and have religious services.47 The 41 42

43 44 45

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Davidson, “Sacred Blood,” 447. Davidson, “Sacred Blood,” 448. As Davidson points out, these plays served mnemonic and devotional functions; indeed, if the Chester play were viewed, “in pecible manner with gode devocion,” one was released from forty days in Purgatory (450, n. 83). Frank, “Meditationes,” 43–45. Frank, “Meditationes,” 99, 135, 142. Forsyth, The Entombment, 153; cf. Jacques Baudoin, La sculpture flamboyante en Champagne Lorraine (Nonette: Créer, 1990), 51. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 65–70 points out that it is not a simple funerary chapel. See also Geneviève Lamontre-Delerue, La basilique Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Chaumont (Langres, 1988); Christelle Maître, Le sépulcre de Chaumont (Chaumont, 1997); Henry Ronot, “Le sépulcre de Chaumont-en-Bassigny,” Bulletin de la société de l’art français (1970), 5–17. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 65; the donor was acting on behalf of a number of inhabitants of the city, such as the chapter of the church, the tutor of her daughters, the town clerk, etc. The terms of the foundation were decided upon while Geoffrey de Saint-Belin was still alive. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 65–66. The cost for these services was fifty pounds tournois. Forsyth (The Entombment, 154) suggests that only the Christ figure and the wall paintings date to the fifteenth century and that the other figures reflect the stylistic traits of the sixteenth century.

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widow of Geoffrey de Saint-Belin was given the keys to the chapel; it was said to have been “assiz et bien assouviz” shortly after the donation, even though the sculpture in the chapel reflects two separate campaigns.48 Because the coat of arms of the Amboise family is displayed with that of the Baudricourt, both upheld by angels, it is quite likely that members of the Amboise family added statues to this densely populated Entombment group.49 A deep niche barely contains eight of the ten mourners gathered around the sarcophagus in which Christ lies upon his shroud (fig. 37). Joseph and Nicodemus kneel at either end of the coffin, and the lid is ominously propped up against the balustrade. Two painted keystones, one of Charity and the other of Justice, decorate the chapel’s vaults.50 Further, the instruments of the Passion are painted on the chapel wall, and flying angels occupy both the sculpted corbels that terminate the pendant ribs of the vault. Their painted counterparts adorn the two-dimensional lancets behind the Entombment. The porters do not occupy themselves with that task, but rather hold the spice jars for the preparation of Christ’s body for burial. Their costumes and facial types betray their later conception; perhaps the most striking aspect of the mourners is their highly individualized countenances.51 Indeed, Jacques Baudoin identifies five of the figures as portraits of the Amboise family in the back row, from left to right: Jean d’Amboise, his wife Catherine de Saint-Belin, Marguerite de Baudricourt, St. John, and then Geoffrey de Saint-Belin as the elderly man in the corner. Guyonne de Saint-Belin would be the Holy Woman kneeling in the first row on the left side.52 Though this degree of precision seems risky, the sacred figures, whose identity similarly remains shrouded in mystery, do seem to be in the guise of particular individuals, and the donors would be the obvious suspects!53 48 49 50

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Forsyth, The Entombment, 154–155; Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 69–70. Ibid. One of the daughters (Catherine) of the Baudricourt family married Jean d’Amboise in 1474, so the two families were inextricably linked. Lamontre-Delerue, La basilique Saint-Jean-Baptiste, 40–41. The keystones have the following inscriptions: “Estote misercordes sicut pater vester misericors est” (Be merciful as your Father is merciful) and “Redde unicuique quod suum est” (Return to each one what is his own). The sculpture was repainted in 1879 by Hector Guiot and restored in 1969 by Ronot. Forsyth, The Entombment, 154–155; Forsyth cites details of drapery, facial types, the rendering of the sarcophagus, and Italianate poses as symptoms of the sixteenth century date of most of the figures. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 66–67 adheres to Forsyth’s dating. Baudoin, La sculpture, 51. Various identifications have been offered for the extra figures in the Entombment, ranging from a repeat appearance of Joseph and Nicodemus to Simeon and Simon of Cyrene.

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Figure 37 Chapel containing Entombment, St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaumont-en-Bassigny. photo: Pascale L.-R.

Karsallah points out that the widow Marguerite de Baudricourt changed her mind about this chapel and founded another chapel in the convent of Minimes in 1501, in which her tomb and that of her daughter were eventually located and which resembled the Holy Sepulcher in architectural form.54 This does not alter the commemorative function the chapel in Chaumont-enBassigny served, for we assume that Geoffrey de Saint-Belin and others were buried there.55 Daily Masses were established for the family in honor of God, the Virgin, the Holy Sepulcher, and for the salvation of the souls of the donors and their descendants.56 What distinguishes Chaumont’s Entombment was a papal bull instituted by Sixtus IV on February 8, 1475: a Plenary Indulgence of all their sins would be issued to those faithful whom, on the day of the feast of St. John the Baptist,

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Others simply suggest the donors are present at this sacred event. See Maître, Le sépulcre de Chaumont, non-paginated. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 69–70. Her new funereal chapel did not contain an Entombment. In 1841 a sepulchral vault in the chapel was excavated and bones were found by M. Fériel. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 68, n. 182. Forsyth, The Entombment, 153.

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confessed and truly repented between the first and second Vespers upon visiting the church of Chaumont.57 The chapel containing the Holy Sepulcher, which was fully illuminated during the Friday and Saturday preceding John the Baptist’s feast day, was one of the stops of the procession of the Grand Pardon within the church from 1476 to 1645.58 Chaumont, which also possessed a relic of the precursor of Christ, was thus doubly endowed with intercessory powers, for I would argue that the Entombment of Christ was a relic of the real Holy Sepulcher. By visiting this sculptural tableau vivant in the spirit of penitence, the ersatz tomb of Christ would have resonated with the aura of the real site of Christ’s death and Resurrection. Finally, during Easter week the chapel of the Holy Sepulcher served as sepulchrum for the reserve Eucharist on Maundy Thursday, a practice documented since 1492. At the same time, the faithful gave alms to the chapel, and this practice continued until the middle of the nineteenth century.59 This liturgical use of the chapel, coupled with its role in the granting of Indulgences, makes this Entombment a site in which the memory of Christ’s sacrifice is intersected by ritual, faith, and the geography of the Holy Land.

The Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem

The experience of viewing a sculptural recreation of the Entombment of Christ was a recapitulation of the time and space of Jerusalem.60 The Holy Sepulcher was the preeminent site of commemoration of the Passion for all Christians: it was a living icon of the Resurrection.61 The pilgrimage to Jerusalem enabled the worshiper to simulate the very itinerary of Christ during Passion week and

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Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 221–222, n. 716; these Grand Pardons always attracted large crowds of worshipers. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 222. Godard, Histoire et tableau, 44 as cited in Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 228, n. 734. It was during this ceremony that a thousand candles sparkled and the statues seemed as if they were about to speak. See above, ch. 1, 19–20, n. 60 Thomas Lentes, “‘As far as the eye can see…’: Rituals of Gazing in the Late Middle Ages,” in The Mind’s Eye. Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, eds. Jeffrey Hamburger and Anne-Marie Bouché (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 369; though Lentes is referring to another medium, namely the Hours of Marie de Bourgogne, I feel the same collapse of time and space occurs in the viewer’s experience of the Entombments. Vikan, “Pilgrims,” 100.

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thereby to place himself in the realm of the holy.62 There was vividness to the experience of visiting the actual tomb. In the fourth century Jerome wrote: “As often as we enter it we see the Savior in his grave clothes, and if we linger we see again the angel sitting at his feet and the napkin folded at his head.”63 Holy sites had the power to revitalize dogma and strengthen faith, and Jerusalem was a veritable theater of the sacred: the tomb of Christ reified the death and Resurrection of Christ.64 During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, more and more pilgrims found their way to the holy city of Jerusalem. Their itinerary was highly organ­ ized by the Franciscans, and the three most important sites were Golgotha, the rotunda of the Anastasis, and the site where the Ascension took place.65 Though there were eighteen stations for the pilgrim to Jerusalem during the Byzantine period, including the palace of Caiaphas, St. Sion, Eleona, and the sites of various martyria, propheteia, and apostoleia, the culmination of the journey was the rotunda of the Anastasis, referred to by Eusebius as “the head of all.”66 Upon reaching the tomb of Christ, Egeria, the late fourth-century pilgrim, recounts: “the whole assembly groans and laments all the Lord underwent for us.”67 On the day of the Resurrection, as the bishop read the Gospel on the spot where the angel once sat when he spoke to the Holy Women, incense was wafted through the air to simulate the spices brought by the Holy Women.68 The mimetic character of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land is striking; Jerome tells us that another (late fourth-century) pilgrim, Paula, upon seeing the 62 63

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Vikan, “Pilgrims,” 97. Cf. Robert Ousterhout, “‘Sweetly Refreshed in Imagination’: Remembering Jerusalem in Words and Images,” Gesta 48/2 (2009), 153–168. Jerome, Ep. 46.5, Migne, Pat. Lat 22, 286 (“quod quotiescumque ingredimur, toties jacere in sidone cerninus Salvatorem: et paululum idedem commoranies, rursum videmus Angelum sedere ad pedes ejus, ed ad caput sudarium convolutum.”) as cited in Francine Cardman, “The Rhetoric of Holy Places: Palestine in the Fourth Century,” in Studia Patristica 17/1 (1982), 23. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 200–201. Bernard Flusin, “Remarques sur les Lieux saints de Jérusalem à l’époque Byzantine,” in Lieux sacrés, Lieux de culte, sanctuaires. Approches Terminologiques, Méthodologiques, Historiques et Monographiques, ed. André Vauchez (École française de Rome, 2000), 124. Cf. Miedema, “Following in the Footsteps,” 73–92. Also, Dansette, “Les pèlerins,” 301–414. Josephie Brefeld, A Guidebook for the Jerusalem Pilgrimage in the Late Middle Ages: A Case for Computer-Aided Textual Criticism (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994), 179–194. Flusin, “Remarques,”125, 129. Egeria’s Travels, ed. John Wilkinson (London: S.P.C.K., 1971), 24, 9–10, 125 as cited by Vikan, “Pilgrims,” 100, n. 29. Vikan, “Pilgrims,” 100.

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tomb of Christ, “held her mouth fixed with faith on the very place where the Lord reposed.”69 It is estimated that many thousands of pilgrims went to Jerusalem between 1300 and 1600, and several texts survive from this period that adhere to an almost formulaic script.70 Why did people go to the Holy Land? The principle reason in this period was to follow in the footsteps of Christ. However, a trip to Jerusalem also garnered Indulgences, cures, advice, procurement or exchange of relics, penance, or knighthood in the order of the Holy Sepulcher. Some went to the Holy Land, because they loved foreign travel; others made a hobby out of pilgrimages: today Jerusalem, tomorrow Rome!71 Interestingly, the pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher did not leave time for a response, such as “compassion,” because the tour guides, namely the Franciscans, kept up a rigorous pace. Indeed, Margery Kempe, who sobbed at the Tomb of the Lord, was an exception to the rule.72 It was typical for a pilgrim of the later Middle Ages to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher three times and to stay within the temple three nights; the Franciscans warned the pilgrims not to take anything away from the holy sites, for to do so risked the penalty of papal excommunication. As Miedema points out, this warning demonstrates that pilgrims were already in the habit of taking souvenirs!73 The confraternities that encouraged these pilgrimages, namely the Holy Sepulcher, Templars, Hospitaliers, and the Franciscans, were reinforced by sermons delivered on the Passion. The latter proliferated between 1450 and 1550 and stressed the connection between the death of Christ, the salvation of mankind, and the need to travel to Jerusalem to find meaning in

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Jerome, Lettres V, ed. J. Labourt, 108, 9, 167 as cited by Flusin, “Remarques,” 130, n. 35. Cf. Vikan, “Pilgrims,” 98–99. According to Paulinus, the pilgrim’s desire to touch the places where Christ had been meant to do so with one’s eyes, lips, or forehead, as well as to reenact the sacred events that made the sites holy. Brefeld, A Guidebook, 9, 180, 194. This author has considered texts in Latin, English, French, German, and Dutch and made comparisons among these accounts; the Holy Sepulcher is statistically the most frequently invoked site. Brefeld, A Guidebook, 10; cf. Dansette, “Les pèlerins,” 305–310; also, see Miedema, “Following in the Footsteps,” 75–78. Miedema, “Following in the Footsteps,” 78–79; indeed, her fellow travelers resented her “compassio” outburst. Miedema, “Following in the Footsteps,” 78. (When I was a student in Greece I learned that they covered the Acropolis with contemporary stone bits, since the marble shards from antiquity had long since been pilfered.)

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their lives.74 Jerusalem concretized the Heavenly Jerusalem and lent reality to the places in the past, lending credence to them in the present.75 The tomb of Christ was a prime bearer of Christian meaning: the Holy Sepulcher and its surroundings were the locus of the greatest concentration of Evangelical memories.76 When pilgrims returned from the Holy Land, they wanted to express their devotion to the tomb of Christ. The confraternity of the Holy Sepulcher located on the rue St. Denis in Paris witnessed a number of tombs and even a family funerary chapel dedicated to the Holy Sepulcher.77 Another manifestation of this devotion was to commission either an architectural copy of the Holy Sepulcher or a sculpture of the Entombment of Christ.78 The large-scale copies of the Holy Sepulcher served various functions, such as funeral chapels, sites of liturgical drama, pilgrimage destinations, and baptisteries.79 Examples that retain a funerary function included St. Michael’s at Fulda, St. Maurice at Constance, and the Cambray Holy Sepulcher.80 The returning crusaders similarly inspired the erection of replicas of the Holy Sepulcher, such as that in Cam74 75

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Dansette, “Les pèlerins,” 306–310. Cf. Bresc-Bautier, “Les imitations,” 320–322; the Hospitaliers had an image of the dead Christ on their seal and the Templars, the Holy Sepulcher. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 202–204. See Ousterhout, “Sweetly Refreshed,” esp. 153–160, n. 8. According to Jonathan Z. Smith, in Jerusalem “story, ritual, and place could be one” and as Ousterhout (154) states “history, ceremony, and loca sancta could merge in the imagination of the faithful.” Cf. Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 86. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 223. Dansette, “Les pèlerins,” 305–310. Louis I of Bourbon, duke of Clermont, founded the confraternity of the Holy Sepulcher located on the rue St. Denis in Paris in 1325 to express the living memory of the sacred place in the Holy Land. One of the objectives of this confraternity was to propagate devotion to the tomb of Christ that would in turn reinforce the presence of the pilgrims at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Robert Ousterhout, “Loca Sancta,” 114–119. Ousterhout, “Sweetly Refreshed,” 163. The whole nature of what constituted a copy in the Middle Ages was first addressed by Richard Krautheimer in “Introduction to an Iconography of Medieval Architecture,” in Studies in Early Christian, Medieval, and Renaissance Art (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 115–150. Architectural copies are meant to invoke the prototype in some aspect and need not be an exact replica to bear the symbolic import of the original. The chapel of S. Sepolcro in Bologna contained a cenotaph decorated with a relief sculpture of the Three Marys at the tomb of Christ, reflecting the Quem quaeritis that was performed at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, which in turn reflected the western liturgical drama of the Visitatio Sepulchri! See Ousterhout, “Sweetly Remembered,” 160–162, figure 12. Cf. Robert Ousterhout, “The Church of Santo Stefano: A ‘Jerusalem’ in Bologna,” Gesta 20/2 (1981), 311–321.

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bridge.81 Bresc-Bautier categorized the significance of these imitations in the following manner: firstly, a replica served as a relic for the faithful who could not go on a pilgrimage, for example Piacenza and San Sepulcro in Milan;82 second, a copy of the Holy Sepulcher was a symbol of the Resurrection, as at St. Michael’s at Fulda; third, it could serve as a Eucharistic repository and provide the stage for the drama of the Visitatio Sepulchri; and finally, it could stand as a symbol of the Orders of the Holy Land, such as the Templars and Hospitaliers.83 What is significant about these copies is that they could invoke the spiritual presence of the original site and thereby confer similar blessings: to be buried in close proximity to a copy of the Holy Sepulcher was to partake in the salvation offered by the resurrected Christ.84 Did this spiritual beneficence extend to the sculptural Entombment of Christ? I believe it did. The visual reenactment of the burial of Christ was a souvenir of what transpired at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. As such, it was a vehicle to recover this act from the distant past and make it live in the present. The souvenir, no matter what size, granted the pilgrim the space to generate memory and thereby reconnected him to the historical experience far from the Holy Land.85 The Entombment was a material reminder of the redemptive contract between God and mankind: the bloody wounds reminded man of his responsibility for Christ’s suffering, but also of Christ’s sacrifice for the human race. Nowhere was that more present than at the site of the Holy Sepulcher, which is the absent presence that looms amidst the mourners at the Entombment of Christ.

Entombment of St.-Nicolas, Troyes

Located in a very small chapel off the north side aisle of the church of St.Nicolas in Troyes is an early sixteenth-century effigy of Christ wrapped in his shroud and suspended over his sarcophagus by two angels (fig. 33).86 The vicar 81 82 83 84 85

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Ousterhout, “Loca sancta,” 115–117. Parthenay was also erected as a direct response to a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Bresc-Bautier, “Les imitations,” 322; Milan’s copy afforded one remission for one’s sins. Bresc-Bautier, “Les imitations,” 323–331. Ousterhout, “Blessings,” 115. Georgia Frank, “Loca Sancta Souvenirs and the Art of Memory,” in Pèlerinages et lieux saints dans l’antiquité et le moyen âge: Mélanges offerts à Pierre Maraval, eds. Béatrice Caseau, Jean-Claude Cheynet and Vincent Déroche (Paris: Travaux et Mémoires Association des amis du Centre d’histoire et civilization de Byzance, 2006), 193–201. The church of St. Nicolas in Troyes was only open one hour a week for confession during April 2012. I admit here that in order to persuade the priest to open the locked chapel

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Jacques Collet, upon his return from the Holy Land, commissioned this cryptic Entombment; he dedicated the chapel to the holy places associated with the Passion.87 The architecture of the chapel may have been altered after 1520 when Michel Oudin returned from the Holy Land with new plans of the holy sites.88 Other figures were once associated with this Entombment, including the soldier now placed to the right of the chapel’s doorway.89 A Latin inscription surmounts the sarcophagus and states: “Life willed to die and rests in this tomb. Because death has been conquered, the conqueror has abolished death.”90 Two round portholes open onto the exterior along the longitudinal side of the tomb; these reflect the original disposition of the burial couch of Christ at the Holy Sepulcher, which had three such openings as seen in the depiction of the Sepulchrum Domini of the Klosterneuburg pulpit.91 These portholes were visible from c. 1100, or shortly before, until the fourteenth century, and were obviously copied by pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher.92 What the sculptural effigy of Christ entombed captures at St. Nicolas is the descent into

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where the Entombment was located, I confessed and received penance for a minor mortal sin! Forsyth, The Entombment, 57. E. Poulle, “L’Église Saint-Nicolas de Troyes,” Congrès archéo­ logique de France à Troyes en 1935, 113 (Paris, 1937), 77–81. Forsyth, The Entombment, 57. This entombment was created according to the measurements of the original tomb of Christ, even though that no longer existed in the sixteenth century. According to the Inventaire (Palissy, for Champagne-Ardenne) this guard was once placed in the former Garden of Gethsemane to the north of the church. Numerous other statues belonged to this work, however, they were displaced in the nineteenth century. VITA MORI VOLVIT ET IN HOC TVMVLO REQUVIEVIT/MORS QVIA VICTA FUIT MORTEM VICTRIX ABOLEVIT. Above this inscription there was once a gilded wood sculptural group, however, it was not integral to the Entombment. Further, the vault above Christ bears the inscription: TOVT EN PAIX. See Martin Biddle, The Tomb of Christ (London: Stoud, 1999), 38, fig. 41. The date of Nicholas of Verdun’s work is c. 1181. Cf. Robert Ousterhout, “The Temple, the Sepulchre, and the Martyrion of the Savior.” Gesta 29/1 (1990), 44–53. The portholes were found on the burial couch, as opposed to the more salient identifying feature of the aedicule above. Biddle, The Tomb, 38–42, ill. 41. Of course, as Biddle rightly notes, the rock cut tomb invoked in the Gospels was not for certain enshrined by Constantine in his fourth century erection of the Holy Sepulcher; the latter was then rebuilt in the eleventh century by the Byzantines, with the aedicule dating to the early nineteenth century, and then the building fell victim to an earthquake in 1927. For the history of the Holy Sepulcher, cf. Charles Coüasnon, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy (1972) (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 1–36; also, cf. Colin Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West From the Beginning to 1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 345–362.

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a crypt-like space that is dark, cramped, and thus evocative of the original tomb of Christ. The donor clearly wished worshipers to believe they were seeing a close copy of Christ’s tomb in the Holy Land, one that even bore the same length and breadth of the original. This impulse to quantify the tomb of Christ, to make Christ’s physical presence a verifiable and timeless reality, renders his body a mnemonic of divinity that was accessible to all. In what Lentes dubbed an arithmetic of salvation, pilgrims would measure the length of the column upon which Christ was flagellated or use a strip of cloth to measure any contact relics from Jerusalem, and those instruments of measure then became infused with sacred power.93 As Vikan noted, the Holy Sepulcher functioned amulectically.94 The painfully straight cadaver of the St. Nicolas Christ, situated in his own rock-cut tomb and gracefully upheld by his angelic escorts, offers a condensed version of the Holy Sepulcher. Yet, contemplation of this Entombment recreated the spiritual presence of the prototype and its concomitant blessings.

Entombment of St. Jean-au-Marché, Troyes and the Prevalence of Death in the late Middle Ages

We have seen above how the Imitatio Christi encouraged the identification with the suffering of Christ during Passion week. What historical factors helped fuel this predisposition to suffer the tortures endured by Christ during the progression of Holy Week? The Hundred Years War, the Plague, famine, the Battle of Agincourt, and the Great Schism (1378–1417) marked this period; the visual arts responded with transi tombs, the representation of the Dance of Death, the Three Living meeting the Three Dead, and the Ars moriendi.95 Paul Binski 93

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Lentes, “Counting Piety,” 55; cf. Gary Vikan, “Byzantine Pilgrim’s Art,” in Heaven on Earth: Art and the Church in Byzantium, ed. Linda Safran (University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 1998), 250. Vikan, “Byzantine Pilgrim’s Art,” 250. Martin, La statuaire, 27. The bibliography for this period is vast; see, for example, Elina Gertsman, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages: Image, Text, Performance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010); Paul Binski, Medieval Death Ritual and Representation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), esp. 123–163; Kathleen Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol: The Transi Tomb in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Philippe Ariès, The Hour of our Death (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), 106–132; Caroline Walker Bynum, “Material Continuity, Personal Survival and the Re­surrection of the Body: a scholastic discussion in its medieval and modern con­texts,” in

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has noted how deeply implicated the body was as a sign of this emergence of the macabre.96 He states: “late-medieval religion is, paradoxically, at once deeply interiorized, immaterial, and transcendent, and yet also somatic, bodycentered, and material, in its imagery.”97 Indeed, the body of Christ in the Entombments is both an image and a relic of Christ’s Passion: it substantiated a history of redemptive suffering. The anxiety of this period, riddled with the successive outbreaks of the plague and the religious reaction thereof, was projected onto the body of Christ in an almost neurotic, obsessive, mode of “quantitative piety.”98 Perhaps one of the most salient aspects of this late medieval period is the role art played in constituting experience: piety and devotion to the wounds of Christ were then a byproduct of the worshiper’s engagement with the mourners surrounding the dead body of Christ.99 In a minimalist rendering of the Entombment at St. Jean-au-Marché in Troyes, St. John, on bended knee, supports the body of Christ as he consoles the Virgin who solemnly holds the limp arm of her dead son (fig. 38). Mary Magdalene anoints Christ’s feet with one hand and wipes her tears with her other hand (fig. 39). This early sixteenthcentury work is really a conflation of an Entombment and Pietà, for there are no porters, no sarcophagus, and Christ rests directly on a patch of sparsely foliated ground.100 The intimacy of this sculpture, coupled with the gestures that unify the figures into a seamless whole, make this work a particularly moving

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Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 239–297; Joseph L. Koerner, “The Mortification of the Image: Death as a Hermeneutic in Hans Baldung Grien,” Representations 10 (1985), 52–101; Robert E. Lerner, “The Black Death and Western eschatological mentalities,” American Historical Review 86 (1981), 533–552; Henk Van Os, The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe, 1300– 1500 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Miri Rubin, “The person in the form: medieval challenges to bodily ‘order’,” in Framing Medieval Bodies, eds. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1994), 100–122. Binski, Medieval Death, 123. Ibid. I shall return to this subject in the final chapter, see below, chapter 5, pp. 149–197. Binski, Medieval Death, 125–130. Binski invokes Lacan’s corps morcelé and the anxiety induced by the fetishizing scrutiny of Christ’s body. The effects of the bubonic plague and its impact on art were first charted by Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), who saw a dramatic shift in style after the 1348 outbreak of the plague. Binski, Medieval Death, 126. Of course all images possess this capacity. See Forsyth, The Entombment, 56–57; Forsyth relates this work to the Saint Martha Master responsible for the Entombment at Chaource and feels this work is closely related to that at Villeneuve-L’Archevêque.

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Figure 38 Entombment/Pietà in St.-Jean-au-Marché, Troyes, stone, early 16th century. photo: Pascale L-R.

tableau vivant. John’s hand rests on the Virgin’s shoulder, paralleling the arm of Christ upheld by Mary. Rhythmic contours are created by Mary Magdalene’s veil that dabs her tears and plays off the circular movement formed by the fluid flowing from the unguent jar anointing Christ’s feet; the line that defines the rivulet of ointment then flows up her right arm to meet the veil held in her left hand. Christ’s body weaves the mourners together, as it undulates in the form of a shallow “W” before them. Their drapery is particularly lush, as each of the mourners wears a belted tunic and copious mantle; the intersecting horizontal and vertical tubular folds that compose Christ’s loincloth are even plentiful. The body of Christ is a simulacrum for all the suffering that he endured for mankind. And like the Three Living Meeting the Three Dead, his body was also a mirror for mankind to realize their culpability as well as the salvation offered by Christ’s sacrifice.101 Mary Magdalene’s preparation of the body for burial, which is captured with the perfume flowing like molten lava from the jar to Christ’s feet, anchors this Entombment/Pietà in the present moment: the sculpture, like medieval drama, is both representation and experience. There are descriptions of nuns swooning at images of Christ suffering, because, in the representation of the wounded and dying body, they enacted a compassionate response of emotional and even physical pain to the visual 101

Binski, Medieval Death, 134–138.

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Figure 39 Entombment/Pietà in St.-Jean-au-Marché, Troyes, detail of Mary Magdalene. photo: Pascale L-R.

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recreation.102 One internalizes the message of the Entombment/Pietà at St.Jean-au-Marché in that the “body somatizes culture, because the world is affectively as well as semantically structured.”103 The history of Christ’s suffering is kept alive in the mind “by habitual memory sedimented in the body.”104

Villeneuve-L’Archevêque: The Entombment from the Abbey of Vauluisant and Resurrection by Proximity

Characterized as an Entombment/Deposition, this sculptural group once belonged to the Cistercian abbey of Vauluisant and was moved to the church of Notre-Dame in Villeneuve-L’Archevêque in 1823 (fig. 40).105 An inscription once accompanied the monument that named its donor as the abbot Antoine Pierre, who commissioned it in honor of his parents Jean Pierre and Colombe Hanotelle in 1528. The sculptural group once occupied the place of honor over the altar in the chapel of the Holy Sepulcher, and, placed before the altar, was their tomb.106 Now situated in the first bay of the south aisle of the church in Villeneuve-L’Archevêque, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus gently lower Christ upon his shroud to the ground. The Virgin in the center, clasping her hands in front of her and beginning to swoon, is supported by John the Evangelist on the left; Mary Magdalene stands to the right. Flanking this central group, on separate pedestals, are poised the other two Holy Women, holding

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Sarah Beckwith, “Ritual, Church and Theatre: Medieval Dramas of the Sacramental Body,” in Church and History 1350–1600 Essays on English Communities, Identities, and Writing, ed. David Aers (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), 78. Sarah Beckwith, “Ritual, Theater, and Social Space in the York Corpus Christi Cycle,” in Bodies and Disciplines Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England, eds. Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 70–71, n. 39 and 40, citing Peter McLaren, “On Ideology and Education: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Empowerment,” Social Text 9/20 (Fall 1988) 175 ff. and Lawrence Grossberg, “Teaching the Popular,” in Theory in the Classroom, ed. Cary Nelson (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), cited in McLaren, “On Ideology,” 175. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 102 as cited in Beckwith, “Ritual, Theater,” 82, n. 41. See Forsyth, The Entombment, 54–56; Forsyth, The Entombment, 54, n. 9; a statue of Colombe Hanotelle kneeling in prayer with her chaplet of prayer beads was apparently once located in close proximity to the tomb and Entombment.

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Figure 40 Entombment from Villeneuve-L’Archevêque, originally from the Abbey of Vauluisant, polychromed stone, 1528. photo: Pascale L-R.

large vessels and wearing elaborate veils (fig. 41).107 Closely related in style to the Entombment at Chaource, the Saint Martha workshop, and a new fluency introduced from Italy in the sixteenth century, this Entombment possesses its own meditative tenor (fig. 42).108 In the more famous instance of the Capponi Chapel of Sta. Felicita in Florence, the Christ in Pontormo’s Entombment (1525–1528) was directly aligned with the altar table below.109 Thus the body of Christ there too bears a synecdochal relationship to the Eucharist. Both works coincide, as well, with the date the Theatines under St. Cajetan instituted the perpetual adoration of the

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As Forsyth notes (The Entombment, 55–56) the Holy Women seem too far away from the central composition, and the absence of their original bases suggest they do not occupy their intended positions. Forsyth, The Entombment, 55–56. Martin, La statuaire, 231–128, also invokes the elusive “Master of the Sad figures;” he sees in this Entombment and that of Chaource, which will be discussed in the following chapter, the last gasp of the creative vitality of the Gothic style of Reims Cathedral. See Frederick Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting Sculpture Architecture (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1994), 553–554, colorplate 108. As Hartt notes, there is some confusion about the nature of Pontormo’s scene, for it too lacks a tomb and/or a cross. Thus, it is often dubbed either a Deposition or Entombment.

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Figure 41 Entombment from Villeneuve-L’Archevêque, detail of Holy Woman. photo: Pascale L-R.

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Figure 42 Entombment from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, polychromed stone, Master of Chaource, 1515. photo: author.

Blessed Sacrament.110 Just as the Host joined the worshiper to the image of Christ, so the image of Christ in the Entombment connected the worshiper to the death and Resurrection of the historical event, reinforcing the reality of the Mass performed by the priest. The Entombment of Christ thereby doubles as a dramatic scene and devotional object.111 What did it mean to be buried in close proximity to an Entombment, as the Pierre family was at Vauluisant? In discussing the Liturgical Cradle from the Grand Beguinage in Louvain from the fifteenth century, Caroline Walker Bynum notes how the object simultaneously calls attention to the Infancy of Christ (the crib) and his divinity (the cathedral).112 This same paradox of life and death, grief and triumph underlies the Entombment, for inherent in Christ’s mortality is his divinity. To be buried with Christ was to be resurrected with him at the end of time. The wounds on Christ’s body never heal even after the Resurrection: he is alive in death; both sacrifice and triumph over death are real and eternal. Christ’s bodily matter lives at the moment he expires and for-

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Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance, 554. Poul Grinder-Hansen, “Public Devotional Pictures in Late Medieval Denmark,” in Images of Cult and Devotion. Function and Reception of Christian images in Medieval and PostMedieval Europe, eds. Soren Kaspersen and Ulla Haastrup (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004), 232. Bynum, Christian Materiality, 62–63, fig. 11.

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ever. In this sense matter triumphs over materiality, but only partially—it must be renewed in the Eucharist.113 The Entombment from Vauluisant seems to freeze one frame of the action of Joseph and Nicodemus kneeling to deposit Christ upon the ground before the wavering figure of Mary in Saint John’s arms. The approaching Holy Women, whose contrapposto is pronounced beneath their drapery, and the veiled hand of the Magdalen, raised to catch her tears, underscore the present tense of this dramatic rendering. The material presence of this narrative is unrelenting: his perennial deposition reifies Christ’s death on the Cross, but the miracle embodied in the elevation of the Eucharist insures Christ’s triumph over death.

Miniature Entombment, L’Hôtel Dieu, Beaune

Carved from one piece of limestone and measuring only 38.5 cm in height by 63.4 cm in length is a high relief representation of the Entombment of Christ found in the Hôtel Dieu in Beaune (fig. 43).114 Though it has suffered considerable surface damage, this polychromed work may be dated to the sixteenth century by virtue of the costumes worn by Joseph and Nicodemus. What function could this private mise au tombeau have served? Burgundians were not only avid pilgrims in this period, but many crusaders came from this region.115 One can imagine someone with a special devotion to the Holy Sepulcher having this model of Christ’s Entombment made for a home altar. A diminutive Christ lies upon a shroud on top of a closed sarcophagus articulated by a blind arcade along its sides. His vulnerability is enhanced by the angle that the coffin is tipped and his hands crossed in front of his abdomen. Joseph and Nicodemus hold ointment jars and advance towards the figure of Christ to prepare him for burial. The Virgin occupies the central position of the mourners in the back row and is flanked by two Holy Women; the long hair and unguent jar of the right-hand figure would suggest that she is the Magdalen. 113 114 115

Bynum, Christian Materiality, 258. The measurements were found in the Inventaire of Côte-d’Or in Dijon; it is 16.5 cm in depth. Dansette, “Les pèlerins,” 301–314; cf. Marie-Christine Gomez-Geraud, Le crépuscule du grand voyage: Les récits de pèlerins à Jérusalem, 1458–1612 (Paris: Champion, 1999); Bernard Hamilton, “The Impact of Crusader Jerusalem on Western Christendom,” The Catholic Historical Review 80/4 (1994), 695–713; Norman Housley, “Indulgences for Crusading 1417– 1517,” in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Robert N. Swanson (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), 277–307. A.R. Leopold, “Crusading Proposals in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History, ed. Robert N. Swanson (Oxford: Boydell Press, 1999), 216–227.

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Figure 43 Miniature Entombment from the Musée de l’Hôtel Dieu, Beaune, polychromed stone, 1450–1475. photo: Musée de l’Hotel Dieu, Beaune.

Though clearly a work of provincial craftsmanship, its earnestness and apparent household usage are noteworthy.

Passion Narrative: Entombment from Montlay

An inscription dates the Passion relief found in the church in Montlay to 1512, and the initials PC (those of the patron) are upheld by angels in the upper corners of the work (figs. 44 and 45). An eight-figure Entombment forms the center scene of the Passion story, and, on the left, is the Resurrection and, on the right, the Noli me tangere. The relief, which is inset into the wall of the church, is small in scale and polychromed stone; it is riddled with inscriptions, not only on the ribbon interlace on the top and sides, but also on the base, around the trees and collars and trim of the figures’ drapery. Angels hold the instruments of the Passion on both sarcophagi, which are also inscribed along their bases. In the Resurrection scene, Christ steps out of the tomb to be met by three rather startled soldiers, one of whom is black and is in the act of pulling his sword from its hilt.116 On the right, Christ’s body faces left as he looks back to address 116

The soldiers, who are usually depicted either in deep slumber or else startled, conform to the customary treatment of this scene; however, the sword-wielding soldier seems to be a variation on this theme.

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Figure 44 Passion Retable from Montlay-en-Auxois, detail of Entombment, polychromed relief, 1512. photo: author.

Figure 45 Passion Retable from Montlay-en-Auxois, overall view. photo: author.

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the kneeling Mary Magdalene, whose outstretched arms frame the tree that separates the two figures.117 Lower relief architecture occupies both corners of the relief, revealing a certain sophistication in rendering a continuous cityscape behind these scenes. The Entombment reflects characteristics encountered before, such as the manner in which Joseph and Nicodemus hold the shroud and tip the figure of Christ toward the viewer, as seen in the Dijon hospital chapel monument (fig. 27). The disposition of mourners is also Dijonnais, and Mary crosses her hands over her bosom as she did at St.-Michel (fig. 25). The style of the figures and coiffures has a distinctly Flemish feeling, and the conflation of Burgundian and Flemish characteristics had been common since the art that flourished in the court of Philip the Bold.118 What is striking in this Passion narrative is the non-sequential disposition of scenes that throws into relief the significance of the Entombment (figs. 44 and 45). Even the size of the sarcophagus in the center outstrips that in the Resurrection. The initials IHS within rays of light are supported by two angels directly above the center of the tomb, and, directly below Christ’s nail-pierced hands, the same monogram is inscribed on the side of the tomb.119 Could this emphasis on the Entombment also reflect PC’s special devotion to the Holy Sepulcher? Again, this is pure speculation, however, as we shall see below with the altarpiece from Bessey-les-Cîteaux, there is no theological reason governing the choice of the Entombment as the centerpiece for the relief from Montlay.

Bessey-les-Cîteaux: Was Claus here?

A polychromed stone relief altarpiece dedicated to scenes from the Passion is rather unceremoniously inserted into the wall to the right of the altar in the church of Bessey-les-Cîteaux (fig. 46). An inscription dates the altarpiece to 1430 and records Claus as the sculptor.120 The inscription also tells us the name of the donor, Jehan de Noys (Jean de Noes), who was the confessor of Margaret 117 118 119 120

Her left arm is broken; but the forearm suggests it would have paralleled her right arm, thereby embracing the tree. David, De Sluter, 7–8; 17 ff.; David attributes the origins of the Burgundian shroud treatment to Flemish artists. IHS are the first three letters in Latin of the name of Jesus and came to mean Jesus Hominum Salvator. See above, ch. 2, p. 25–71; cf. Forsyth, The Entombment, 64; Boucherat, “A New Approach,” 317–336.

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Figure 46 Passion Retable from Bessey-les-Cîteaux, polychromed relief, signed “Claus,” c. 1430. photo: author.

of Bavaria, the wife of John the Fearless. Because the inscription requests prayers for the soul of the donor as well as that of Claus de Werve, scholars have concluded that the work must have been finished after both their deaths in late 1439.121 Further, it has been posited that “per Claus fabrifactum” (made by Claus) was a way to enhance the status of this rather mediocre workshop product.122 Tracery-filled arcades frame the seven scenes from the Passion: the Crucifixion forms the centerpiece of this altar, and it is accentuated by greater height to accommodate the looming Cross (fig. 47). The latter is particularly stark, because the body of Christ no longer survives; the figure must have been rendered in the round and attached to the relief background. The foot of the Cross is crowded with soldiers; John supporting the Virgin; the Holy Women; and, in front, kneeling, facing the worshiper, is the donor: a monk clad in white robes. The story begins at the left with the Arrest of Christ, which seems to be conflated with the Betrayal by Judas (fig. 48). There is an inordinate display of weaponry in the scene, as the figures seem to be preparing for the Scourging that will transpire shortly. The second scene is Christ before Caiaphas, who

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This is the opinion of Jules d’Arbaumont and Pierre Camp (see above, ch. 2, 49, n. 64) as cited in Boucherat, “A New Approach,” 320, n. 21. Boucherat, “A New Approach,” 320. By invoking the name of a master such as Claus de Werve, the work would have immediately gained in prestige.

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Figure 47 Passion Retable from Bessey-les-Cîteaux, detail of Crucifixion. photo: author.

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Figure 48 Passion Retable from Bessey-les-Cîteaux, detail of Arrest/Betrayal of Christ. photo: author

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Figure 49 Passion Retable from Bessey-les-Cîteaux, Christ before Caiaphas and Scourging of Christ. photo: author.

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Figure 50 Passion Retable from Bessey-les-Cîeaux, Deposition from the Cross. photo: author.

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rends his garment in the presence of Jesus (fig. 49).123 The third scene is the Flagellation overseen by the high priests and then the culminating moment of the Crucifixion occurs in the center of the altarpiece, where Christ’s exposed body would have echoed that in the preceding scene (fig. 47). The three scenes to the right are the Deposition, the Entombment, and the Resurrection (fig. 50). Not only does the blue sky create a basso continuo for the entire altarpiece, unifying the diverse scenes, but also a raised rocky landscape forms the background for the lower two-thirds of all the scenes. Figures provide unity as we follow Nicodemus’ conical hat and Joseph’s sober head-covering from the callisthenic Deposition to the poignant Entombment (fig. 19). In the latter, the porters, buttressing John, the Virgin, and a Holy Woman and standing slightly behind the tomb, hold the shroud and display the body of Christ upon his sarcophagus. Occupying the lower third of the composition is the beautiful figure of Mary Magdalene, long hair flowing down her back, kneeling before the sarcophagus and extending her hands to anoint the feet of Christ in a manner reminiscent of the fourteenth-century Sienese painter Simone Martini.124 This Italian quotation of the Magdalen coupled with the Flemish placement of the porters; the Burgundian disposition of mourners; and the tipped up display of the body of Christ, reveal the vitality of the Entombment theme during this period. In the last vignette, the resurrected Christ brandishes his shroud like a magnificent cape as an angel, strongly reminiscent of those of Claus de Werve, censes the triumphant Savior.

Musings about Entombments

We have examined various Entombments from the regions of Burgundy and Champagne, both freestanding and in relief, in an attempt to discern the ways in which they functioned in their original contexts. Whether serving as an ersatz pilgrimage to Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulcher or as the sepulchrum for the paraliturgical drama during Easter week, the sculptural Entombment was an object of devotion that encouraged identification with Christ’s suffering and death. The crusades and pilgrimages provided people with firsthand 123 124

Matthew 26.57–67; John 18.12–27; Caiaphas believes that Christ has blasphemed by saying who he is. Pierre Quarré, “L’influence de Simone Martini sur la sculpture bourguignonne,” Bulletin de la société nationale des Antiquaires de France (1960–1962), 53–55. The Orsini polyptych by Simone Martini had been owned by the Chartreuse de Champmol since the end of the fourteenth century. Cf. Boucherat, “A New Approach,” 320–321.

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knowledge of the holy sites of Jerusalem, and these sculptural recreations were tangible souvenirs of the tomb of Christ; as such, they were imbued with the sacred power of the original Holy Sepulcher. The sculptures were images of piety and meditation: Andachtsbilder on the humanity of Christ. In a funereal context, the Entombment monumentalized the significance of the private tomb into a memorial, while guaranteeing eternal salvation.125 For to be buried close to Christ was to both die with him and be resurrected with him at the end of time. The Entombments captured a past historical moment and re-presented it, making it reoccur in present time. The emotive community of carved mourners around Christ’s tomb invited the living to join in a community of remembrance of Christ’s suffering and his triumph over death; the donor buried close to the Entombment was encompassed by this collective memory rendered in stone. An image was a presence. One could experience the presence of Christ in his visual absence in the Eucharist.126 In a much less enigmatic fashion, the Entombments expressed the real presence of the mortal Christ’s dead body and the visual absence of his divine body, the resurrected Christ seen, or not seen, by the Holy Women at the tomb. At the same time, the tomb itself was a relic of the real Holy Sepulcher, the other absent presence not seen in the sculptural representation of the Entombment of Christ. To worship before an Entombment group was to strengthen one’s faith at a repository of sacred memory, an experience capable of earning one Indulgences equal to those gained on a trip to the Holy Land. In the following chapter, we will consider the connection between theater and the Entombment of Christ. Kreuder has noted the theatrical composition of much of medieval culture, notably its religious plays, but also its social practices, political, cultural, and public activities. Indeed, the whole Imitatio Christi implicates the worshiper as one of a community of sufferers.127 How does the Entombment of Christ fit into this society? Can performance theory help us understand the mimetic level on which these sculptural works authenticated the Passion of Christ for the late medieval worshiper? 125 126 127

Aballéa, Les saints sépulcres, 18. Laugerud, “Visuality and Devotion,” 191–200. Kreuder, “Flagellation of the Son of God,” 179–185;

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Hocus Pocus: The Entombment of Christ and Medieval Performance

Art and Performance

Through visible things are the invisible things of God understood (Romans 1.20): the Entombment re-presented a moment from the Passion cycle for the worshipers to know the fate of the Lord in his fleshly incarnation. The sculptural presence of this event, like that of a medieval performance, “offered spectators a way of seeing that engaged their bodies and operated as a powerful agent of visual piety.”1 In this chapter we will consider the manner in which the sculptural Entombments engendered a tactile experience akin to the affective piety summoned by actors in medieval plays.2 Just as the images physically recreate sacred moments, the performance places the spectator squarely in the presence of scenes from the Bible. The audience reacts to the latter empathetically and viscerally: the body is the organ of knowing in both late medieval religious piety and theatrical performances.3 The complex interrelationship between medieval drama and the visual arts is far beyond the scope of this study; however, Aquinas viewed drama, painting, and sculpture as phantasmata or images and believed that they were the link between body and soul, sense and understanding.4 Whether these images 1 2

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Stevenson, “Material Bodies,” 208. Giles J. Milhaven, “A Medieval Lesson on Bodily Knowing: Women’s Experience and Men’s Thought,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 52/2 (1989), 341–373; Milhaven discusses how a statue of a Pietà pinned the worshiper down and held him fast, “in their pain and sorrow” (356–357). Morgan, Visual Piety, 65–76; cf. Michael O’Connell, “God’s Body: Incarnation, Physical Embodiment, and the Fate of Biblical Theater in the Sixteenth Century,” in Subjects on the World’s Stage: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eds. David G. Allen and Robert A. White (Newark and London: University of Delaware, 1991), 62–87. Lerud, “Quick Images,” 213. For the interrelationship of medieval drama and the visual arts, see Pamela Sheingorn, “Medieval Drama Studies and the New Art History,” Mediaevalia 18 (1995), 143–162; Stevens, “Intertextuality,” 317–337; Glenn Ehrstine, “Passion Spectatorship Between Private and Public Devotion,” in Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces, eds. Elina Gertsman and Jill Stevenson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012), 302–320.

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were “quick,” that is moving, or static (“deed”), did not affect the power of visual tableaux to imprint upon the viewers’ understanding or memory.5 Seeing was an essential part of the art of memory, and people were advised to use real places as visual mnemonics.6 Moreover, medieval seeing was a mode of touching the object of vision: images had affective power, because, in the theory of extromission, the object of vision returned a transformative ray of light that moved the observer. “Seeing is feeling in every sense: a physical ‘touch,’ a sen­ sation of pleasure and pain, an emotion ‘expressed in matter.’ It is also movement.”7 All medieval spectatorship, according to Ehrstine and Biernoff, was inherently kinesthetic: the audience of a religious performance experienced bodily sensations in their engagement with the spectacle.8 In light of this kinesthetic kinship, would it not be instructive to eavesdrop upon a medieval theater audience to observe their responses to the simulation of a scene from the Passion of Christ in order to imagine the possible physical reactions of worshipers upon encountering a carved Entombment? I am not suggesting a parity of these two media, only that the distinctions that we draw between the five senses were not as sharply differentiated for pre-modern societies.9 Where to begin this quest? Perhaps at the gates to the medieval city, for the religious processions carried out during key times of the holy year, such as Easter week, promoted civic identity and social order among members of the political body, which was the city.10 The latter was corporal in a literal sense, a political entity, and, in a metaphorical sense, because it was made up of parts functioning as a whole; the religious processions embodied the collective (civic) and the individual (citizen) in their performance, and unified them.11 5

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Lerud, “Quick Images,” 213. Here Lerud is drawing on the memory studies of Frances Yates and Mary Carruthers (Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1966)) and The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), respectively) and comparing the effect of the English Corpus Christi drama and the visual arts. Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 221–224; 27–28; 94–95; 281. Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (Hampshire & New York: Palgrave, 2002), 97, n. 69; Biernoff is invoking both Aristotle and Bacon here. Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 97 and Ehrstine, “Passion Spectatorship,” 304–305. Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.,1982), 73–74. Keith D. Lilley, “Cities of God: Medieval Urban Forms and their Christian Symbolism,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series 29/3 (2004), 296–313, esp. 305. Lilley, “Cities of God,” 305. Cf. Gerard Nijsten, “Feasts and Public Spectacle: Late Medieval Drama and Performance in the Low Countries,” in The Stage as Mirror. Civic Theatre in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Alan E. Knight (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), 107–143.

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The patterns traced by the ritual processions in a city reinforced and reiterated the mystical symbolic form of the city, implicating both the individual and the collective in this recreation of Christ’s life and death. Miri Rubin notes that the most common route for the Corpus Christi procession linked the periphery to the center, culminating at the cathedral or main church.12 The city was thereby a microcosm of the wider world, where Jerusalem occupied the center point.13 The city also provided the backdrop for the staging of mystery plays either as tableaux vivants performed on the streets or staged on mobile wagons (pageants).14 What is striking about this microcosm of the wider world with its axis mundi from town to church is that Christ’s body was the locus of world history: he embodied the past, present, and future of the world.15 The effect of the Corpus Christi procession was thus twofold: the civic body performed Christ’s body as a symbol of social wholeness, but his body also stood for the whole world reflected by the axis through the center of town that symbolized the course of world history.16 The public processions and dramatic productions both helped to unify the social body or the town in which they were performed and to constitute identity.17 Despite the tensions that existed between the various groups of citizens, the dramatic procession honoring the Virgin, Christ, or one of the saints represented both the body that was Christ as well as the body that was the town. “Even the act of walking through the streets was symbolic: in this way the idea of space was joined with that of time to make a total unity of time, space, and experience.”18 Plays and other spectacles were cultural expressions that helped forge the identity of the town that formed a foil for their production. The ­Entombment also became a signature of a parish church within a given town, a recognizable stage of the Cross avant la lettre.19 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 267–268. Lilley, “Cities of God,” 306. W. Tydeman, The Theatre in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 97–120. Lilley, “Cities of God,” 306. Ibid. Cf. M. James, “Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town,” Past and Present 98 (1983), 3–29, esp. 11–12. Nijsten, “Feasts and Public Spectacle,” 127. Nijsten, “Feasts and Public Spectacle,” 128. The definitive order of the Stations of the Cross was adopted by the Franciscans in c. 1517. The Via Dolorosa or Via Crucis commemorates the path of Christ from the Temple Mount to the Holy Sepulcher and marks the events between his appearance in the praetorium before Pontius Pilate and his Entombment. The Franciscans, who were appointed guardians of the shrines of the Holy Land, led pilgrims to these sacred sites and then

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Religious plays and processions were, of course, distinct entities, and, by the end of the fifteenth century, both the actors and the audiences were undergoing changes: the performance of Latin drama was targeted at the elite and was usually performed by pupils from Latin schools.20 Plays began in the arena of the church and churchyard, but migrated to the marketplace and the streets, where they were aimed at a wider audience.21 Within the church, the cardinal directions retained their symbolic associations so that the altar in the east was associated with the Resurrection, which would have been reinforced by the Easter liturgy.22 The Easter play, which was essentially the Visitatio Sepulchri enacted, took place across the altar in churches, where the altar was interpreted as the Holy Sepulcher.23 However, in other churches, a separate structure was erected and found either in the chancel, the north aisle, or even the west end of the nave.24 In both dramatic performances and processions, audiences subscribed to a consensual mythic framework: namely, that the church was equivalent to the Holy Sepulcher and the city, Jerusalem.25 As the city enacts Jerusalem, the inhabitants become citizens of Jerusalem. In a similar fashion, the worshipers before an Entombment comingle with the mourners at the tomb of Christ, as the sculpture mediates the emotional exchange tendered over the body of the Savior.

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the pilgrims upon their return home recreated the latter. Initially, the number of stations varied between twelve and fourteen; for example, there were fourteen when William Wey visited the Holy Land in 1462. It was not until the seventeenth century that it became popular to erect the stations in churches, and in 1731 Pope Clement XII fixed the number to fourteen and priests were encouraged to practice the Way of the Cross. See Martin, La statuaire, 33. Nijsten, “Feasts and Public Spectacle,” 122. See Ronald L. Grimes, “Religion, Ritual, and Performance,” in Religion, Theatre, and Performance Acts of Faith, ed. Lance Gharavi (London: Routledge, 2012), 27–41. John Wesley Harris, Medieval Theatre in Context: An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 36–46. Cf. Glynne Wickham, The Medieval Theatre, 3rd edition (Northamp­tonshire: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 55–95. Harris, Medieval Theatre, 38–39. The east end of the church became synonymous with heaven, the holy, etc. and the west, by contrast, became associated with the non-spiritual, material world and thus death; the tradition of representing the Last Judgment on west walls was quite venerable by this period! Kroesen, The Sepulchrum Domini, 172. Kroesen, The Sepulchrum Domini, See above, ch. 1, pp. 7–24. Pamela King, “Seeing and Hearing: Looking and Listening,” Early Theatre 3/1 (2000), 164– 165. The perceptual pump was primed by both royal entries and processions for citizens to transpose the identity of a pageant’s setting to its fictive realm.

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Another quite salient parallel between the Passion plays and the Entombment sculptures is their shared emphasis on the physical presence of Christ. Just as Christ as a Man of Sorrows became a dominant icon of the later Middle Ages, so did the plays prolong the scenes of torture, beating, mockery, and scourging of Christ in a very realistic manner.26 In the York Crucifixion, the soldiers quarrel among themselves as they manage to incorrectly measure, pound, and re-measure the wood of the Cross and then struggle to stretch Christ’s limbs to fit the bored holes. As O’Connell notes, the juxtaposition of their inept craftsmanship and their quotidian conversation throws into relief the banality of evil.27 The poignancy of these scenes fosters the affective devotion to the humanity of Christ, a devotion that focuses on the “well beloved body” (corpus tam dilectum) that Mary Magdalene believes has been taken from the tomb in the Resurrection play.28 Indeed, devotion to Christ’s body, blood, and wounds may be found in both the plays and the sculptural Entombments under investigation. J.W. Robinson singles out the sensational realism and impassioned emotionalism of certain static images in the plays that resonate with the imagery of late medieval art.29 Christ’s monologues in the Passion plays, against the backdrop of the Cross or stepping out of the tomb, are similar to the Images of Pity: “It is as if the icon has become animated.”30 A member of a late medieval audience during a performance of a Passion or Resurrection play is compared to a priant before a painting or sculpture; that is, he is in communion with the performance. What transpires can only be described as a religious rite, a type of ritual drama that often culminates in a blessing being conferred upon the audience.31 As noted above, the plays, like the Entombment sculptures, repeatedly insist upon the real presence of the body of Christ. Indeed, the Croxton play of the Sacrament even reflected the popular devotional practice dedicated to the Five Wounds of Christ in its emphasis on the real presence of Christ in the

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O’Connell, “God’s Body,” 79–80. This author stresses the realism of the brutality depicted and the avoidance of stylization of these scenes. O’Connell, “God’s Body,” 80. O’Connell, “God’s Body,” 74. J.W. Robinson, “The Late Medieval Cult of Jesus and the Mystery Plays,” PMLA 80/5 (1965), 508–514. Robinson, “The Late Medieval Cult,” 511. Robinson, “The Late Medieval Cult,” 512–513. For example, at the end of the Towneley Resurrection after the Image of Pity offers mercy for repentance, Mary Magdalene involves the audience by blessing them.

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Figure 51 Entombment from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, detail of guard. photo: author

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Figure 52 Entombment from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, detail of other guard. photo: author.

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material world.32 Fifteenth-century drama resonated with the iconography of affective piety and insisted upon the “present tense” of the performance. Henri Rey-Flaud summarized this phenomenon when he observed that the theater of the Middle Ages did not seek to represent the event, but truly to have it live once more.33 When Christ addresses the audience by proclaiming, “My woundys ar weytt and all blody,” (Towneley I, 233) he steps outside of historical time to engage the audience, drawing a parallel between his body and the Eucharist.34 This emphasis on the human, suffering nature of Christ as a sacrificial offering for the salvation of mankind was reiterated in the sermons on the Resurrection from the later Middle Ages that eschewed the theme of triumph in favor of a focus on the Eucharist and Christ’s sacrifice.35 Does medieval drama also grapple with the two sides of Christ’s Passion: the Christus triumphans and the Christus patiens, and, if so, how? In the Resurrection scene, the dramatist has the ability to show Christ’s victory over death (heralded by the singing of angels) followed by his pulling aside his cloak to reveal the wounds of the suffering Christ. The drama thus unfolds sequentially, and, as Sheingorn states, the audience would realize the “ultimate truth that Christus triumphans and Christus patiens co-exist, for to God historical sequential time has no meaning.”36 Though the Entombment of Christ clearly exists is the realm of suffering and sorrow, the medieval worshiper knew well how this sculptural drama would end in victory.

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Donnalee Dox, “Theatrical Space, Mutable Space, and the Space of the Imagination. Three Readings of the Croxton Play of the Sacrament,” in Medieval Practices of Space. Medieval Cultures, volume 23, eds. Barbara A. Hanawalt and Michal Kobialka (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 181. Henri Rey-Flaud, Pour une dramaturgie du moyen-âge (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980), 18. “Le Théâtre du Moyen Age ne cherche plus alors à figurer l’événement, mais à le faire véritablement revivre.” Pamela Sheingorn, “The Moment of Resurrection in the Corpus Christi Plays,” Medievalia et Humanistica 11 (1982), 121. Christ does this repeatedly in these complaint speeches, when he speaks in the present tense and draws a parallel with the Eucharist or Man of Sorrows. Sheingorn, “The Moment,” 121–122. Sheingorn, “The Moment,” 122–123. Ironically, only a sequence of images would convey this theological message.

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Performance and the Entombment of St.-Jean-Baptiste at Chaource

Certain tenets of performance theory may be applied to the study of these sculptural Entombments, for they, like the mystery plays, reveal the profoundly theatrical composition of medieval culture. Friedemann Kreuder, for example, sees the Imitatio Christi embodied in the performance of the Flagellation of Christ: the latter was a collective visualization of the story of salvation through the mimetic body of the audience that becomes a community of suffering in compassio.37 The Entombment also asks the worshiper to join the mourners around the tomb of Christ. Perhaps even more interesting is the connection forged between pain and memory: the art of memoria is bound to violence and pain in rhetoric, just as the doctrine of salvation is transmitted to the spectator in a Passion play through the suffering of Christ.38 Does this principle apply to a representation of the Entombment in late medieval art? The Church of St.-Jean-Baptiste in Chaource in Champagne possesses one of the most beautiful Entombments of the early sixteenth century (fig. 42). Situated at the northeast end of the church, in a chapel accessed by descending several steps into a darkened chamber, one feels as if one is entering the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The Master of Chaource from Troyes carved the sculptural group for Nicolas de Monstier and his wife Jacqueline de Laignes in 1515.39 One enters the door that is manned by three inquisitive guards, who are life-sized if not slightly larger (figs. 51 and 52). The lighting is subdued, and one’s eye travels from the rugged contours of the faces of Joseph and Nicodemus to the inexpressible grief shared by the Virgin and St. John. Each of the Marys is subtly differentiated, and one follows their collective glances to the cadaver of Christ, whose pallor insists upon his death (fig. 53). The patrons, kneeling by a prie-dieu, occupy the right wall of the chapel with an inscription, and their coat of arms emblazoned on the wall behind them (fig. 54). The mise en scène of this sculpture coupled with the intensity of the mourning figures makes the poignancy of the work psychologically inescapable. 37 38 39

Kreuder, “Flagellation of the Son of God,” 179, 185. Kreuder, “Flagellation of the Son of God,” 186. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 53; Forsyth attributes the sculpture to the Saint Martha Master, a sculptor named after the figure of Martha from the church of the Madeleine in Troyes. However, most scholars refer to the artist as the Master of Chaource, who may possibly be identified as Jacques Bachot. See Baudoin, La sculpture, 133. The same sculptor has been credited with the Pietà/Entombment from St.-Jean au-Marché (fig. 38), the Pietà from Bayel, the Entombment in Villeneuve-l’Archevêque (fig. 40), and the retable of the Apostles in Marigny-le-Chatel, as well as other works in Champagne.

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Figure 53 Entombment from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, detail of Holy Women. photo: author.

The descent into the small chamber where the Entombment is found engenders a liminal experience for the worshiper, one that is both kinesthetic and static. It is kinesthetic, because the movement of the viewer alters the actual space as well as the perception of time; the latter becomes the distant historical past and the eschatological future simultaneously. The sculptural encounter is obviously static, however, this mimics the cadence of the Passion plays that contained ritualized scenes within the action, which was paused so that the audience could focus on Christ and his wounds and thereby elicit the compassio of the beholders.40 As one passes between the guards manning the 40

Warning and Brown, “On the Alterity of Medieval Religious Drama,” 281–283. The authors reflect on this tendency in the Mystère de la passion of Arnoul Greban and the Arras Passion play; however, this alternation between narrative scenes and static images is a hallmark of medieval mystery plays. Grimes, “Religion,” 34–38, feels that theater and ritual need to be kept separate, even though both involve actors; his definition seems to imply that theater cannot be as transformative as ritual, because it is only enacted rather than embodied. Erika Fischer-Lichte (“The Medieval Religious Plays—Ritual or Theatre?” in Visualizing Medieval Performance: Perspectives, Histories, Contexts, ed. Elina Gertsman (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), 252–254), on the other hand, views both ritual and theater as transformative performances, even though the former may rely on symbols to convey meaning. Both present another reality, though clearly the representation of Christ’s life differs from his real presence in the Eucharist. It is noteworthy that participation in a Passion play, and even attendance, was considered a good work, and divine mercy was granted for such acts.

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Figure 54 Entombment from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, detail of donors. photo: author.

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door to the Entombment, one sees the enactment of this final moment from the trilogy of the Crucifixion, Deposition, and Entombment. Its perpetual reenactment is an act of mnemonic remembrance, one that occurred in illo tempore, but that will continue to occur for each person who enters this room.41 Just as there is no gap between salvation history and real time during the performance of the plays, so too does the Entombment of Chaource sustain the present moment: the patrons, who kneel and pray on the right wall, witness the movements of the porters, who lower Christ to his sarcophagus, and the mourners who look on. The presence of these contemporary witnesses mediates both time and space for the worshiper, signaling the topographical veracity of this moment from Christ’s Passion (figs. 42, 51–54).42 Scribner charts the changing relationship between sense perception and piety in the later Middle Ages: worship was an intensely visual experience that virtually always involved images.43 For example, the Crucifixion might be enacted on Good Friday with a wooden Christ with movable arms and legs and a side that could be pierced; this same Crucifix would be carried during Rogation days through the fields to insure a bountiful harvest. During the Ascension, the effigy of Christ would be lifted through a hole in the roof of the church.44 In these examples, the reenactment of sacred events more closely parallels what transpires in the Passion plays. Indeed, according to Scribner, the images were believed to be active agents that entered into a relationship with the viewer and possessed the indwelling personality of the sacred person they repre­ sented.45 Again, this “language” stems back to the idea of the visible world being a sign of the invisible world, a semiotic system rooted in Augustinian thought that operates through the five senses.46 Faith is based on what the worshiper 41

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Fischer-Lichte, “The Medieval Religious Plays,” 258; the author is referring to the performance of plays, however, I feel the same rhetoric of remembrance occurs with the Entombment sculptures. The inscription above the patrons verifies that it was Jacqueline de Laignes who commissioned the statues, speaking of Nicolas de Monstier, her first husband, as deceased in 1515; she was a widow to her second husband in 1527. See Francis Salet, “L’église de Chaource,” Congrès archéologique de France à Troyes en 1955 (Paris, 1957), 364. See Paoletti, “Wooden Sculpture,” 85–110 for a discussion of the role of the patron in the Entombment group. Scribner, “Popular Piety,” 448–469. Scribner, “Popular Piety,” 456; cf. Paoletti, “Wooden Sculpture,” 85–110. Cf. Roger E. Reynolds, “The Drama of Medieval Liturgical Processions,” Revue de Musicologie 86/1 (2000), 127–142. Scribner, “Popular Piety,” 457. Ibid.

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cannot see; yet the Entombment provides him or her with Christ’s body, which becomes the performance text in the staged tableau vivant. Gertsman has compared art and drama on the grounds of their shared cultural discourse that is simultaneously visual, performative, mnemonic, and devotional.47 In theater the locus is the sacred, iconic moment of the play, while the platea refers to the fluid space of the spectators that is often entered by the performers to prompt the audience to respond in a certain way to the drama.48 In the Resurrection play, when the three Marys infiltrate the audience to lament Christ’s death, they incite a similar emotional reaction.49 Can the Entombment at Chaource be framed in similar terms? In the Chaource Entombment, the body of Christ is the locus, and the platea is composed of the mourners, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus (figs. 42, 51–54). The presence of the guard at the door, the two guards along the left wall, and the patrons on the right wall blurs the distinct spatial realms, so that the worshiper is thrust into a room, where the viewers and the viewed already coexist. As in the Meditationes Vitae Christi, where the reader is urged to meditate on every detail of Christ’s ordeal, here the spectator becomes a “tangible presence upon the imagined stage.”50 This conflation of the public/performative realm with the private/personal realm is what is so compelling to the onlooker. And it is this active viewing that engenders active recollection when one is no longer in the presence of the Entombment or when the play is over.51 Indeed, the memory of the Entombment re-presents the past, bringing to life the time, place, and material forms that create a sensory trace. The iconic image of this moment from the Passion becomes part of the visual rhetoric of remembrance.52

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Gertsman, “The Loci,” 119–135. This phenomenon was characterized by Sylvia Tomasch as, “breaking the frame.” See Sylvia Tomasch, “Breaking the Frame: Medieval Art and Drama,” Early Drama to 1600, Acta 13 (1985), 81–93. Gertsman, “The Loci,” 120; Gertsman compares the “division of labor” in the Resurrection play to that in Rogier van der Weyden’s Deposition, where the three Marys similarly orchestrate the viewers’ response to the scene. Gertsman, “The Loci,” 121. Gertsman, “The Loci,” 126; Gertsman stresses the mnemonic function of both visual and dramatic art; although she does not include sculpture in her analysis, I feel that the ideas apply to this medium as well. Morgan, Visual Piety, 195; cf. Patrick Hutton, History as the Art of Memory (Hanover, NH: University of Vermont and University Press of New England, 1993), 76.

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Dramatic Agency and the Entombment at Saint-Vorles in Châtillon-sur-Seine

Nothing quite prepares one for the twelve-person Entombment found in the Church of Saint-Vorles in Châtillon-sur-Seine (fig. 55). Dated c. 1527 and donated by Edmé Regnier de Romprey and his wife, the dame de la Ferté, both of whom are represented kneeling in the foreground, the Entombment was commissioned for their family burial chapel in the Franciscan church in Châtillon (fig. 58).53 Bearing the imprint of the styles of Burgundy and Champagne, the most salient influence on this sculptural ensemble is that of the Italian Renaissance.54 Mary Magdalene exuberantly lifts the lid of her unguent jar in a gesture that will become a two-armed raised outcry in the Entombment of Saint-Remi at Reims, a work related to this Entombment in spirit if not in scale (figs. 56 and 57). Italianate features include the elaborate costumes and theatrical postures of the figures as they assume their rather staged poses around the effigy of Christ upon his classicizing sarcophagus.55 The patrons’ presence not only breaks the isocephaly of the mourners but also shifts the temporal context to the present moment (fig. 58). The burly guards, one of whom has his arm raised to strike, preface the tableau vivant and are rendered in a slightly larger scale than the life-size figures that comprise the rest of the scene, as if their hulking form were used to underscore their function. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus stand back from the sarcophagus with the other figures and strike contrappostic, animated poses; Nicodemus appears ready to anoint the body of Christ with his open ointment jar. The costumes of the porters are extremely detailed and rival those of the guards. The Virgin and John the Evangelist are again treated as an intertwined duet of figures: Mary swoons as she beholds Christ, and John steadies her with both 53

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Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 157; cf. Martin, La statuaire, 222; Jacques Baudoin, La sculpture flamboyante en Bourgogne et France-Comté (Nonette: Éditions Créer, 1996), 306. The Franciscan church was destroyed in 1595. The treatment of Mary’s veil is similar to that seen in the Holy Women at Chaource (fig. 42); the figure of Mary Magdalene is very close in style to that of the Magdalen at Mussysur-Seine (Forsyth suggests they are by the same hand), while Nicodemus and Joseph share the bold stance and vigorous proportions of Burgundian porters. See Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 156 and Baudoin, La sculpture flamboyante, 306. Although both Forsyth (The Entombment of Christ, 157) and Baudoin (La sculpture flamboyante, 306) identify the frieze of figures on the sarcophagus as the twelve apostles, the figures are represented semi-clad in togas, and they do not seem very apostolic. No other identification presents itself. However, a sarcophagus with a pagan theme does not seem beyond the realm of possibility.

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Figure 55 Entombment from St.-Vorles, Châtillon-sur-Seine, from former Franciscan church, polychromed stone, c. 1527. photo: author.

arms. Two Holy Women buttress this central group, and Mary Magdalene stands to the right with her right arm elevated, echoing the same arm of the guard, who closes the semi-circle on that side. The facial expressions in this work convey the shared sorrow of the mourners: mouths fall open, eyes are narrowed by sadness, and the donors are lost in prayer. The depth of emotion represented in this work is reminiscent of the fervor that characterized late medieval preaching, where both the preacher and audience were transformed.56 Muessig invokes the theatrical preaching of Ladislaus whose sermons (c. 1505) so moved the worshipers that they were overcome with grief; indeed, the preacher was so ardent for the Lord that he was elevated above the ambo before his amazed audience.57 Preachers also used props and sound effects similar to those used in the mysteries. For example, during a sermon at Metz, a trumpet sounded three times once Pilate pronounced his sentence, and, when Christ was suspended on the Cross, someone hidden struck an anvil three times for every nail.58 The Entombment sculpture, 56 57 58

See Muessig, “Performance of the Passion,” 129–142. Muessig, “Performance of the Passion,” 135–136. Muessig, “Performance of the Passion,” 136.

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Figure 56 Entombment from St.-Vorles, Châtillon-sur-Seine, detail of Mary Magdalene. photo: author.

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Figure 57 Entombment from St.-Remi, Reims, polychromed stone, c. 1525–1545. photo: Pascale L-R.

if still in the midst of the original funerary chapel of the lieutenant of la Montagne and his wife, the dame de la Ferté, would have stirred its medieval audience to feel the pain suffered by Christ and the emotional toll of his loss for mankind (figs. 55 and 58). In a Passion play and in gazing at the Entombment of Christ, the spectator sees the wounds inflicted upon the body of Christ in what is an essentially voyeuristic experience.59 At this moment, the dramatic agency shifts to the spectator, who must create meaning through the performers’ bodies (or sculptural representations) and his own presence at the theatrical event (or before the tableau vivant). Bodily presence is the key ingredient for affective piety.60 A medieval worshiper before a carved Pietà recalled that the, “art pinned me down with the Passion of Jesus Christ and Mary held me fast in their pain and sorrow.”61 The materiality of the sculpture helped foster this tactile religious experience; indeed, the experiential knowledge supplanted all non-body

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Stevenson, “Material Bodies,” 204–233, esp. 213. Stevenson, “Material Bodies,” 213–214. Milhaven, “A Medieval Lesson,” 356–357 as cited by Stevenson, “Material Bodies,” 214.

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Figure 58 Entombment from St.-Vorles, Châtillon-sur-Seine, detail of donors. photo: author.

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memories of Mary for the worshiper.62 It is striking that stone is the medium used to realize the Entombment of Christ, for it is most conducive to rendering a simulacrum of flesh and blood. The medium, as Marshall McLuhan reminds us, is the message, and the medium is an extension of one’s body.63 There was a corporeal component to devotional reception, one that was triggered by viewing both a mystery play as well as a simulation of Christ’s Entombment.64 As Muessig noted in regard to the Beguine nun’s visions and stigmata, neither divine manifestation was efficacious without an audience. Medieval performance was to see and be seen, as the performers touched the spectators and vice versa.65 The whole impetus behind mapping the holy city of Jerusalem upon one’s local town was to insure that Christ’s Passion occurred in familiar surroundings. Often a work of sculpture formed the centerpiece for public devotions preceding the performance of a Passion play: in Lucerne the Arrest of Christ was set up at the base of the north steeple of the local church in 1516, and the latter became the site of devotional activities during Easter week.66 The sculpture served as a station for evening processions around the church’s chapel of the Holy Sepulchre and, on Maundy Thursday, was the site of a candlelight vigil.67 This interweaving of the visual and the performing arts, coupled with the viewing postures recommended for devotional contemplation, argues for the experiential nature the two mediums share. Jean Gerson, following the lead of William of Auvergne, advised the worshiper to kneel, stand, sit, bow, or lean up against something, or perhaps even lie down, to attain knowledge of God in The Mountain of Contemplation.68 In an analysis of Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of Christ, Griffiths alludes to the embodiment of late medieval piety: “When viewing religious spectacle, one expects a somatic engagement that could be as extreme as the Imitatio Christi or as innocuous as possessing an image of Christ that returns one’s gaze. Each of these spectacular modes of representing the Crucifixion foregrounds an im62

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“She cannot go back in memory and distinguish in the original experience a non-body union with Mary from a bodily one.” Milhaven, “A Medieval Lesson,” 355 as cited by Stevenson, “Material Bodies,” 214. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964), 9–18. Ehrstine, “Passion Spectatorship,” 311. Ehrstine, “Passion Spectatorship,” 306; cf. Muessig, “Performance of the Passion,” 133–135. Ehrstine, “Passion Spectatorship,” 308. Ehrstine, “Passion Spectatorship,” 308, n. 28 Jean Gerson, “The Mountain of Contemplation” in Jean Gerson, Early Works, trans. Brian Patrick McGuire (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), 98 as cited in Ehrstine, “Passion Spectatorship,” 309, n. 34.

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mersive and interactive gaze, the idea that the act of looking not only demands more of the spectator—a bodily engagement in the case of Imitatio Christi— but somehow delivers more.”69 The goal of a Passion play was to transform what the suffering Christ endures into compassion in the viewer, a vicarious participation in Christ’s suffering, death, and Resurrection. The sequence of emblematic tableaux that composed the Passion narrative fostered the sense of immediacy that characterized the plays; indeed, the plays projected Christ’s suffering to the present time. The frozen actions of the patrons, mourners, and soldiers that surround the dead Christ at Châtillon-sur-Seine similarly arrest time and sadden the worshiper who encounters this Entombment scene.

Melodrama and the Role of Women in the Entombment at SaintRemi in Reims

The Passion plays, like the Entombment sculptures, dwell on the tragedy of Christ’s suffering and death, even though the Resurrection transforms that defeat into a triumph. The ultimate triumph over death, however, belongs to the realm of theology, and the plays are drama first, and doctrine afterwards.70 The sculptural recreation of the Entombment, though promising the Resurrection, also triggers the response of pity and sadness among the members of its audience. McNeir isolates two psychological reactions that are summoned on the part of the Corpus Christi dramatists to the tension inspired by Christ’s death: one is to resort to comedy to distract the audience from its distress, and the other is to resort to melodrama to anesthetize the audience by the proliferation of painful details surrounding the Crucifixion.71 What path did the sculptors of the Entombments follow? The Entombment found in the abbey church of Saint-Remi in Reims subscribes to the melodramatic school of artistic expression (fig. 57). Once belonging to the church of the Templars in Reims, the scabbards and elaborate belts worn by Joseph and Nicodemus attest to the military orientation of the order

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Alison Griffiths, “The Revered Gaze: The Medieval Imaginary of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” Cinema Journal 46/2 (2007), 24–25. Waldo F. McNeir, “The Corpus Christi Passion Plays as Dramatic Art,” Studies in Philology 48/3 Studies in Mediaeval Culture (1951), 601–628, esp. 604. McNeir refers to the plays’ vantage point as one of “theological hindsight.” McNeir, “The Corpus Christi Passion Plays,” 623. The author dubs the comedic impulse the “minus” principle and the melodramatic method the “plus” principle.

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of the Templars.72 Though the sarcophagus is modern, an inscription on the front of the tomb slab reads: “Frère Francois Sarradin cõmmandeur de céans, a fait faire ce sépulcre. En l’an mil cinq cens trent et ung. Priez Dieu pour luy.”73 (Brother Francois Sarradin, commander of this house, had this sepulcher made in the year 1531. Pray to God for him.) Eight life-size figures compose the group, and it is characterized by an emotionalism that culminates in the raised arms of Mary Magdalene (fig. 59).74 This gesture stretches the mantle cord diagonally across her breasts and violently throws the mantle off her left shoulder, while her face betrays both agony and disbelief at the sight of Christ’s lifeless corpse. John must restrain the Virgin as she bows over her dead son, hands tightly clasped. The pose and gestures of the other two Holy Women mirror each other, and they provide a foil for the more emotive mourners. Joseph and Nicodemus seem lost in thought as they hold the shroud in a manner reminiscent of Burgundian examples from the previous century.75 Richard Beadle characterized medie­val dramaturgy as, “unerringly implicative;” indeed, what provokes the comparison with medieval drama in the instance of the Entombment of Saint-Remi is not its theatricality, but rather its implicative power.76 The mimetic representation of this sacred moment from the Passion made a material impression on the viewer, one that was concrete, tangible, and imprinted upon the mind. Religious dramas were conceived not only to teach and entertain, but also to create a sacred history that could be, “actualized within the present.”77 Yet, there was even an insistence on the materiality of time: as the drama was embellished, performances tended to span virtually the same period of time as the original events.78 This “temporal verisimilitude” meant 72

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Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 157; cf. Louis Demaison, “Saint-Remi de Reims,” Congrès archéologique de France à Reims en 1911 (Paris, 1912), 96–97. The sculptural Entombment was given to Saint-Remi by the owner of the old church of the Templars in 1803. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 157, n. 54. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 184. Though the forearms were restored in 1958, they follow their original trajectory. The porters hold the shroud with two hands, as if holding a hammock, in the manner seen in the Entombments found at Semur-en-Auxois (fig. 1), the Chapel of Saint-Esprit at the hospital in Dijon (fig. 27), Talant (fig. 35), and others. Richard Beadle, “Masks, Mimes and Miracles: Medieval English Theatricality and Its Illusions,” in From Script to Stage in Early Modern England, eds. P. Holland and S. Orgel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 37. David Mills, “The ‘Now’ and ‘Then’,” Medieval English Theatre 22 (2000), 6. Véronique Plesch, “‘Étalage complaisant?’ The Torments of Christ in French Passion Plays,” Comparative Drama 28/4 (1994–1995), 458–485, esp. 474, n. 75. One criticism of the

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Figure 59 Entombment from St.-Remi, Reims, detail of Mary Magdalene. photo: Pascale L-R.

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that experiencing a Passion play could be a rather arduous affair, one that imbued the spectator with images to meditate upon after it was over.79 But again, are “quick” (living or moving) images more effective than static, “dead” ones? Time has been arrested for the mourners of the Saint-Remi Entombment: mouths fall open to speak, Mary is prevented from swooning, and the Magdalen’s despair is cast in stone (figs. 57 and 59). In a sense, the instantaneity of the sculptural simulacrum catapults the past into the present, crystallizing the moment of the Entombment into a vivid visual image, one that does not risk losing an audience during a lengthy narrative sequence. The performance of the Saint-Remi Entombment is shared by the carved figures and the viewers, the latter of whom approach and visually “consume” the work. But the memoria, traditionally bound to violence and pain in rhetoric, is here relegated to the doctrine of Salvation embodied and transmitted to the viewer in this work as well as in the performance of the mysteries.80 The sculptural Entombment, like the Passion play, is both representation and experience.81 Women have played a central role in the sculptural Entombment of Christ, a role inherited from the first enactment of the Visitatio Sepulchri. Indeed, women have always played an active role in both the preparation of and mourning for the deceased.82 If Robert Darnton is right, we should be able to read this scene as a text in which social hierarchies are inscribed upon the body.83 The Holy Women mediate this moment from the Passion for the view-

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Passion of Greban was “Le Sauveur des hommes n’a pas souffert plus longtemps en réalité que, dans le mystère, celui qui le représente.” (“The Savior did not in reality suffer longer than the one who impersonates him in the mystery play.”) Plesch, “Étalage complaisant?,” 475; Plesch argues for the Passion plays as a source for images for private meditation. The expression “temporal verisimilitude” is culled from Omer Jodogne, “La structure des mystères français,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 42/3 (1964), 832, “vraisemblance temporelle.” Kreuder, “Flagellation of the Son of God,” 186–187. Beckwith, Christ’s Body, 61. Though Beckwith is speaking only of medieval drama, my contention is that this holds true for the visual arts as well. See, for example, Christine Mitchell Havelock, “Mourners on Greek Vases: Remarks on the Social History of Women,” in Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany, eds. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 45–61; Piroska Nagy, “Religious Weeping as Ritual in the Medieval West,” Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 48/2 (2004), 119–137; Edward James, “Burial and Status,” Transactions of Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series 39 (1989), 23–40; Sharon Gerstel, “Painted Sources for Female Piety in Medieval Byzantium,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 52 (1998), 89–111. This type of analysis is used by Susan Rodgers and Joanna E. Ziegler in “Elisabeth of Spalbeek’s Trance Dance of Faith: A Performance Theory Interpretation from Anthropological

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ers: their bodies are the site where the loss of Christ is made manifest. Their emotional outburst spiritually performs the impact of Christ’s death for humanity and fosters in its vehemence a kindred sadness in the viewer. In a similar vein, the ecstatic trances of Elisabeth of Spalbeek have been interpreted as virtually shamanistic in their transformative powers for both the mystic herself and those who observed her.84 Just as the Flagellation was the epitome of the Imitatio Christi, the Lamentation was the height of the Imitatio Mariae.85 The late medieval period was steeped in the role compassion played in redemption, and women had a particular facility in fostering this emotion.86 Women also played a crucial role in the shift of focus from Christ’s divinity to his humanity: for women were powerful representatives of the powerless, advocates for the bleeding, suffering, yet salvific powers of Christ.87 That Christ heals with his wounds led Bynum to suggest that women could more closely imitate Christ by their possession of generative flesh.88 According to Aers this feminization of Christ led to the apoth­eosis of women in terms of access to the suffering body of Christ.89 The Holy Women who surround the body of Christ in Saint-Remi bridge the gap between the past and present reality of the Christ who suffered and continues to suffer before them. They are the Greek chorus in this sculptural tragedy.

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and Art Historical Perspectives,” in Performance and Transformation: New Approaches to Late Medieval Spirituality, eds. J. Ziegler and M. Suydam (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 299–355, esp. 309. Ziegler and Rodgers, “Elisabeth of Spalbeek’s Trance Dance,” 313. Randi Klebanoff, “Passion, Compassion and the Sorrows of Women: Niccolo dell’Arca’s Lamentation over the dead Christ for the Bolognese Confraternity of Santa Maria della Vita,” Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 146–172, esp. 154–155. Klebanoff, “Passion, Compassion,” 155–157; Indeed, the behavior of women at funerals was viewed as troublesome, because it bordered on histrionic; however, they were lauded for their self-mortification, compassion for human suffering, and for the sorrows of Christ. This position is championed by Caroline Walker Bynum (Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)); cf. David Aers, “The Humanity of Christ: Reflections on Orthodox Late Medieval Representations,” in The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture, eds. David Aers and Lynn Staley (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 15–42, esp. 30–31. Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), passim. Aers, “The Humanity of Christ,” 35–37. This divinization of maternity and the essence of women was a product of late medieval piety and was not without consequences.

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Aura and the Entombment at Vesoul

According to Walter Benjamin, a work of art may lose its aura if it is detached from its ritual function.90 The sculptural Entombments are never completely divorced from the Easter liturgy, even though they may not have been used in the actual performance of that liturgy. The latter often involved the use of a statue of Christ that was taken down from the Cross and placed on an altar that doubled as the Holy Sepulcher (the Depositio). Then, on Easter Sunday, Christ would rise from his tomb (the Elevatio); it was not uncommon for monks or even lay people to assume the roles of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus and to place the statue of Christ on the lap of a man who played the Virgin Mary.91 Another aspect of the Entombment sculptures that resonates with the viewer is the perception of similitude. We share a body that resembles that of Christ, and “we suffer with it because it bears the marks of suffering. The dead Christ rouses our grief all the more, because it shows death in terms and forms most of us know.”92 One is able to realize in oneself the quality of suffering endured by Christ. But, there is more. “The imprisonment of presence in representation gives the fixed image its potentiality; then it may be cherished or become a fetish.”93 The Entombment of Christ becomes an object of devotion, one that is performed by the worshiper in an act of mimetic identification. That nuns sometimes experienced physical pain before representations of the wounded Christ suggests the power wielded by art, an art that clearly still possessed its aura.94 As Biernoff surmises, the devotional practice of identifying with Christ mirrors the medieval art of memory, “with its emphasis on bodily sight, interior visualization, and the mnemonic articulation of memory

90 91

92 93

94

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968), 226. For a fuller discussion of the liturgy, see above ch. I., pp. 7–24. See David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 286–287, n. 9. Freedberg, The Power of Images, 191. Freedberg, The Power of Images, 234; Freedberg is here contrasting a photographic image with a filmic image, however, there is a similar disjuncture between the sculptural representation and the performed mysteries. See Anne L. Clark, “Venerating the Veronica: Varieties of Passion Piety in the Later Middle Ages,” Material Religion 3/2 (2007), 164–189, esp. 175. This is reinforced by the findings of many other scholars, notably Caroline Walker Bynum and Jeffrey Hamburger.

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Figure 60 Entombment from St.-Georges, Vesoul, polychromed stone, mid-16th century. photo: author.

images.”95 The pathos of the Entombment of Christ lingers in the mind’s eye as well as in the heart of the beholder. A seven-figure Entombment dating from the middle of the sixteenth century is found in the chapel of the Holy Sepulcher in the church of Saint-­Georges in Vesoul (fig. 60). Influenced by the animated and emotional sculptural groups emanating from Italy, the figures also share elaborate costumes and coiffures, imaginative hats, and expressions fixed in a state of startled sorrow. Joseph, in a balletic pose, holds the tilted head of Christ in his right hand, which con­ stitutes the only direct contact between the mourners and the body of Christ (fig. 61). In contradistinction, Nicodemus, a marvelous bearded figure, stands frontally and displays the crown of thorns, riddled with spines, at right angles to his body (fig. 62). Behind Christ’s contorted body stand, from left to right, John supporting Mary, Mary Magdalene with her unguent jar, and another Holy Woman with her hands clasped in prayer (fig. 63). The Vesoul Entombment captures the immediacy of the “here and now” (sein Hier und Jetzt), a requisite quality for the work to possess aura in Benjamin’s eyes.96 The restless body of Christ, the paused gestures of the Marys, the rhetorical action of Nicodemus holding the crown of thorns, and the inaudible speech of the mourners reinforce the present tense of this work. The vivid costumes enhance the impression made by the sculpted group. For example, one 95 96

Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 140; cf. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 54, 57. Benjamin, “The Work of Art,” 220–224.

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Figure 61 Entombment from St.-Georges, Vesoul, detail of Joseph of Arimathea. photo: author.

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Figure 62 Entombment from St.-Georges, Vesoul, detail of Nicodemus. photo: author.

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Figure 63 Entombment from St.-Georges, Vesoul, detail of Holy Woman. photo: author.

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is dazzled by the fur-trimmed mantle of Nicodemus, his chain belt and pendant sword, and conical hat, which terminates in a rolled turban that is delineated with a gilded diamond pattern resembling the omphalos at Delphi and matching the color of the brocade on his shirt and cuffs (fig. 62). These details not only enhance memoria, but also underlie the aura of the work.

Pouilly-en-Auxois and Ductus97or Directed Movement

The composition of every work of art—in sound or paint or stone or ink—has a ductus, or path, that the artist chose in his use of color, tenor, and ornament; simultaneously, every spectator follows his own ductus in experiencing that work of art.98 The first goal of every composition is to identify its scopus, or goal, its starting point (stasis), and then its path (ductus) to that goal (scopus). Carruthers notes that emotion is the quickest route to capture the mind’s attention, and the language of emotion includes anger, wonder, and awe.99 What strikes me as useful about the trope of ductus is its stress on the instrumentality of art: the memory of God lies in the realm of recognition, and the path through the Entombment of Christ engenders a meditation on the meaning of Christ’s life and death accessed by the identification of the members of this holy assembly.100 The Entombment of Christ found in the northwest corner of the chapel of Notre-Dame-Trouvée in Pouilly-en-Auxois, dated 1521, and donated by Nicolas Boyeau of Pouilly, was created under the spell of Italian Renaissance models (fig. 64).101 The group consists of ten figures, including two sleeping guards in front of the sarcophagus and three smaller angels bearing the instruments of the Passion placed on a shelf surmounting the main figural group (figs. 65 and 66). The original location of this Entombment is unknown, and its date is inscribed on a shield mounted nearby. An obtrusive grill hinders the contemporary viewer’s appreciation of this sculpture, however, its dramatic pitch is still 97

98 99 100

101

See Mary Carruthers, “Rhetorical Ductus, or Moving through a Composition,” in Acting on the Past: Historical Performance Across the Disciplines, eds. Mark Franko and Annette Richards (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), 99–117. Carruthers, “Rhetorical Ductus,” 111–112. Carruthers, “Rhetorical Ductus,” 105–106. Carruthers, “Rhetorical Ductus,” 113; Carruthers contrasts the cognitive uses of art to pure mimesis and notes that figures must be recognized in order to be effective; it is in this way that social phenomena that are framed rhetorically acquire an ethical, communal dimension. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 79, 147, 161, and 184. Cf. Martin, La statuaire, 222–224.

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Figure 64 Entombment from Chapel of Notre-Dame-Trouvée in Pouilly-en-Auxois, stone, 1521. photo: author.

quite perceptible. The Virgin Mary swoons in the center of the composition and is caught in this instance by two of the Holy Women (fig. 67). Mary Magdalene stands to the left and, to the right, St. John, overcome with emotion, holds a handkerchief to his face. Joseph and Nicodemus occupy their customary positions at the head and feet of Christ, respectively. The depiction of an older woman supporting Mary, with her open mouth and intermittent teeth, in addition to the preponderance of heads gazing imploringly towards heaven engender an intense emotional tenor that adheres to the formula prescribed in the rhetoric of re-collective cognition. Memoria was triggered by surprise and strangeness, which in turn arose with the use of metaphora, metonymy, allegoria, oxymoron, grotesquery, exaggeration, orderliness, pattern, rhythm, amplification, opposition, and contrast—all of which forged mnemonically powerful associations.102 The soldiers are particularly noteworthy (figs. 64 and 65). They seem to advertise their Roman affiliation with fantastic armor replete with human heads; in one instance the head appears to devour the arm emerging from the sleeve of the sleeping soldier, and two other heads animate the shields supporting the 102

Carruthers, “Rhetorical Ductus,” 105.

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Figure 65 Entombment from Chapel of Notre-Dame-Trouvée in Pouilly-en-Auxois, detail of soldier. photo: author.

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Figure 66 Entombment from Chapel of Notre-Dame-Trouvée in Pouilly-en-Auxois, detail of angels above. photo: author.

Figure 67 Entombment from Chapel of Notre-Dame-Trouvée in Pouilly-en-Auxois, detail of swooning Virgin and Holy Woman. photo: author.

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contorted bodies of the guards. The artist has skillfully contrasted the rugged, youthful physiognomies of the unconscious soldiers with the emphatic mourning of the seasoned figures who surround the corpse of Christ. Indeed, the ductus through this composition may be through levels of spiritual awareness: one journeys from the corpus of Christ, whose death is transcendent, to the compassio of Mary to the spiritual darkness of the guards, who form the base of the composition. Finally, the three angels now poised above the Entombment provide a gloss to the ductus of the sculpture (fig. 66). The outer two angels, dressed as celebrants of the Mass, hold the instruments of the Passion (a cross and a nowdestroyed object) and flank a scroll-bearing angel in the middle. Assuming the role of a Greek chorus, the angels underline Christ’s suffering and his triumph over that ordeal in heaven; perhaps the words on the banderole once spelled out this message of victory over death. Their postures are dance-like, and their presence reminds the worshiper that death is not the last act of this Passion play.

Baume-les-Dames: Provincial Pathos

The cemetery chapel of Baume-les-Dames contains an under life-size Entombment of Christ raised on a plinth in the choir (fig. 68). The sculpture was commissioned by the canon Pignet of Besançon c. 1540; the canon’s coat of arms is represented on the sarcophagus, flanking two rather ungainly angels who support an escutcheon bearing the instruments of the Passion (fig. 69).103 Joseph and Nicodemus hold the shroud in the customary Burgundian fashion, and Christ lies rigidly between them with his hands crossed over his abdomen. The mourners behind the body of Christ, which are carved as three-quarter-length figures resting on a base, are in the following order: Mary is at the head of Christ, gently restrained by Saint John, followed by the three Holy Women, one of whom clasps her hands in prayer, another with arms crossed over her chest, while the last reaches for her unguent jar (fig. 70). The garish colors, which reflect a restoration in 1970, and the unsophisticated style attest to the local origins of this sculpture.104 103 104

Forsyth wrongly identifies this work as carved of wood. See Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 172. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 162–163. The figures of Joseph and Nicodemus wear similar costumes and have similar physiognomies to another rustic Entombment, that found in Ray-sur-Saône.

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Figure 68 Entombment from Baume-les-Dames, Cemetery Chapel, polychromed stone, c. 1545. photo: author.

Figure 69 Entombment from Baume-les-Dames, Cemetery Chapel, detail of front of ­sarcophagus. photo: author.

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Figure 70 Entombment from Baume-les-Dames, Cemetery Chapel, detail of mourners. photo: author.

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Though rustic in execution, the effect of this sculptural Entombment is akin to a ritual, a “folklorised ritual,” that is elevated by its association with both drama and funeral rites.105 The identification of the tomb of the patron Pignet with that of Christ, signified by the juxtaposition of the arms of the former and the arma Christi of the latter on the front of the sarcophagus, reminds the worshipers to dwell not only on the suffering of their Savior, but also on the resurrection of the donor at the end of time. The verticality of the mourners, in conjunction with their insistent isocephaly, accentuates the prone position of Christ upon the sarcophagus, throwing into relief the intersection of the living and the dead. In this way the Entombment is performative: a ritual is being enacted, embodied, condensed, and inscribed upon the worshipers. The profoundly mimetic character of this sculptural work insured its authenticity as a moment from salvation history; indeed, the entire devotional experience was mapped on the body of Christ. Thus, when a nun touched the hands and feet of a similar figure of Christ lying in a sarcophagus, she experienced the, “flesh and blood as if a living person were lying there.”106 Similarly, by measuring the side wound of Christ, kissing it, and multiplying by forty, one could participate in his salvific power: the wound literally became an object, a contact relic. Christ’s materialized body became what it represented.107 This fluid definition of Christ’s body is a key to understanding the Entombment. Christ is alive in death. “Both sacrifice and triumph over it are real and eternal. Christ’s bodily matter lives at the moment he expires—and forever.”108 The sacred resided in matter, matter that could be seen and experienced in a corporeal manner: “to meditate on scenes from the Passion would have been to enter into this fabric of associations and expectations.”109 As a devotional image, the Entombment of Christ staged an affective encounter with a God made flesh.110 At Baume-les-Dames, it is once again the Holy Women, whose gestures are reminiscent of the proverbial three wise monkeys, who parse this meditation upon Christ’s sacrifice for mankind (fig. 70). The Virgin has delivered her lament, and the Passion play has shifted into static 105 106

107 108 109 110

See Robert Scribner, “Ritual and Popular Religion in Catholic Germany at the Time of the Reformation,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35 (1984), 71. This incident is recounted about a nun from Switzerland in Jeffrey F. Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), 85, 495, n. 243. Bynum, Christian Materiality, 99. Bynum, Christian Materiality, 258. Suzannah Biernoff, “Carnal Relations: Embodied Sight in Merleau-Ponty, Roger Bacon and St. Francis,” Journal of Visual Culture 4/1 (2005), 43. Biernoff, “Carnal Relations,” 44.

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mode from narrative mode: the arma Christi provides the cypher to the Entombment as it is borne aloft by the maladroit angels on the sarcophagus (fig. 69).111 Despite the provincial character of this Entombment, it is still able to inspire pathos in the worshiper; the mourners beckon the faithful to join in their community of compassion.

Interpretive Strategies

We have considered above the various methods by which worshipers apprehended the meaning of the sculptural Entombments in Burgundy and Champagne. Why were the cultural, ethical, and religious expectations of this historical moment ripe for the reception of these works? Late medieval piety fostered devotion to the Passion of Christ, and these works embodied that devotion. How was the sacred experience inscribed upon the worshiper? Certain characteristics encompass all the Entombments: an emphasis on corporeal presence, a detailed rendering of garments and attributes, and an emotional fervor that heightens the worshipers’ engagement in the scene and enhances memoria. The medium of the Entombments adds to their power as Andachtsbilder: they add the third dimension to belief, one that is transformative in the exchange between the worshiper and the worshiped.112 The Entombment of Christ was experiential in nature, a quality it shared with the Passion plays performed during the same period. In both, the body of Christ was the site where time, space, and drama coalesced. Both Christ’s suffering and his triumph over that suffering emanated from the wounds in his body to the worshiper/spectator, whose reception was visceral in nature. Indeed, the human body was the sensitive gauge of affective piety in the late Middle Ages. In the next chapter, we will examine where the Entombments fit into the landscape of other late medieval sculpture produced in Europe during this period. Though monumental sculpture still plays a major role in defining the art of piety, the retable devoted to the Passion becomes a finely tuned instrument of devotion, one that achieves its artistic apogee in the waning of the Middle Ages. 111

112

King, “Seeing and Hearing,” 163; the alternation of “tell-and-show” is a dramatic technique used by the Butchers’ dramatist, where the arma Christi are contrasted with visual ingredients from Golgotha paintings in a narrative sequence. “It is one of the functions of the third dimension to come to the rescue when things get uncomfortable in the second.” Rudolf Arnheim, Toward a Psychology of Art: Collected Essays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 239.

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Conclusion: The Entombments in the Context of Late Medieval Sculpture

The Future Forecast: Art from the Court of Philip the Bold

While historians debate the waning of the Middle Ages, and whether the changes that occurred in medieval society c. 1500 were the result of a decline in the vitality of the culture, a socio-economic crisis, or a gradual transition to the early modern period, our query is decidedly more narrow in focus.1 Why did the sculptural representation of the Entombment of Christ have such a relatively short lifespan in the visual legacy of late medieval piety? The monumental sculptures begin to appear in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and, by the end of the sixteenth century, they simply had gone out of fashion. The Passion of Christ remained central to the Christian experience, yet the Entombment as a vehicle of faith no longer seemed to answer the religious call to arms. Was there a change in liturgy that engendered this paradigm shift or simply a new taste for the ornate, intricate worlds created in the Passion retables that proliferated during the late Middle Ages? This chapter will examine some of the sculpture that was produced in the regions of Burgundy and Champagne during and after the period in which the Entombments flourished and offer some final observations about the significance of the latter in their historical context. It is curious that the taste for statues of individual saints did not wane, nor did the Pietà lose any of its popular appeal. Indeed, the image of the Virgin with the dead Christ on her lap seemed to supplant the representation of Christ’s Entombment. Seminal to this brief overview is the patronage of the Valois dukes and their courtship of artists of Flemish origin.2 The marriage between Philip the Bold and Margaret 1 2

See Donald Sullivan, “The End of the Middle Ages: Decline, Crisis, or Transformation?,” The History Teacher 14/4 (1981), 551–565. The marriage of Philip the Bold and Margaret de Male of Flanders engendered a liaison between Burgundy and the art center of Ghent. See Ludovic Nys, “Art in the Court of Flanders at the Time of the Marriage of Philip the Bold and Margaret de Male,” in Art from the Court of Burgundy, 52–64; for general remarks regarding the sculpture of this region during the late medieval period, see Hervé Oursel, “Remarques sur la sculpture dans le Nord de la France à la fin du Moyen-Âge,” in Actes des Journées Internationales Claus Sluter (Septembre 1990) (Dijon: Association Claus Sluter, 1992), 233–237.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004293144_007

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de Male of Flanders (Margaret III of Dampiere) gave the duke access upon the death of Margaret’s father to Artois, Burgundy, Rethel, Flanders, and Never.3 It is not an exaggeration to state that the majority of Philip’s court artists were from Flanders, and the art of the Chartreuse de Champmol bears the unmistakable imprint of this imported style.4 The presence of the magisterial altarpiece by Melchior Broederlam and Jacques de Baerze (1392–1399) on Burgundian soil was a powerful catalyst for artistic change in and of itself (fig. 3).5 The paintings of Broederlam introduced a unique way of visualizing the world: in the scenes of the Annun­ciation, Visitation, Presentation in the Temple, and Flight into Egypt, the architecture simultaneously reveals complex interior and exterior spaces, while landscapes divulge rocky paths and mountainous passes. This spatial dexterity coexists with the use of a gold background and the introduction of innovative iconographic details; prophets adorn the temple where the Annunciation transpires, and the Fall of Idols occurs in the background of the Flight into Egypt. The complex dollhouse architecture is reminiscent of Trecento painting, yet the realism of the landscape and faces reflects the artist’s Flemish origins.6 The two gilded wood and polychrome altarpieces by Jacques de Baerze dedicated to the Crucifixion and Saints and Martyrs bear the initials P and M for Philip and Margaret; the second was intended for the altar of the chapterhouse of Champmol, and its painted panels no longer exist.7 The central panel of the Crucifixion triptych, also destined for Champmol, which formed the verso of Broederlam’s Infancy cycle, consists of from left to right: the Adoration of the Magi, the Crucifixion, and the Entombment (figs. 3, 71, and 72). Saints beneath 3 4

5

6 7

Richard Vaughan, Philip the Bold: The Formation of the Burgundian State (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, Ltd., 2002), 113–139. For a view of the art of Flanders before and after the marriage of Philip and Margaret, see Nys, “Art in the Court of Flanders,” 52–64. See Sophie Cassagnes-Brouquet, “Artists to the Dukes of Burgundy,” and “Atelier Activity and the Status of Artists,” in Art from the Court of Burgundy, 89–93 and 282–287, respectively, for an overview of Philip’s recruited artists from Jean Malouel to Claus Sluter to Jean d’Arbois. Brabant was a leading center for the production of retables, and the dukes of Burgundy seem to have had a predilection for this style. The altarpiece, now housed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Dijon, was one of two retables commissioned for the Chartreuse de Champmol by Philip the Bold that replicated examples from the abbey of Biljoke at Gand, which were in Termonde, where Jacques Baerze had his atelier. They were transported from Termonde to Champmol in 1391. See Susanna Bichler, “The Retables de Jacques de Baërze,” Actes des Journées Internationales, 23–35. The Museum of Fine Arts, Dijon (Paris, Musées et Monuments de France, 1992), 31. Ibid.

Conclusion

Figure 71 Passion Altarpiece, Jacques de Baerze, detail of Adoration of the Magi, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, CA 1420A. photo: François Jay, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.

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Figure 72 Figure 72 Passion Altarpiece, Jacques de Baerze, detail of the Crucifixion, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, CA 1420A. photo: Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.

a continuous Gothic arcade ornament the outer wings that buttress the center panel. Though tame in comparison to the retables that characterize the following generation, both the style and content of this altarpiece foreshadow the developments that follow. The proliferation of microarchitecture embellished with pinnacles and angels surmounting and enframing the scenes below endows the biblical narratives with an internal coherence and visual complexity. The worshiper enters the sheltered fictive spaces and consumes in one glance the finite scenes before him or her. In considering the relationship between Jacques de Baerze’s Entombment and that of the monumental representations that we have been considering, say for example, the sculpture at Chaource, the compositional cues are not that disparate (figs. 23 and 42). Yet, the presence of the upper parts of a Gothic cathedral encroaching upon the gilded wood vignette changes the role of the viewer vis-à-vis the work of art: the worshiper becomes an interloper at this moment from the Passion, rather than a full-bodied participant in the circle of mourners. This new role is not without sensual benefits, as the world that opens up is one of intricate tracery patterns, beautiful facial expressions, and an eloquent rapport between the figures and the background. Although the viewer does not have to penetrate a gothic arcade to see the action that unfolds in the retable as in viewing the procession of pleurants beneath the tomb of Philip the Bold, there is an aesthetic kinship in these two works; the viewer

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must excavate the layers of Gothic reality to witness the low relief Entombment (figs. 3 and 5).

The Triumph of the Retable

In a gilded and painted wood Passion altarpiece from the sixteenth century in the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts, one may see the future of the retable of Jacques de Baerze (fig. 73). A complex organic interlace vine scroll borders the triptych and introduces the deep relief space of the late Gothic pendant arcades, the latter of which are set at an angle to the ground to create greater depth. Looming larger is the central panel that features the Crucifixion, a densely packed scene in which the soldiers seem to tread upon the heads of the swooning

Figure 73 Passion Retable, Dijon Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv 2028, gilded and polychromed wood, 16th century. photo: François Jay, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.

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Figure 74 Passion Retable, detail of Way to Calvary, photo: François Jay. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.

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Figure 75 Passion Retable, Maître de la Vue de Sainte Gudule, Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Inv. PE 156, gilded and polychromed wood, late 15th century. photo: Jean Tholance, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Mary and the disciples represented beneath them. Below the virtual horror vacui of the Crucifixion scene is the representation of the Entombment/Lamentation encapsulated in a predella-like panel. The inclusion of a predella is peculiar to the central panel, creating a reliquary-like recess that makes it distinctive from the side panels. The left and right wings represent Christ carrying the Cross and the Deposition from the Cross, respectively. The artists or atelier that created this work heightened the pathos of the narratives by filling the compositions with figures that personalize the biblical scenes with anecdotal details: for example, on the way to Calvary, Christ stops to speak to Veronica, who holds the veil imprinted with the Savior’s image; two women face each other beseechingly during the Deposition; and Mary Magdalene begins to anoint the feet of Christ at his Entombment (fig. 73). The conjunction of the assertive architecture and the condensed gatherings of figures give these scenes an emotional immediacy and tangibility that appealed to the late medieval audience. The retable created a microcosm of Christ’s Passion: the verisimilitude and variety of the scriptural scenes arrested the attention of the viewer and invited his immersion in the minutiae of Christ’s last moments on earth. A polychrome gilded wood Passion retable dating from the late fifteenth century may be seen in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (fig. 75). Related

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in both form and content to the Dijon Passion retable, the Parisian work is further elaborated by two painted wings by the so-called “maître de la vue de Ste.-Gudule.”8 An even higher pitch of drama characterizes this work, as the thieves writhe on their crosses to either side of Christ, the way to Calvary is populated by menacing characters, and the Deposition is accompanied by Mary Magdalene convulsively weeping into her veil, while Mary swoons into the arms of John the Evangelist. In lieu of the continuous Gothic arcade, the scenes are crowned with an attic story containing additional scenes related to the narrative and separated by a projecting baldachin, supported by a radiating rib vault. The rocky terrain shared by all three scenes further accentuates the disequilibrium of the Passion story (fig. 76). Though the dominant stylistic influence on the above works has been Flemish, in turning to the Passion retable from Champagne carved out of limestone and dated c. 1522, the accent is decidedly Italianate (fig. 77).9 Imago clipeata, upheld by angels, contain images of the patrons on the base, and their busts reappear on either side of the central scene of the Crucifixion. The framing vocabulary has become Renaissance in nature, and the scenes below feature narrative subplots that are rendered in lower relief but as a part of the principal scene; thus, on the right panel above the Entombment of Christ one sees the three crosses, but the Deposition of Christ has already occurred. The drama of the Crucifixion outstrips that of any representations we have seen heretofore (fig. 78). The Virgin has passed out and is lying on the laps of two Marys as John stands reverently gazing up at Christ. In one extraordinary passage, the thief on the right is rendered with his body slumped forward at a right angle, which propels his hair downward to almost make contact with his contorted leg. The vocabulary of forms is reminiscent here of the Entombment at Pouilly-en-Auxois; melodramatic responses to the Passion coupled with shields bearing human masks unite these two very different works (figs. 64–67, 77–78). In the retable Entombment, Joseph of Arimathea (or Nicodemus) wears a hat reminiscent of that seen on the same figure in the Entombment at Vesoul, and John, centrally placed, supports Mary in a manner similar to many examples observed in Burgundy (figs. 62 and 77).

8

9

This work is inv. PE 156 and the painter is named for an altarpiece in the Louvre from c. 1470 featuring the life of Ste.-Gudule; the church dedicated to her and St.-Michel, located in Brussels, is represented in the background of this work in an unfinished state. Retable of the Passion from Champagne, white limestone with traces of polychrome, in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs; Depot du Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar, 1984, Inv. Colmar SP 601.

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Figure 76 Passion Retable, Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs, detail of Deposition from the Cross. photo: author. .

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Figure 77 Passion Retable, Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs, limestone from Champagne, c. 1522. photo: Jean Tholance, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

One of the most extensive retables from the sixteenth century may be found poised on a nineteenth-century altar in the choir of the church at Echannay (fig. 79). Carved of white limestone and composed of twenty-one individual panels, the altarpiece is devoted to the Passion of Christ, beginning with the Last Supper and terminating with Christ before the Doubting Thomas. One of the most extraordinary reliefs is the Descent into Limbo, in which Christ athletically charges into the open jowls of hell to rescue Adam and Eve with one hand; his other hand holds the victory banner that flutters in reaction to his movement, while his cape seems to balance the striding pose of his body (fig. 80). In the spandrels of the panel in much lower relief are an angel on the left and a devil on the right, who seem to be awaiting the outcome of Christ’s intervention. The Entombment or Lamentation from Echannay is rather unusual, as three different moments are treated in one panel (fig. 81). In the upper right are the three empty crosses, and, in the middle ground to the left, the preparation of the tomb occurs as Joseph and Nicodemus place the shroud upon it. The fore·

Conclusion

Figure 78 Passion Retable, Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs, detail of the Crucifixion. photo: author.

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Figure 79 Passion Altarpiece from St.-Remi, Echannay, limestone, 16th century. photo: author.

ground is occupied by the seated, limp body of the dead Christ, who is supported by the three kneeling figures of John the Evangelist at the Savior’s back, the Virgin by his upper arm and torso, and Mary Magdalene by his feet; the latter wistfully extends her arm to touch Christ’s lifeless hand. Did the protracted treatment of the Passion narrative find a more receptive audience during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries?10 The placement of the retable or altarpiece upon the back of the altar or the altar frontal dates from the thirteenth century; the juxtaposition of the biblical basis for Christ’s Incarnation and Passion with the site of the celebration of the Eucharist imbued these works with a talismanic power.11 Though the monumental Entombments were associated with pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher and thus invested with sacred presence, the scale of the retable, coupled with the marvelous miscellany of its constitution, proved a powerful lure to the pious. The retables, it 10

11

For a discussion of the commissions of retables in Germany, see Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 62–69. The standard work on this subject is Joseph Braun, Der christliche Altar in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Munich: Alte Meister Guenther Koch, 1924), II, 540–544. Before the thirteenth century, the priest or sub-deacon stood to the east of the altar and faced the congregation, however, the shift to celebrating the Eucharist on the west side of the altar freed the east side for the display of a retable.

Conclusion

Figure 80 Passion Altarpiece from St.-Remi, Echannay, detail of the Descent into Limbo. photo: author.

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Figure 81 Passion Altarpiece from St.-Remi, Echannay, detail of the Entombment. photo: author.

would seem, were in the final analysis eminently more accessible than the monumental memorials to Christ’s Passion. Like the private Book of Hours, there was an element of collective possession that characterized these beautiful altarpieces: their scale personalized the art of devotion for the churchgoers.12 As the Host was elevated, the viewer saw in the background the gilded figure of Christ crucified amidst a clamoring crowd of onlookers. This synchronicity of form and content would have been a powerful and persuasive means of edification and propagation of the Christian doctrine.

Monumental Sculpture: Pietàs of Champagne

The other dominant landmark on the late Gothic horizon was the Pietà. Culled from the Passion, this moment of intense grief of a mother for her dead son is laden with the mnemonic of remembrance. For inherent in this iconographic 12

The experience of an altarpiece also implicated the body and senses of the worshiper, as demonstrated by Beth Williamson, “Sensory Experience in Medieval Devotion: Sound and Vision, Invisibility and Silence,” Speculum 88/1 (2013), 1–43.

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Figure 82 Pietà from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, stone, 15th century. photo: author.

trope is the visual memory of the Virgin and Child: this figural group becomes an eerie premonition of Mary’s final embrace of the Savior at the end of his mortal life. Many of the churches that house an Entombment of Christ also possess a Pietà.13 The parish church remained a favorite locus for lay piety. The same sculptors were engaged to carve both subjects, and there is something almost formulaic about the examples from Burgundy and Champagne. The latter, exemplified by the Pietà in Chaource, features a somber figure of Mary clad in blue, who holds Christ gently, as his body forms a graceful arc across her lap to terminate in his curled right hand, which rests slightly above the ground (fig. 82). Another Pietà in Chaource follows the same basic type, however, the Christ figure’s arms are crossed over his abdomen in the guise of a Man of Sor-

13

See William H. Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture: Regional Variations (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), 17–19, for the origins of the iconography of the Pietà from a conflation of the Threnos and the Madonna of Humility.

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Figure 83 Pietà from St.-Jean-Baptiste, Chaource, stone, 15th century. photo: author.

rows (fig. 83).14 The effect of this pose, coupled with the Virgin’s own gesture of sorrow, creates a less than stable composition for the figure group. St.-Jean-au-Marché and St.-Nizier both contain Pietàs that reflect a conflation of the types invoked above (figs. 84 and 85). The figure of Christ is draped over the lap of the Virgin in each instance, and the Virgin presses her left hand to her heart in a gesture of grief. In both instances, Christ’s right arm dramatically falls to the hemline of the Virgin’s robe, underscoring the lifelessness of his heavy body. The close resemblance of the Christ of the Entombment/Deposition and that of the Pietà in St.-Jean-au-Marché suggests the same artist was responsible for both works (figs. 84 and 38). William Forsyth characterizes the St.-Nizier Pietà as the classic type developed in Champagne and sees the other three groups that develop in this region 14

There is also a Man of Sorrows in Chaource, another subject that proliferated during this period. The Man of Sorrows was “imported” to Burgundy and Champagne from Brabant and to the Lowlands in the beginning of the sixteenth century. See Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture, 67.

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Figure 84 Pietà from St.-Jean-au-Marché, Troyes, stone, 16th century. photo: Pascale .

as basic variations on this theme (fig. 85).15 The triangular silhouette formed by the Virgin, her supple drapery, and the smaller stature of Christ seem to be the noteworthy characteristics of this type.16 To these one could add the tension created by the one-handed hold that the Virgin has on the body of Christ and the graphic treatment of the bleeding wounds. Despite the abraded condition of the Pietà in the Musée Vauluisant, its beauty is still apparent (fig. 86). Forsyth characterizes this as a second type of Pietà from Champagne, because of the nested V-folds of the Virgin’s drapery, the new emotion on Mary’s face, the elegant proportions of the figures, and 15 16

Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture, 47–48. Ibid.

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Figure 85 Pietà from St.-Nizier, Troyes, stone, 16th century. photo: Pascale L.-R.

masterful carving.17 The signature Troyenne facial type, associated with the socalled Saint Martha Master, may be seen in Mary’s broad forehead, narrow chin, long hair that harmonizes with her veil, and downcast eyes from which flow the tears upon her cheeks.18

17 18

Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture, 49, 51. The Saint Martha Master is named after the statue of that saint in the Troyenne church of Ste.-Madeleine and is often associated with the Chaource and Villeneuve-L-Archevêque Entombments (figs. 42 and 40, respectively). Forsyth does not mention this stylistic affiliation with the Vauluisant Pietà, however, I believe there is a somber kinship.

Conclusion

Figure 86 Pietà from the Musée de Vauluisant, Troyes, polychromed stone, 16th century. photo: author.

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The most distinctive variation on the theme of the Pietà in Champagne may be seen in the church of St.-Martin in Bayel; here the Christ figure is diagonally disposed across the lap of the Virgin, who hovers close to his chest in an attitude of palpable sorrow. This sculpture is very close in style to the Saint Martha Master, and Forsyth posits that the Bayel Christ may be by this sculptor, c. 1520.19 The way that the Virgin and her drapery conform to the position of Christ’s prone body, coupled with the angle of Mary’s solicitous gaze, enhance the pathos of this representation. It is important to remember that the proliferation of this subject corresponds to the rise of the cult of Notre-Dame de Pité (Our Lady of Sorrows), which was also incorporated into the liturgy of the Church.20 The confraternities dedicated to this cult were awarded special Indulgences and had a high Mass celebrated on the Sunday after the octave of the Ascension. According to Mâle, these confraternities would have been the likely donors of many of these sculptural Pietàs.21 Could the absence of a cult dedicated to the Entombment have been a factor in its lower art historical profile during this liminal period between the late Gothic and Renaissance?22

Pietàs of Burgundy

Turning to Burgundy, Forsyth distinguishes six distinct types of Pietà in this region and sees the initial impetus stemming from the ducal workshop of Claus Sluter.23 Because Philip the Bold seems to have favored the Pietà as an intercessory image for his family, the popularity of this iconographic theme in the region of Burgundy is easily understood.24 The figures that comprise the Pietà found in the Chapel of the St.-Esprit in the hospital at Dijon, which belongs to the first variant, bear a family resemblance to those in the adjacent Entombment of Christ (figs. 27, 29, and 87).25 Slightly bulbous noses, round 19 20 21 22

23 24 25

Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture, 75–76, figs. 93–94. Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture, 37; See also Mâle, Religious Art in France, 118–124. Mâle, Religious Art in France, 119. The issue of the arbitrariness of periodization in the art of the Gothic and Renaissance eras is beautifully addressed by Ethan Matt Kavaler, Renaissance Gothic (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), 1–45. Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture, 21–45. Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture, 18–19. It is interesting to note that Forsyth (The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture, 19) traces the appearance of the first sculptural representation of this subject to Philip the Bold, who had a Pietà transferred from his hôtel d’Artois to the monastery at Champmol.

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Figure 87 Entombment from the Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem of the Hospital of St.-Esprit in Dijon, detail of the mourners. photo: author.

eyes, and sadly frowning lips characterize the faces, and an analogous canon of proportions governs the figures, one that exhibits a somewhat shorter, stolid build. It is only logical that the same workshop would produce sculpture of such kindred subject matter. The Burgundian “formula” of Pietà is most eloquently stated in the Pietà/ Entombment at Lons-le-Saunier (fig. 30). The body of Christ, which is gracefully held by Mary’s two arms, somehow remains anchored to the sloping lap,

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Figure 88 Pietà from Lons-le-Saunier, polychromed stone, 16th century. photo: author.

while the Savior’s arms lie awkwardly near his torso. A remarkable exception to this type is also found at Lons-le-Saunier, in a free-standing Pietà (fig. 88). Here, the Virgin is seated flat on the ground with her foreshortened legs outstretched before her. Christ, completely horizontal, is suspended upon her lap, which is sheathed in the pleated folds of her mantle that create a foil for the dead body. The Virgin, mouth opened, holds her hands in prayer above Christ. The sculpture is at once deeply moving and diverting, as the degree of foreshortening catapults the Virgin’s bare feet suddenly into the viewer’s line of vision and worship. An example culled from Forsyth’s sixth type of Pietà may be seen in St.Seine-l’Abbaye, a church that houses a single figure from an Entombment group (fig. 89).26 Here, a composed Virgin offers her dead son, raising his left arm in her left hand and supporting his body with her other arm. Christ’s body bends backward over Mary’s raised knee, and his head is cast downwards with his long hair dramatically swept away from his neck and torso. The Virgin’s face, gently inclined towards Christ’s, bears an expression full of tenderness and loss. Like the Entombments, the Pietàs focus on one frame of the Passion narrative, one that derives much of its pathos from the tragedy of this one26

Forsyth, The Pietà in French Late Gothic Sculpture, 44, fig. 39. See William H. Forsyth, “Popular Imagery in a Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Crèche,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 24 (1989), 117–126.

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Figure 89 Pietà from Seine-l’Abbaye, stone, 16th century. photo: author.

sided human exchange. Like the moment during Christ’s Infancy when Mary held Jesus upon her lap as the embodiment of the future savior of the world, Christ now has died to fulfill his mission on earth, despite the human pain his death inflicts upon Mary. Not only is the Pietà the essence of Mary’s sorrow, it is the emotional centerpiece of both the Lamentation and the Entombment of Christ.

Monumental Sculpture: The Nativity, Saints, Angels, and Martyrs

The swan song of the Entombment was a languorous affair and it did not go unheralded into that good night, but rather forged liaisons with other contemporary works of art whose species were not doomed to extinction. It seems quite often that one encounters a work that shares a certain sensibility with the Entombments; one such work is a limestone sculpture of a Nativity scene from an undetermined monastery from the last quarter of the fifteenth century, now to be found in the Archaeological Museum in Dijon (fig. 90).27 Surprisingly large in scale, this homey scene of a reclining Mary nursing the Christ child as Joseph sits at her feet takes place against the wattled matting construc27

This work bears the Inventory number 1329. See Forsyth, “Popular Imagery,” 117–126.

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Figure 90 Nativity, Dijon Musée archéologique, Inv.Arb. 1329, polychromed stone, late 15th century. photo: F. Perrodin.

tion that serves as a foil for the bed and figures before it. Related in style to the Entombment found in the Chapel of the Ste.-Croix of the hospital at Dijon, the crèche is one of a series devoted to that subject that hail from Burgundy (fig. 27).28 The figures betray both a rustic and ingenuous character: Mary protectively holds the Christ child and proffers her breast, as Joseph, pigeon toed and innocent, solicitously looks on (fig. 91). This tableau vivant engages the worshiper with the same earnestness as the mourners that comprise the Entombment at Baume-les-Dames (fig. 68). Commissioning a work in sculpture was considered a pious act: the art was an expression of the patron’s wish to reach personal sainthood by performing good deeds.29 It is not surprising then to find such a wealth of individual statues dedicated to saints in parish churches. The statue of St. Theobald, which dates from the first third of the fifteenth century and is found in St.-Hippolyte in Poligny, is a beautiful example of this genre of sculpture (fig. 92). Almost a throwback to the courtly elegance of the art of Saint Louis, this eleventhcentury saint stands in exaggerated contrapposto with a falcon perched on his left fist and his right hand inside the hunting bag he wears suspended from his 28

29

Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 71; Forsyth, “Popular Imagery,” 117–126; one of the finest examples of these Nativity scenes belongs to the Metropolitan Museum and includes adoring angels and shepherds as well as the ox and the ass. Vincent Tabbagh, “Art Patrons in Burgundy (1360–1420)” in Art from the Court of Burgundy, 267–269.

Conclusion

Figure 91 Nativity, Dijon Musée archéologique, detail of Virgin and Christ Child. photo: author.

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Figure 92 St. Theobald from St.-Hippolyte, Poligny, polychromed stone, early 15th century. photo: author.

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belt.30 The elaborate drapery and the rendering of his accessories—particularly the game bag—evoke the figures of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus in several of the Entombments, such as that in the hospital at Tonnerre (fig. 7).31 At the same time, the saint’s sweet and open expression recalls the faces of the mourners and the displaced angels from the Entombment at Semur-en-Auxois (fig. 1).

Baume-les-Messieurs: Repository of Sculpture

Found in the church of Baume-les-Messieurs is an extraordinary statue of St. Michael (1415–1430) leading the Soul of the Dead, namely the abbot Amé de Chalon, while Crushing the Demon (fig. 93).32 This unusual iconographic conflation is explained by the original placement of this statue opposite Christ in Judgment to the southwest of the abbot’s tomb, the latter of which is located beneath an arch on the north wall to the side of the high altar.33 The abbot was an avid patron of the arts who commissioned a rood screen and private chapel, both richly embellished with sculpture, in the Cluniac abbey of Baume-lesMessieurs. The abbey had burned in 1336 and was not restored until the abbacy of Amé de Chalon (1389–1431).34 The statue of St. Michael, attributed to Claus de Werve, is a tour de force. Nestled in the crook of the statue’s left arm, beautifully balanced by the copious drapery around him, sits the miniature figure of the abbot, complete with miter and crosier.35 Michael, head inclined protectively towards his clerical charge, thrusts his spear into the demon’s gullet with his raised right arm. Though the demon has lost minor parts of his body, he preserves a wonderfully menacing air, as his toothy maw rears up to meet the spear of the avenging archangel. The tomb of the abbot Amé de Chalon possesses a cortege of mourners in high relief that emulate those around the tomb of Philip the Bold. The 30

31 32 33 34 35

St.-Theobald was the son of a nobleman from Champagne, who chose to live as a hermit. See Sabine Witt, “The Statuary of Poligny: Foundations and Court Art in Franche-Comté” in Art from the Court of Burgundy, 270–282, esp. 272. Witt, “The Statuary of Poligny,” 272 relates this statue to Isaiah on the Well of Moses as well as to the spirit of the statues of Claus de Werve. Sandrine Roser, “Baume-les-Messieurs” in Art from the Court of Burgundy, 278–282, esp. 281–282. Roser, “Baume-les-Messieurs,” 279. Roser, “Baume-les-Messieurs,” 278–279. Roser, “Baume-les-Messieurs,” 281; Roser suggests that this is a portrait likeness of the abbot and that the “moment” depicted is that of the abbot’s judgment before Christ.

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Figure 93 St. Michael from Baume-les-Messieurs, attributed to Claus de Werve, polychromed stone, c. 1415–1430. photo: author.

seven-member cortege is composed of lay figures that alternate with Cluniac brothers and buttress a depiction of the abbot in the center; they are repeated on the other side of the tomb. The vault of this funerary chapel is painted with the four Evangelists and their symbols, and independent statues on con­soles, including that of St. Michael, once surrounded the tomb and those of his family members.36 The rood screen, also added by this enterprising abbot, was 36

Roser, “Baume-les-Messieurs,” 278–280.

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once located between the seventh and eighth bays of the nave and was destroyed in the seventeenth century; it was quite elaborate with three arches and a gallery accessible by a spiral staircase.37 The early fifteenth-century statue of Mary Magdalene that occupies the center position of an altarpiece with painted wings is an outstanding example of Burgundian sculpture (fig. 94). A statuesque figure strides forward: she holds the unguent jar in her left hand and points to it with her right hand. Her luxurious locks cascade around her shoulders, escaping the veil she wears, and her tunic and mantle create beautiful, volumetric folds that fall to the ground, providing stability for the statue. Though we cannot see the figure’s right foot, the drapery on that side balances the advancing left foot. The face of the Mag­dalen is quite beautiful: her gentle expression is countered by smiling eyes, and her long face adds to the grace of the figure. The traces of polychrome on the statue reveal a richly embroidered mantle of blue and gold covering a red, belted ­tunic.  A self-possessed air characterizes the statue of St. John the Evangelist that once adorned the apse at the east end of Abbot Amé de Chalon’s chapel above the altar (fig. 95). The figure was a pendant to the statue of the Virgin, and they once flanked an altarpiece of the Crucifixion; they were believed to reflect the figures that once flanked the Crucifixion that crowned the Well of Moses.38 The figure, however, does not need this august lineage to merit our attention. Swathed in a belted robe with a mantle over it, the figure stands with his weight on his left leg and his right leg relaxed beneath the swaying folds of drapery. In his left hand, he holds the chalice filled with an emerging serpent, and a book rests behind it; his right hand is raised in the same direction, towards which his head is inclined, a pose that recalls that of St. Michael on a neighboring pedestal (fig. 93). The tufted curls of St. John similarly recall the coiffure of St. Michael, though the former’s expression is one of grim determination; does his face reflect the knowledge that he must drink of Christ’s chalice (Matthew 20.23) and that his cup teems with poison? An angel bearing a long-stemmed cross and nails now stands above a partial Entombment of Christ (fig. 96). Catherin Le Gaignaire (d. 1516), dean of the

37

38

Roser, “Baume-les-Messieurs,” 278; the abbot could reach the rood screen directly from his residence on the west side of the church via the flat roof of the north gallery of the cloister. Roser, “Baume-les-Messieurs,” 279; this hypothesis is called into question by Susie Nash’s work and the hypothesis that the Well of Moses was surmounted by the lone figure of the Magdalen at the feet of Christ on the Cross. See above, ch. 2, 32, n. 17.

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Figure 94 St. Mary Magdalene from Baume-les-Messieurs, p­ olychromed stone, early 15th century. photo: author.

Conclusion

Figure 95 St. John the Evangelist from Baume-les-Messieurs, polychromed stone, early 15th century. photo: author.

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Figure 96 Angel (15th century) and Entombment (1515) from Baume-les-Messieurs, stone. photo: author.

chapter of Baume, commissioned the Entombment.39 Neither the angel nor the fragmentary figures that surround the dead Christ belong to the Entombment. The angel was paired with another angel bearing a column, however, the latter survives only as a fragment. The original position of these angels is open to speculation, as they could have been part of an earlier Entombment, the abbot’s tomb program, or even the rood screen.40 Wearing an ample, belted robe with a high collar, the angel turns to look left while holding the instruments of the Passion towards the right. His furrowed brow, sad eyes, and open mouth conspire to give the angel a mournful countenance. The angel, replete with a robe that is at least one size too large, creates an impression similar to that of the St. Michael and thereby is aligned in style and affect with the sculpture that emanated from the atelier of Claus de Werve (fig. 93). Before leaving Baume-les-Messieurs, it is instructive to consider the dead Christ of the Entombment from the early sixteenth century (fig. 96). Unlike the fifteenth-century statues that are enveloped in lush drapery, the body of Christ wears only a loincloth, which creates a stark contrast to the figure’s protruding ribcage, gaping wound, and rigid limbs. The head of Christ, which maintains the strictly horizontal axis of the body, is rendered with long, dark hair and a matching pointed beard that does not conceal his beautiful features, the latter of which have the transcendent quality of those of the face of the Christ from Langres (fig. 22). What could have displaced the Holy Women, the Virgin, and 39 40

Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 172. Roser, “Baume-les-Messieurs,” 280.

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St. John that once mourned the death of this Christ? Their whereabouts are unknown, though their sculptural predecessors are in evidence throughout this church to bear witness to the word of God.

St. Luke Writing the Gospel

Two works housed in the Museum of Fine Arts in Dijon share the same contemplative spirit as the Entombments we have examined. One of these sculptures, which falls squarely within the circle of works associated with Claus de Werve, is the figure of St. Luke accompanied by his symbol that once belonged to the community of the Sisters of Charity on the rue Saumaise in Dijon (fig. 97).41 Though the Evangelist is deprived of other Gospel writers for company and his original context is unknown, this sculpture from the first third of the fifteenth century casts a spell over the viewers. Absorbed in the task of transcribing the Gospel, Luke writes with his right hand and holds the lengthy scroll with his left hand. He wears the signature voluminous mantle that cascades in folds by his feet along with the rolled portion of the scroll. It is Luke’s face, however, that is so compelling: gentle eyes cast on the text, a slight smile plays on his lips, and his hair and beard frame the round face, upon which these features are found. The expression of the ox harmonizes with that of the Evangelist, and the treatment of his fur may be compared to that of the lion at the feet of the tomb effigy of Philip the Bold (fig. 5).42

Saint Reading

In another room of the same museum, one encounters a female saint pursuing a text; in this instance, the figure is portrayed reading a book (fig. 99).43 One is immediately struck by her powers of concentration: her eyes steadily hold the page, her lips are pursed in concentration, and her broad forehead is free of the tresses that fall to either side of her face. Wearing a belted tunic and mantle, her hands emerge from the latter to gracefully hold the book to the right side, while the folds of the mantle respond to this motion with a series of nested Vfolds down the front and a complex overlapping pattern to the left side. Yet, the 41 42 43

Boucherat, “A New Approach,” 334. Ibid. This figure has been attributed to the Burgundian School and dated to the second half of the fifteenth century, according to the museum text.

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Figure 97 St. Luke and his ox, Dijon Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv. 2820, workshop of Claus de Werve, polychromed stone, early 15th century. photo: François Jay, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.

drapery does not divert the viewer (nor the saint) from the act of reading that is the driving narrative force of this sculpture. In the extreme quietude, the arrested motion, and attention to costume, this saint is reminiscent of the Holy Women we observed at the tomb of Christ. She shares the ethos of the startled Mary Magdalene at the Entombment of Tonnerre (fig. 10).

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Figure 98 Female Saint Reading, Dijon Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv. 3928 bis, polychromed stone, 15th century. photo: François Jay, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.

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Altarpiece of the Lamentation, c. 1425–1435

Before turning to contemporary sepulchral art, the polychromed and gilded wood altarpiece of the Lamentation in the Musée National du Moyen Âge (Cluny) provides a wonderful example of the transmogrification of the Entombment from monumental sculpture to the more accessible stature of an altarpiece (fig. 99).44 Despite the stylistic kinship of the sculpture discussed above, the future of the Passion belonged to the altarpiece and retable. This example, attributed to the circle of Claus de Werve, is characterized by a seamless composition engendered by the use of gesture and the flow of drapery as a foil for the body of Christ, the latter of which further unifies the Lamentation. Mary Magdalene, standing to the right, touches the Virgin’s mantle with her left hand and, with her right hand, touches that of Christ which dangles around the Virgin’s neck. John, on the left, helps support the upper body of Christ, which slumps towards him. Mary, head tilted down and to the right, holds Christ upon her lap, as the folds of the Virgin’s tunic descend vertically in a crescendo of cloth that pools at the base of the sculpted altarpiece. St. John’s head mirrors the dramatic angle of Christ’s head, while the inclination of the Virgin’s upper torso to the right is echoed by the Magdalen’s balletic posture that both advances and respectfully distances the figure from the tragic triad to the left. In a beautifully understated detail, the left foot of Christ hovers over Mary Magdalene’s discarded unguent jar found on the ground below. This work captures the monumentality of a life-size Entombment of Christ, yet preserves the miniaturist approach of the altarpieces dedicated to the Passion of Christ that proliferated during the later Middle Ages.

The Tomb of Christ in the Context of Tomb Sculpture

The effigy of Christ upon his tomb functions in a manner that may be compared to other medieval tomb sculptures, particularly in expressing the bonds that exist between the living and the dead.45 The body of Christ concretizes a memory of his life and death for the salvation of mankind and charges the latter with the task of commemoration. Death and the customs associated with it are rites of incorporation into Christ’s death and Resurrection. How then did 44

45

See Boucherat, “A New Approach,” 323. The museum acquired this piece in 1988, and its inventory number is CL 23311; according to the museum label, it is the work of the “entourage” of Claus de Werve. Paul Binski, Medieval Death, 102–112.

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Figure 99 Altarpiece of the Lamentation, Musée de Cluny, Inv. CL 23311, workshop of Claus de Werve, polychromed and gilded wood, 15th century. photo: courtesy of the Cluny Museum, RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.

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medieval tomb sculpture approach the task of honoring the deceased in order to garner them a position among the elect at the end of time? The evolution of tomb sculpture follows that of funereal practices. The appearance of the gisant, for example, corresponds to the practice of exposing the body on a lying-in-state bed (lit du parade).46 As Binski, Panofsky, and others have demonstrated, a good death was accompanied by the Office of the Dead and a Mass; part of the former involved the reading of the Gospel account of Christ’s Passion, so that, in some sense, every Christian’s demise was linked to the suffering of Jesus.47 The role of the effigy or gisant, which came into funerary fashion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was to remind the living to pray for the deceased to lessen the time spent in Purgatory.48 The effigy thereby served to identify the individual: it was the primary vehicle for giving voice and presence to the defunct. Yet the sculptural representation was quite unlike the corpse, as it was idealized and visually primed for the resurrection.49 This contradiction is beautifully illustrated in the royal tombs added to Saint-Denis by Louis IX and the abbot Matthew of Vendôme, c. 1264.50 Recumbent effigies, clad in royal garb replete with crowns and scepters, patiently gaze upward in seeming anticipation of the Last Judgment. This portrait-like demeanor of the effigies intersected with the symbolic function of the tomb. The elements that defined the individual, from facial features to heraldry, asserted the authorial presence of the deceased, yet also pointed to the impermanence of all things terrestrial.51 The tomb effigies were active agents in the mnemonic system that fueled the cult of the dead. In this economy of commemoration, the sculptural doppelgängers reminded the living to celebrate the anniversary Masses and obsequies on the seventh and thir46 47

48 49 50 51

Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 130–143. See Ariès, The Hour of our Death, 165–168. Binski, Medieval Death, 52–53; Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture: its changing aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964). See also, Nancy Caciola, “Spirits seeking bodies: death, possession and communal memory in the Middle Ages,” in The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 66–86. Binski, Medieval Death, 115–122. Binski, Medieval Death, 93–94. See Donna Sadler, Reading the Reverse Façade of Reims Cathedral: Royalty and Ritual in Thirteenth-Century France (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 215–221. For the medieval concept of portraiture and what constitutes “likeness,” see Stephen Perkinson, The Likeness of the King: A Prehistory of Portraiture in Late Medieval France (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 27–84; Binski, Medieval Death, 103–107.

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teenth day after burial as well as on the first year’s anniversary and All Souls’ Day.52 The tomb of Christ offered the ultimate salvific reward, as evidenced by the fact that several Entombments were Indulgenced, whether or not they were deemed pilgrimage sites.53 The proper response at Christ’s sepulcher was threnodic in tenor, for his suffering triggered not only Mary’s lament but also the sorrow of all who witnessed the tragic scene. Christ’s identity is forged by heraldic symbols as well, however, the instruments of the Passion are his coat of arms. His crown is one of thorns, not gilded metal. Do the effigies of Christ in the Entombments conform to the general outlines of the deceased in contemporary tomb sculpture? By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Ars moriendi and the macabre had begun to affect the shape of funereal monuments.54 The poised effigies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, whether accompanied by cherished lapdogs or mourned by pluerants that process beneath the gisants, gradually gave way c. 1400 to the transi tomb in which the body of the deceased was represented in a state of decay, juxtaposed with its still robust double.55 Late medieval piety, particularly the aspect that focused on the body of Christ as locus of spiritual attention, redounded to the layperson: there was a devotional life within the corpus mysticum.56 Though all memorials possessed a salvific dimension, Christ’s tomb was imbued with unprecedented divine 52 53 54

55

56

Binski, Medieval Death, 121. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 254–273. Although the Church addressed the need to die a good death from very early on, and sermons devoted to death date from the thirteenth century, the Ars moriendi refers to a type of tract dating from the end of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, such as the Médecine de l’âme or Science de bien mourir. The latter, written by Jean Gerson c. 1403, was followed by the Ars Moriendi, and they addressed the importance of the individual’s personal meditation and conscience, his choice on his deathbed between Satan and the Virgin and angels. These manuals provided models not only for the good death, but also the path to follow awaiting that death. See Michel Lauwers, “Ars Moriendi” in Dictionnaire Encyclopédiique du Moyen Âge, ed. André Vauchez (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1997), I, 127; Carlo Bascetta, “Art de bien vivre et bien mourir” in Dictionnaire des lettres françaises. Le Moyen Âge, eds. R. Bossuat, L. Pichard, G. Raynaud de Lage, G. Hase-Nohr, and M. Zink (Paris: La Pochothèque, 1964; 1992), 96–99. For the macabre and its impact on tomb sculpture, see Binski, Medieval Death, 123–163; the most obvious manifestation of this shift in sensibility was the development of the transi tomb, as we shall see. Karsallah (Les Mises au tombeau, 131–132) rightly compares the two works of Germain Pilon, one a study for the transi for Henri II and one a Christ for an Entombment—both conserved in the Louvre—to the transi tomb tradition. Binski, Medieval Death, 66.

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power. That so many donors chose to erect Entombments in their funereal chap­els in order to harness that spiritual “clout” suggests the prevalence of this belief. It is interesting that the evolution of tomb sculpture, which at one point c. 1300 favored canopied, multi-level monuments, veered dangerously towards displays of unequivocal vanity and pride.57 Yet, the Entombments eschewed ostentation and chose instead to foreground the pathos engendered by the sight of Christ’s body amidst the assembly of mourners. The tomb of Christ was, as we have seen, in many ways a piece of theater, a proscenium, against which the drama of the burial, the future emptiness of the tomb, and the Resurrection could be envisioned.58 This effect would have been heightened if the sculptural representation were actually engaged in the liturgical celebration of the Depositio, Elevatio, and Visitatio Sepulchri. Unlike the relics of Christ, or even the contact relics associated with the Savior, the sculptural effigy of the dead Christ was immune from corruption. It could not be multiplied like the Holy Blood or Foreskin, nor could it be accused of subverting Christ’s perfect bodily Resurrection. This artistic advantage may account in part for the popularity of these sculptural tableaux vivants. The Entombment of Christ allowed the believer to suspend disbelief for the duration of this narrative from the Passion: the visual simulacrum invited the participation of the worshiper by dissolving the barrier between art and life. It is noteworthy that, despite the chronological intersection of the Entombments with the period when the macabre was at its height, the sculptors did not cross paths with the Three Living and the Three Dead.59 Indeed, the creators of the Entombments seem to persist in the milieu of tomb monuments emanating from the court of Philip the Bold, where mourners accompany the catafalque to its resting place in a stately procession. Though the mourners around the tomb of Christ are culled from sacred history, their language is not peculiar to saints. Their medium is sorrow, one that binds them to the pleurants beneath the Valois duke’s tomb or the porters, who bear the effigy of 57 58 59

Binski, Medieval Death, 88. Binski, Medieval Death, 99; see Christopher S. Wood, Review of Bild-Anthropologie: Entwürfe für eine Bildwissenschaft, by Hans Belting, Art Bulletin 86/2 (2004), 370–373. Though the image of Christ as the Man of Sorrows could be a frontispiece to this period of the Black Death, famines, Hundred Years’ War, et.al., the Entombments do not reflect the introspective, guilt-ridden, ironic sensibility often found in works characterized as macabre. The legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead has its roots in the tale of Barlaam and Josephat, and the earliest European version dates to the thirteenth century; three noblemen who are hunting encounter three corpses in varying states of decay, who remind the living of the transience of life and the need to change their ways before it is too late. See Binski, Medieval Death, 123–163.

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Philippe Pot upon their shoulders (figs. 1, 5, and 6). Superimposed upon the Entombment’s function of transferring the body of Christ from death to triumph over that death is its role as a foil for the Mass of the Dead.60 From the preparation of the corpse to the handling of the shroud, every ritual that accompanied a secular funeral was a recapitulation on some level of Christ’s Entombment.61 Karsallah has called attention to the fact that burying the dead was one of the Seven Acts of Mercy that a Christian could fulfill. Further, that to console the afflicted was a spiritual act of misericord that the faithful were urged to realize.62 Was a donor of an Entombment securing salvation by proxy? The implied (or actual) presence of the donor mediated the sacred event for the worshipers: the Imitatio Christi embraced not only the Passion, but also the duties that fell to Christ’s immediate followers in the stewardship of the earthly Jerusalem.

Puligny-Montrachet: Entombment as Altar

A richly-carved sarcophagus, dated 1539, supports a figure of the dead Christ and is found inserted awkwardly beneath the high altar of the parish church of the Assumption at Puligny-Montrachet (fig. 100). An engraved Latin inscription on the cornice of the coffin alludes to taking the body of Jesus and binding him with linen and spices.63 Though obviously not in its original context, the surmounting altarpiece bears two sleeping soldiers directly above the prone figure of Christ, which mirrors iconographically the soldiers who occupy the four arcades that articulate the front face of the sarcophagus. The unusual character of this abbreviated Entombment—the absence of Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and the mourners around the tomb—coupled with the inscription so germane to the preparation of the deceased for Christian burial does not rule out the work’s proximity to the altar at the time of its creation. 60 61

62 63

Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 135–137. The medieval use of the shroud in burials, to both protect and isolate the body, coupled with the identification of the material as that used to cover altars has Christological overtones. See Alexandre-Bidon, “Le corps et son linceul,” in A Reveiller les morts. Le mort au quotidian dans l’Occident médiéval, eds. Daniele Alexandre-Bidon and Cécile Treffont (Lyon: Presses Universitaire, 1993), 183–206. Karsallah, Les Mises au tombeau, 135–137 and n. 419. The inscription, which runs along the front and right side of the sarcophagus, reads as follows: “Acceptev (n) t avt corpvs Iesv e Ligavervnt evm Lintheis cv Aromatib/vs.” (John 19.40?) The sarcophagus also bears a coat of arms belonging to the Mypont family.

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Figure 100

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Entombment Altar in Puligny-Montrachet, stone, 1539. photo: author.

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The decorative vocabulary and the treatment of the individual figures of this work are reminiscent of those seen on the altarpiece at Echannay; the same artists were undoubtedly responsible for both works (fig. 79). The figure of Christ lies on a pallet on top of the sarcophagus; his well-proportioned body, long wavy hair, open mouth, and gaping wounds virtually concealed by the altar table above. The four soldiers that animate the front of the sarcophagus are contained within an arcade, and the spandrels of the latter are occupied by cherubim with enormous heads and broad wings. The soldiers beneath the second and fourth arches slumber, while the other armed figures are shown in action. The piers of the arcade are decorated with carvings of the instruments of the Passion, a pair of facing quadrupeds, and a putto with a fruit bowl on his head. The lunette above the second sleeping soldier is inscribed with the date.

From Step to Altar: Petit-Jailly

Nestled in a Burgundian hamlet is the small church of Petit-Jailly. Once embedded in the church steps, the present altar frontal represents a very rich Entombment of Christ, flanked by the kneeling patrons to either side (fig. 101). Three sleeping soldiers are found in front of the tomb, and two flying angels separate the donors from the sacred figures in the scene. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus hold Christ suspended on an ample shroud that is angled towards the worshiper, as John, the Virgin, Mary Magdalene, and two Holy Women stand behind the body of Jesus. A folded ribbon border bears the date of 1512 and frames the retable on all sides, except the base. This curious work is believed to come from the chapel of the Holy Sepulcher of the abbey of Fontenay.64 The work bears the imprint of several stylistic currents: the shroud reflects the treatment seen in the Entombment from the hospital chapel of Dijon, the faces and costumes seem Flemish, and the soldiers echo those of the Holy Graves (figs. 27 and 2, respectively). The closest parallel to this work may be seen in the retable from Montlay (fig. 44).65 There is a wonderful excess of emotion in this work: tears pour from the eyes of Mary and John, the angels appear fretful, and the mouths of the porters drop open as they execute their task. The garments reveal elaborate collars and cuffs, the hats receive special attention, and the faces of the donors betray a portrait-like approach. Again, this relief is not in its original context, however, the juxtaposition of altar and corpus of Christ is striking. Christ’s body served as a foil for 64 65

Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 183. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 78–79; for Montlay, see above ch. 3, pp. 72–110.

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Figure 101

Entombment Altar from Petit-Jailly, stone, 1512. photo: author.

the elevation of the Eucharist during the Mass, for directly in front of the latter the Eucharistic Host would be elevated during the Mass.

Jouarre: Body of Christ as Object of Devotion

Although more typical for Italian Lamentations of the fifteenth century, such as those of Niccolo dell’Arca and Guido Mazzoni in Sta. Maria della Vita, Bologna (originally) and S. Giovanni Battista, Modena, respectively, several French Entombments represent the body of Christ directly on the ground surrounded by mourners.66 A pastiche of an Entombment now housed in the parish church of St.-Pierre and St.-Paul in Jouarre was originally commissioned by the abbess Antoinette de Moustiers (d. 1515) for the chapel of the Holy Sepulcher of the former Benedictine abbey (fig. 102).67 The Entombment was ordered in 1514 66

67

For an illustration of the Lamentations of Niccolo dell’Arca and Guido Mazzoni, see John Pope-Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture: An Introduction to Italian Sculpture (New York: Vintage Books, 1985) II, figs. 127–128. The French examples that feature Christ’s body on the ground include Varangéville, Monthureux-sur-Saône, and an example now undergoing restoration in the Musée Vauluisant in Troyes. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 178; the history of this monument spans two periods of creation, a series of sculptural mishaps, and may now include a Holy Woman from an entirely different Entombment. The discussion above will focus only on the psychological/art historical shift wrought by Christ’s placement on the ground instead of upon a raised sarcophagus.

Conclusion

Figure 102

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Entombment from the Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher in the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Jouarre, stone, 16th century. photo: Pascale L-R.

from the workshop of Michel Colombe and originally consisted of twelve figures, including angels with the Instruments of the Passion.68 The position of Christ, whose dignity in death is expressed by his graceful body, is the centerpiece of a scene of hushed reverie: each mourner lost in contemplation of the meaning of this death. Joseph of Arimathea proffers the crown of thorns, while Nicodemus is portrayed with the shroud folded in his upheld hands, as if it were the national flag at a fallen soldier’s burial. Mary stands with her hands in prayer, and the Holy Women all bear unguent jars. How does the distance between Christ and his mourners change the emotional impact of the work? Were the artists trying to adhere to the Jewish traditions of burial, in which the body was placed in the ground, whether in a cave or not?69 The air of ritual that permeates this Entombment, despite its ad hoc appearance, suggests a connection to the Office of the Dead and the accompa68

69

Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 95–101; 178; in 1848, ten figures still existed, though they represented the work of two successive workshops. Because of the advanced age of Colombe at the time of the contract, the actual carving of the Christ, Joseph, and Nicodemus (the highest quality figures) fell to his successor, Guillaume Regnault. The Holy Women, which are later and of inferior quality, were probably the work of Guillaume’s son, Jean Regnault. See J.S. Kennard Jr., “The Burial of Jesus,” Journal of Biblical Literature 74 (1955), 227–238.

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nying Mass. There is something sacramental in the circle of grief: no one touches the corpus, for Christ commands a sense of awe. The abbess, whose commission certainly coincided with her own tomb, envisioned caring for Christ’s dead body visually in the hope that her own mortal soul would obtain salvation.

Conclusion by Case Study: St.-Maurice at Epinal

Crammed into a side chapel in the church of St.-Maurice at Epinal are the nine figures (originally ten) of an Entombment (fig. 103). William Forsyth described the latter in the following way: “This impoverished monument is a classic example of a local style gone to seed.”70 No better work captures so many of the characteristics proposed in this study, including the often sub-standard quality of the workmanship. Like many examples discussed, this Entombment is no longer in its original context; it was commissioned for the chapel of the Holy Sepulcher in the church of St.-Maurice that opened onto the cemetery. The mourners seem to have been shuffled about, and they once included another angel in their midst.71 Different regional accents are seen in this work: the pillow beneath Christ’s head is borrowed from the Holy Graves, the central swooning Virgin from Burgundy, and the expressive grief of the Holy Women from Lorraine and Champagne. But, the lingua franca does not disguise the way the work affects the worshiper, who is drawn into this still-life as an active participant in the community of sorrow. The pathos of entombing the dead Christ reverberates to stone and flesh mourners alike; the work possesses an aura of sadness that answered the dictates of late medieval piety. One unchanging interpretation of the Entombment is that it functioned as a devotional object or Andachtsbild. Thus, even if the sculptural representation is used liturgically during the Easter Depositio, Elevatio, Visitatio Sepulchri, as at Chaumont-en-Bassigny, it remained the locus of Christ’s Passion (fig. 4). Similarly, the work could symbolize the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, as I have suggested, but retain its devotional function. The Entombment of Christ fosters memoria. The importance of the Imitatio Christi coupled with the tomb as a souvenir of the last stage of Christ’s mortal journey engenders a process of commemoration. The perpetuation of the act of Entombment erases the death from the collective consciousness and 70 71

Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ, 44. Ibid.

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Figure 103

Entombment from St.-Maurice, from Chapel of Holy Sepulcher, Epinal, polychromed stone, early 16th century. photo: Pascale L-R.

replaces it with a vision of Christ’s mortality that signified salvation for mankind. One entered Paradise through the wounds of Christ, and the latter were magnified to give real presence to the body of Christ. It was his body that conjured the absent presence of his divinity or the resurrected Christ. The emphasis on this “well beloved body” found a parallel in the Passion plays that were performed around the same time. The alternation of narrative and static scenes that focused on the suffering body of Christ would have ­resonated with the worshiper before an Entombment sculpture. It is no coincidence that an Entombment could engender Indulgences and a Passion play culminate in the blessing of the audience.72 The Entombment at Epinal also exhibits an inherent kinship with theater in the rendering of Mary’s Compassio, as the hidden St. John supports the Virgin from behind, echoing her pose, except for his head that tilts to the right in order to be visible (fig. 104). The use of gesture and often palpable tears to convey the sadness of this moment suggests the influence of the dramatic arts. One of the most intriguing aspects of these Entombments is the role assigned to the worshiper—that is the bodily participation in the pain and suffering endured by Christ. The sculptural representation arrested time so that the viewer could step into the tableau vivant and experience the reality of the 72

See above, chapter 4, pp. 111–148, n. 30; chapter 3, pp. 72–110, n. 55.

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Figure 104

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Entombment from St.-Maurice, from Chapel of Holy Sepulcher, Epinal, detail of Virgin and St. John the Evangelist. photo: author.

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Passion. The Entombment no longer existed in the distant past; it existed in the eternal present. This timelessness, which was shaped by the ductus of the work, endowed the sculpture with an aura that had the power, even in the most provincial examples, to move the worshiper. The Entombment of Christ, though hewn of stone, touched the flesh and spirit of the late Middle Ages.

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Index

Index

229

Index Aballéa, Sylvie 74 absent presence 4, 24, 72, 73, 78, 83, 86–90, 110, 195 Aers, David 134 affective piety 111, 112, 118, 127, 148 Albosset, Simon 59, 63 Amboise family, the 84 Andachtsbilder 63, 68, 110, 148, 194 Areford, David 82n37 arithmetic of salvation 92 See also quantitative piety Arnade, Peter 43 Ars moriendi, the 92, 187 Ascension, the 73 staging of the 81, 122 aura 135–140 Bachot, Jacques 119n39 Baerze, Jacques de 150–153, 151–152 Barthes, Roland 3n10, 42–45, 59 Baudoin, Jacques 84 Baudricourt, Marguerite de 83–85 Baume-les-Dames (Entombment) 144–148, 145–146, 172 Baume-les-Messieurs Entombment 180, 181 statue of Mary Magdalene 177, 178 statue of St. John the Evangelist 177, 179 statue of St. Michael 175–177, 176, 180 Bayel, St.-Martin (Pietà) 119n39, 168 Beadle, Richard 131 Beaune, Musée de l’Hôtel Dieu (miniature Entombment) 100, 101 Beguine nun 80, 129 See also stigmata Benjamin, Walter 135, 136 Bernard, Guy 59, 63 Bessey-les-Cîteaux Entombment from the Retable of, 48, 49, 103–109, 104–108 Biernoff, Suzannah 112, 135 Biljoke at Gand, abbey of 150n5

Binski, Paul 92–93, 186 Blood Controversy, the 82n39 blood of Christ 54, 81n35, 82–83, 115 and the Well of Moses 34, 36, 43, 45 Boucherat, Véronique 49n64, 56n85 Bourges 74 Brabant 150n4, 164n14 Bresc-Bautier, Genviève 90 Broederlam, Melchior 55n83, 150 Brown, Marshall 17n50, 120n40 Buronfosse, Lancelot de 26, 27, 30 Bynum, Caroline Walker 73, 99, 134 Caiaphas 107, 104 palace of 87 Cajetan, St. 97 Cambray Holy Sepulcher 89 Cambridge Holy Sepulcher 89 Camera Lucida (Roland Barthes) 43 Campbell, Thomas 65, 72 Carruthers, Mary 140 Chalon, Amé de 175–177 Chalon, Louis de 66n105 Champmol, workshop of Langres Entombment 53–56, 54 See also Chartreuse de Champmol Chaource, St.-Jean-Baptiste Entombment 93n100, 97, 99, 116, 117, 119–123, 120, 121, 124n54, 152 Pietà 163, 164 Master of 99, 119 Chartreuse de Champmol 2–3, 13, 21, 30, 31, 71, 150 portal to the ducal oratory and Valois necropolis 49–52, 50–51 Tomb of Philip the Bold 46–48, 47–48 Well of Moses, the 32–46, 33, 37, 39–41, 53 Châtillon-sur-Seine, St.-Vorles (Entombment) 9, 124–130, 125–126, 128 Chaumont-en-Bassigny, Church of St.-JeanBaptiste (Entombment) 19, 83–86, 85, 194

* Figures in italic denote illustrations.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/ 9789004293144 _009

230 Christus patiens 118 Christus triumphans 118 Collet, Jacques 91 Colombe, Michel 193 confraternity of the Holy Sepulcher, the 74n9, 89 Constance, St. Maurice 89 Constantine 91n92 Cordeliers of Lons 66n105 Corpus Christi play, the 112n5, 130 Corpus Christi procession 113 costume, role of in Entombments 20–21, 78–79, 136–140, 137–139 Crapillet, Brother 59 crèche. See Nativity scenes Croxton play, the 115 crusades, the 4, 73, 89, 109 Dance of Death, the 92 d’Arbois, Jean 150n4 Darnton, Robert 133 David (king) 36–38, 37 dell’Arca, Niccolo, the Lamentation of 192 Depositio 2n5, 4, 11, 15–18, 135 Dijon Archaeological Museum 56, 57 Dijon, Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem of the Hospital of St.-Esprit Entombment 59, 61, 61–63, 62, 65–66, 168–169, 169 comparisons with other Entombments  66, 67n107, 78, 172 treatment of the shroud 68, 75, 103, 131n75, 191 Pietà 63, 64, 66, 168–169 Dijon Musée des Beaux-Arts 13, 22, 47, 56, 150n5, 151–154, 181–182, 182–183 Dijon, St.-Michel (Entombment) 57–59, 58, 60, 68, 103 Dole Archaeological Museum 58n87, 69, 70 Dominicans,the 82n39 donors and salvific dimension of Entombments  1, 73, 110, 147, 188–189 presence in Entombments 9, 49, 84 drama liturgical drama 14–19 medieval drama 42–43, 111–133 mystery plays 10n17, 20–21, 111–123, 129

Index Passion plays 20–21, 52–53, 83, 115–133, 148 ductus 140, 144, 197 Easter liturgy, the 4, 11, 14–20, 69, 135 Easter Sepulchres 14–15 Easter week 2, 4, 11–20, 69, 81, 86, 129 religious processions during 112–114 Echannay, St.-Remi (Retable) 158, 160–162, 191 Egeria 87 Ehrstine, Glenn 112 Eleona 87 Elevatio 2n5, 15–18, 135 Elisabeth of Spalbeek 134 embalming 66 Entombments (List of Entombments discussed in the text.) Baume-les-Dames 144–148, 145–146, 172 Baume-les-Messieurs 180, 181 Beaune, Musée de l’Hôtel Dieu (miniature Entombment) 100, 101 Bessey-les-Cîteaux, Entombment from the Retable of 48, 49, 109 Chaource, St.-Jean-Baptiste 93n100, 97, 99, 116–117, 119–123, 120, 121, 124n54, 152 Châtillon-sur-Seine, St.-Vorles 9, 124–130, 125–126, 128 Chaumont-en-Bassigny, Church of St.-Jean-Baptiste 19, 83–86, 85, 194 Dijon, Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem of the Hospital of St.-Esprit 59, 61, 61–63, 62, 65–66, 168–169, 169 comparisons with other Entombments  66, 67n107, 78, 172 treatment of the shroud 68, 75, 103, 131n75, 191 Dijon, St.-Michel 57–59, 58, 60, 68, 103 Epinal, St.-Maurice, from Chapel of Holy Sepulcher 194–196, 195–196 Froidefontaine 58n87, 69, 70 Jouarre, Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher, Church of Sts. Peter and Paul 192– 194, 193 Langres, St.-Mammès Cathedral 52–56, 54, 180 Lons-le-Saunier, Entombment/Pietà from St. Désiré 66–69, 67, 78, 79n, 169 Petit-Jailly, 191, 192

231

Index Pouilly-en-Auxois, Chapel of Notre-DameTrouvée 140–144, 141–143, 156 Reims, St.-Remi 124–125, 127, 130–134, 132 Semur-en-Auxois, Church of the Nativity  2, 74–78, 76, 131n75, 175 Talant 78–80, 79, 80, 131n75 Tonnerre, Hospital of Notre-Dame-desFontenilles 25–30, 26, 28–29, 38, 77 comparisons with other Entombments  58, 63, 68, 175, 182 treatment of the shroud 63, 65, 68 Troyes, St.-Jean-au-Marché (Entombment/ Pietà) 93–96, 94–95 Troyes, St.-Nicolas 75, 90–92 Vesoul, St.-Georges 135–140, 136–139, 156 Villeneuve-L’Archevêque (originally from the abbey of Vauluisant) 93n100, 96–100, 97–98 as Andachtsbilder 63, 68, 110, 148, 194 costume, role of in 20–21, 78–79, 136–140, 137–139 decline of 5, 149–197 as ersatz pilgrimage to Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem 4, 86–92, 109–110 Flemish influences on 77n19, 103, 109, 149–150, 191 Italianate influences on 10, 20, 84n51, 124, 140, 192 origins of 1–2, 7–24 salvific dimension of 89–90, 99–100, 110, 147, 187–189 as souvenir of Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem  4, 77, 86–92, 109–110 Epinal, St.-Maurice, from Chapel of Holy Sepulcher (Entombment) 194–196, 195–196 Eusebius 87 extromission, theory of 112 Ferté, the dame de la 124, 127 Fiefvés, Jehen 23 Flemish influences on Entombments 77n19, 103, 109, 149–150, 191 Fontenay, abbey of 191, Forsyth, William, H. on the Baume-les-Dames Entombment  144n103

on the Chaumont-en-Bassigny Entombment 83n47, 84n51 on the Dijon, St.-Michel Entombment 58, 59n89 Entombment typologies 164–171 on the Epinal Entombment 194  on Jean Michel and Georges de la Sonnette 27 on the Langres Entombment 55 on the Lons-le-Saunier Entombment/ Pietà 66n105, 67n106, 67n107 on the origins of Entombments 8, 9, 20 on the Semur-en-Auxois Entombment  75n16, 77n19 on the Saint Martha Master 119n39 on the St.-Vorles Entombment 124n54, 124n55 on the Talant Entombment 78n26 on the Troyes, St. Jean-au-Marché Entombment 93n100 on the Villeneuve-L’Archevêque Entombment 97n107 Francis, St., 80 Franciscans, the 4, 74, 77, 80, 82n39, 87, 88, 113n19 Froidefontaine (Entombment) 58n87, 69, 70 Fulda, St. Michael’s 89–90 Gelfand, Laura 34 Gerson, Jean 129, 187n54 Gertrude. See Beguine nun Gertsman, Elina 52, 123 Gigny, abbey of 66n105 gisants 186–187 Golgotha 87 Gospel of Nicodemus, the 7, 8, 9, 72 Grand Pardon, the procession of the 86 Griffiths, Alison 129 Grosseteste’s system of perception 44 Guillaume, Chandelier 77n17 Guiot, Hector 84n50 Hardison, O.B. 16 Heiligen Gräber. See Holy Graves Holy Blood relics, the 82n39 Holy Graves in Germany 1, 10–13, 12, 18, 20, 191, 194 Holy Grave from Church of Peter and Paul, Neuwiller-lès-Saverne, 11, 12

232 Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the the confraternity of 74n9, 89 copies of 4, 26–27, 73–74, 89–92, 109–110 Entombments as symbol of 25, 74, 86, 109–110, 194 pilgrimage to 73–74, 86–89 Order of the 4, 88 Holy Shroud, the 63, 65 Holy Trinity tondo, Lamentation of the 34, 35 Holy Week 4, 11, 15, 17–19 Hospitaliers, the  74, 88, 89n74, 90 Huerta, Jean de la 63 Images of Pity 115 imagines agentes 38, 42n41, 52 Imitatio Christi 49, 92, 110, 119, 129, 130, 134, 189, 194 Imitatio Mariae 134 Indulgences 5, 53, 55, 85–86, 88, 110, 187 Issoudun, abbey of 74 Italianate influences on Entombments 10, 20, 84n51, 124, 140, 192 on Retables 156 itinerary of Christ 4, 74, 86–88 See also pilgrimage to Jerusalem Jerome, St. 87 Jerusalem. See Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem; see pilgrimage to Jerusalem Johnson, Holly 42 John the Fearless 49, 77n17, 104 Joigny, St.-Jean 58n87 Jouarre, Chapel of the Holy Sepulcher, Church of Sts. Peter and Paul (Entombment) 192–194, 193 Julian of Norwich 82 Karsallah, Elsa on Chaumont-en-Bassigny 83n45, 85 on costumes in Entombments 20 on Germain Pilon 187n55 on Indulgenced Entombments 5n15 on the origins of Entombments 7n1, 8n3, 8n5, 9n8 on the Seven Acts of Mercy 189

Index Kempe, Margery 88 Kreuder, Friedemann 110, 119 Ladislaus 125 Laignes, Jacqueline de 119, 122n42 Lamentation, the 10, 134, 171, 184, 185, 192 Langres, St.-Mammès Cathedral (Entombment) 52–56, 54, 180 La Prée 74 Le Gaignaire, Catherin 177 Le Moiturier, Antoine 23, 75n16, 77 Lentes, Thomas 92 Lerud, Theodore K. 42 Liebreich, Aenne 75n16 lieux de mémoire 74 Life of Jesus Christ (Ludolph of Saxony) 32 Lincoln Cathedral 14 Lindquist, Sherry C.M. 34, 36, 38, 42n41, 47, 50 Liturgical Cradle from the Grand Beguinage, Louvain 99 locus 52, 113, 123 Lons-le-Saunier, St.-Désiré Entombment/Pietà 66–69, 67, 78, 79n, 169 Pietà 170 Louis IX (king) 46n60, 186 Louis XI (king) 83 Ludolph of Saxony 32 Luke, St. 181, 182 Madonna of Humility, the 163n13 Maimponte, Marcel 74n14 Maître de la Vue de Ste.-Gudule, 155, 156 Mâlain, Jacques de 23 Mâle, Émile 10n17, 20, 168 Malouel, Jean 34, 35, 55, 150n4 Man of Sorrows 73, 82n37, 115, 118n34, 164n14, 188n59 Marchand, Jean 53, 54 Margaret de Male of Flanders. See Margaret of Flanders Margaret of Bavaria 103 Margaret III of Dampiere. See Margaret of Flanders Margaret of Flanders 36, 55n83, 149n2, 150 Martin, Michel 13, 20, 30 Martini, Simone 109 Marville, Jean de 21, 22, 46, 49, 50–51

Index Mary Magdalene, statue of, Baume-lesMessieurs 177, 178 Mass of the Five Wounds, the 44n56 Matthew of Vendôme 186 Mazzoni, Guido, the Lamentation of 192 McLuhan, Marshall 129 McNeir, Waldo, F. 130 Meditationes Vitae Christi 82, 123 memoria 23–24, 74, 119–141, 148, 194 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 68 Michel, Jean 20n62, 26, 27 Miedema, Nine 88 Minimes, convent of 85 Monstier, Nicolas de 119, 122n42 Montbéliard, Jeanne de 66n105 Monthureux-sur-Saône 192n66 Montlay-en-Auxois (Retable) 101–103, 102, 191 Mountain of Contemplation, The, (Jean Gerson) 129 Moustiers, Antoinette de 192 Muessig, Carolyn 80, 125, 129 Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris 155, 157–159 Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon 13, 22, 47, 56, 150n5, 151–154, 181–182, 182–183 Musée National du Moyen Âge, Cluny 184, 185 Musée Vauluisant, Troyes 165, 192n66 Museum of Fine Art and Archaeology, Dole 58n87, 69, 70 Mussy-sur-Seine 124n54 mystery plays 10n17, 20–21, 111–123, 129 Nash, Susie 53, 177n38 Nativity scenes 171–173, 172–173 Neuwiller-lès-Saverne, Church of Sts. Peter and Paul 11, 12 Nicolas Boyeau of Pouilly 140 Noes, Jean de. See Noys, Jehan de Nora, Pierre 23–24, 74 Notre-Dame de Pité, the cult of 168 Noys, Jehan de 49, 103 Nuremberg, St. Sebald’s 11 O’Connell, Michael 115 Ogier, Jacotin 74 Oudin, Michel 91

233 Paoletti, John 77 Parthenay 90n81 Passion of Christ, The (film by Mel Gibson)  129 Passion plays 20–21, 52–53, 83, 115–133, 148 Passion Saint-Geneviève 21 Paulinus (Paula) 87, 88n69 performance theory 5, 110, 119–130 performative piety 20, 22, 25, 32, 34, 49, 69, 147 Petit-Jailly (Entombment) 191, 192 phantasmata 43, 111 Philip the Bold Art from the court of 3, 55n83, 149–153, 151, 152 and Pietàs 168 portal to the ducal oratory and necropolis of the Valois dynasty 49–52, 50, 51 tomb of 3, 21–22, 22, 46–47, 47, 54 Well of Moses 32–46, 33, 37, 39–41 Piacenza 90 Pierre, Antoine 96, 99 Pietàs Chaource, St.-Jean-Baptiste 163–164 Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem, Dijon 63, 64 Lons-le-Saunier, St.-Désiré 170 Seine-l’Abbaye 170, 171 St.-Esprit, Dijon 168–169, 169 Troyes, St.-Jean-au-Marché 164, 165 Troyes, St.-Nizier 164–165, 166 Troyes, Musée de Vauluisant 165–166, 167 Pignet of Besançon 144 pilgrimage to Jerusalem 4, 77, 86–90, 109–110 stations of the 87, 88 Pilon, Germain 187n55 planctus, the, 6 platea, 52, 123 pleurants 22–23, 22, 23, 46–47, 47, 188 Poitiers, Charles de 53 Pontormo’s Entombment, Capponi Chapel, Sta. Felicita, Florence 97 Pot, Philippe, tomb of 22–23, 23, 47, 77, 189 Pouilly-en-Auxois, Chapel of Notre-DameTrouvée (Entombment) 140–144, 141–143, 156

234 Prindale, Hennequin 55 Prochno, Renate 32, 50n65 Pseudo-Bonaventure 9 Puligny-Montrachet (Entombment/altar)  189, 190 punctum 3n10, 43–46, 59 quantitative piety 82, 92–93 Quarré, Pierre 53n75, 55n81, 56n85, 63n93 Quem quaeritis, the 3n11, 16–19, 65, 72, 89n80 Ray-sur-Saône 144n104 Reims, St.-Remi (Entombment) 124–125, 127, 130–134, 132 religious plays. See drama religious processions 86, 112–114 retables Bessey-les-Cîteaux 48, 49, 103–109, 104–108 in Dijon Musée des Beaux-Arts 153–155, 153–154 in Germany 160n10 Echannay, St.-Remi 158, 160–162, 191 Maître de la Vue de Ste.-Gudule, Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs 155, 156 Montlay-en-Auxois 101–103, 102, 191 in Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs 155, 155–156, 157–159 Rey-Flaud, Henri 118 Robinson, J.W. 115 Romprey, Edmé Regnier de 124 Ronot, Henry 84n50 rotunda of the Anastasis 87 Rubin, Miri 81, 113 Saint-Belin, Geoffrey de 83–85 Saint Martha Master 93n100, 119n39, 166, 168 Saint-Denis, royal tombs at 50n65, 186 salvific dimension of Entombments 89–90, 99–100, 110, 147, 187–189 San Sepulcro, Milan 90 Sarradin, Francois 131 Savoisy, Louise de 23 scopus 140 Scribner, Robert 53, 122

Index Seine-l’Abbaye (Pietà) 170, 171 sein Hier und Jetzt 136 Semur-en-Auxois, Church of the Nativity (Entombment) 2, 74–78, 76, 131n75, 175 sepulchrum 4, 11, 15, 18, 86, 109 Sheingorn, Pamela 14, 118 Showings (Julian of Norwich) 82 shroud 63, 65–69, 75, 189n61, 191 Burgundian treatment of 103n118, 131, See also Holy Shroud, the Sixtus IV (pope) 85 Sluter, Claus and Langres Entombment 55 and Pietàs 168 portal to the ducal oratory and necropolis of the Valois dynasty 49–52, 50, 51 Tomb of Philip the Bold 21–22, 22, 46–47, 49 Well of Moses 3, 27n9, 30–46, 31, 33, 37, 39–41, 53, 71 Solesmes, St.-Pierre 18 Sonnette, Georges de la 26, 27 St.-Bénigne, Dijon 56, 57 Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem. See Dijon, Chapel of Ste.-Croix-de-Jérusalem of the Hospital of St.-Esprit Ste.-Gudule, Maître de la Vue de 155, 156 Ste.-Madeleine, Troyes 119n39, 166n18 St.-Esprit. See Dijon, Chapel of Ste.-Croix-deJérusalem of the Hospital of St.-Esprit Sticca, Sandro 15 stigmata 80, 129 St.-Jean-au-Marché, Troyes Entombment/Pietà 93–96, 94–95 Pietà 164, 165 St. John the Evangelist, statue of, Baume-lesMessieurs 177, 179 St.-Laurent d’Eu 20n62 St.-Martin, Bayel (Pietà) 119n39, 168 St. Maurice, Constance 89 St. Michael, statue of, Baume-les-Messieurs 175–177, 176, 180 St. Michael’s, Fulda 89–90 St.-Michel, Dijon (Entombment) 57–59, 58, 60, 68, 103 St.-Nicolas, Troyes (Entombment) 75, 90–92

235

Index St.-Nizier, Troyes (Pietà) 164–165, 166 St. Sebald’s, Nuremberg 11 St.-Seine-l’Abbaye 170, 171 St. Sion 87 St. Theobald, statue of, St.-Hippolyte in Poligny 172, 174, 175 studium 43 Summa theologica (Thomas Aquinas) 43n47 Synoptic Gospels,the 7–8 tabernacles 11, 13–14 Tachau, Katherine 44 Talant (Entombment) 78–80, 79, 80, 131n75 Templars, the 74, 88, 89n74, 90, 131 temporal verisimilitude 131, 133n79 Termonde 150n5 theater. See drama Theatines, the 97 Thomas Aquinas 43, 111 Three Living Meeting the Three Dead, the  92, 94 Threnos 9–10, 163n13 Tilley, Christopher 25, 68 Tonnerre, Hospital of Notre-Dame-des Fontenilles (Entombment) 25–30, 26, 28–29,38,77 comparisons with other Entombments  58, 63, 68, 175, 182 treatment of the shroud 63, 65, 68 Towneley Resurrection,the 115n31 transi tombs 92, 187 Trecento art 10, 150 Troyes Musée de Vauluisant 165–166, 167 Ste.-Madeleine 119n39, 166n18 St.-Jean-au-Marché Entombment/Pietà 93–96, 94–95 Pietà 164, 165 St.-Nicolas (Entombment) 75, 90–92 St.-Nizier (Pietà) 164–165, 166 Valois duke. See Philip the Bold Valois necropolis 49–52, 50–51 Varangéville 192n66

Vauluisant Entombment originally from the abbey now in Villeneuve-L’Archevêque  93n100, 96–100, 97–98 Musée de 165–166, 167 Pietà 165–166, 167 Vesoul, St.-Georges (Entombment) 135–140, 136–139, 156 Via Crucis 113n19 Via Dolorosa 77, 113n19 Vikan, Gary 92 Villeneuve-L’Archevêque (Entombment)  93n100, 96–100, 97–98 Visitatio sepulchri 2n5, 4, 15–18, 24, 89n80, 90, 114, 133, 188, 194 Voragine, Jacobus da 9 Warning, Rainer 17n50, 120n40 Weitzmann, Kurt 9 Well of Moses, the 3, 27n9, 30–46, 31, 33, 37, 39–41, 53, 71 Werve, Claus de tomb of Philip the Bold 21, 22, 46 works attributed to Baume-les-Messieurs, statue of St. Michael 175–177, 176, 180 Bessey-les-Cîteaux, Entombment from the Retable of 48, 49, 103–109, 104–108 Langres Entombment 52–56, 54, 181 Musée de Cluny, Altarpiece of Lamentation 184, 185 statue of St. Luke 181, 182 St.-Bénigne Christ on the Cross 56, 57 Wey, William 77, 114n19 William of Auvergne 129 women, role of in Entombments 133–134 wounds of Christ, the 44–45, 73, 78–83, 90, 93–96, 195 the Five Wounds of Christ 44n56, 115 in plays 115, 118, 120, 122, 127 York Crucifixion, the 115 Young, Karl 15, 16, 17n50