Tomb of Philippe Pot

Unattributed donor portrait believed to be of Philippe Pot, Church of Notre-Dame of Dijon

Philippe Pot was born in 1428 at the Château de la Rochepot, outside Dijon in today's France. The region was then part of the Duchy of Burgundy and his father, Jacques, was an adviser and senior official to Duke Philip the Good.[4][5] Pot was raised and educated at the Burgundian court. He was a scholar and bibliophile,[4] and served during the politically fraught years of the last two Valois dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Good (r. 1419–1467) and Charles the Bold (r. 1467–1477). During this period, he rose to become a knight of the Golden Fleece and seigneur, or lord, of La Rochepot (his ancestral home) and Thorey-sur-Ouche in Burgundy.[4] He was instrumental in arranging both Charles' betrothal to Catherine of France, and second marriage to Isabella of Bourbon.[6]

Soon after Charles' defeat and death in January 1477 at the battle of Nancy, Burgundy came under French control, and Pot seemingly changed allegiance to Louis XI, king of France (r. 1461–1483). Suspicious of his association with Louis, Charles and Isabella's daughter Mary of Burgundy expelled him from her realm and the court at Lille in June 1477. In disgrace, he fled to the then French city of Tournai, and was removed from the order of the Golden Fleece in 1481.[4]

He travelled in August 1477 on behalf of Louis to Lens in northern France to negotiate a truce with Mary and her husband and co-ruler, Maximilian of Austria. The truce was signed on 8 September, and Louis eventually appointed him as grand seneschal of Burgundy. Following the king's death in 1483, Pot served under Louis' son Charles VIII (r. 1483–1498).[4][7] Pot died in Dijon on 20 September 1493 aged around 65, having already made detailed plans for his burial place, funeral monument and epitaph.[8][9]

Plans for Pot's tomb first appear in the historical records on 28 August 1480, when Pot paid the abbot of Cîteaux Abbey, Jean de Cirey, one thousand livres for a burial place in the abbey's chapel of Saint-Jean-Baptiste. Although the dates of its construction are unknown, it is generally assumed to have been between 1480 and 1483 given that the inscriptions mention events after the January 1477 death of Charles the Bold, and mention Louis XI as king.[9] Pot's motto "Tant L. vaut, était" (So much was he worth) was painted in several locations within the chapel.[9][10] The floor of the Jean-Baptiste chapel is lined with rows of medieval burial plots, although few are marked. It was placed at the corner of the south arm of the chapel's transept. He was buried underneath his monument, located to the left of the altar.[9]

Tomb of Philip the Bold, built between 1381 and 1410

Pot's monument was one of the last of the Burgundian-style tombs, whose characteristics include the deceased having naturalised faces, open eyes and angels above their heads.[2] The portrayal of the mourners (pleurants) is their defining motif. The style began with the tomb of Philip the Bold (d. 1404), built by the sculptors Jean de Marville (d. 1389) and Claus Sluter (d. 1405/6) from 1381, for the Chartreuse de Champmol, outside Dijon.[11][12] Described by the art historian Frits Scholten as "one of the most magnificent tombs of the Late Middle Ages",[12] its innovation was in transforming the mourners from the earlier static and unemotional figures to, according to the art historian John Moffitt, individualised weepers that "stumble forward in mutual anguish while praying in perpetuity for the late Duke's soul".[13] This treatment was often copied and developed over the following century.[14][15] By the time of Pot's commission the figures had become much larger – Sluter's have an average height of 40 cm (16 in) – and were free-standing rather than attached to the monument.[13][16]

Pot commissioned his tomb some 13 years before he died, with his date of death left blank during construction; the current one was probably added in the 19th century.[9] The tomb's extensive inscriptions indicate he wished to leave a record of his importance and prosperity, and to explain his change in allegiance to Louis XI. He probably first employed a painter to agree an overall design and then hired stonemasons, sculptors and craftsmen to construct the tomb.[17]

Art historians have not identified the artists or craftsmen responsible for designing and building the tomb. Antoine Le Moiturier (d. 1495) is often suggested as likely to have designed the pleurants, given the similarity of the solid and rigid rendering of their clothing to the Mourners of Dijon which are often attributed to him.[38][39] Guillaume Chandelier, a painter active in Dijon at the time, has been suggested as involved, although with little supporting evidence.[40][2]

Art historians generally distinguish between the conventional design of the effigy, the expressive form of the mourners, and the inventive placing of the slab on narrow points above each of their shoulders.[17][41] While it is possible that a single artist, who was both a painter and sculptor, oversaw the tomb's completion, the variation in the quality of sculpture indicates several hands. The art historian Robert Marcoux notes variabilities in skill, and believes that parts of the sculpture are so sparsely detailed that they were likely completed by workshop members.[42]

Lithograph after a c. 1857–1870 photograph by Armand de Vesvrotte taken in Beire-le-Châtel.[43]

The tomb passed through several owners and locations over the centuries, and its complex history was only fully pieced together in the mid-20th century.[5] It was first mentioned as completed in 1649 by Pierre Palliot, a bookseller and printer in Dijon, when he described the coats of arms and the inscriptions. The antiquarian and collector François Roger de Gaignières (d. 1715) made drawings of the tomb between 1699 and 1700, which are lost and known only from copies by the artist Louis Boudan (fl. 1687–1709); these are uninformative as they contain inaccuracies.[44] The tomb was nationalised during the early years of the French Revolution when the state took ownership of all church property.[5]

Sometime between 1791 and 1793 François Devosge, an artist and director of the Dijon School of Drawing, was employed to relocate it to the Benedictine abbey in Saint-Bénigne. It was next mentioned in September 1808 when it was acquired for fifty-three livres by Count Richard de Vesvrotte, following a legal case against the French state. He placed it under trees in the garden of his hôtel particulier (townhouse), the Hôtel de Ruffey at 33 rue Berbisey in Dijon.[45][46]

Charles Édouard de Beaumont, Au Solei, 1875. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York[47]

Richard's son Pierre sold the townhouse in 1850 and relocated the tomb to the Château de Vesvrotte in Beire-le-Châtel, Côte-d'Or,[48] where it was again placed in an outdoor garden. It was photographed for the first time in a series of photolithographs commissioned by Pierre's son Alphonse Richard de Vesvrotte. They were published in 1863, and inspired the artist, antiquarian and collector Charles Édouard de Beaumont's 1875 painting Au solei (or At the Tomb of Philippe Pot), which shows a couple lying at the foot of the tomb in a meadow surrounded by trees.[46][49][50]

The Vesvrotte family attempted to sell the tomb some time after Richard's death in 1873. The French state sought to block the sale, claiming it was by now public property, a claim eventually rejected in 1886 by a Dijon court who gave full ownership to Pierre's son, Armand de Vesvrotte.[43][50] It was nationalised by the French state that August on the grounds that it was an "object of national historical importance".[1] It was acquired for the Louvre in 1889 by the intermediator Charles Mannheim.[5][46]

The tomb was cleaned and restored several times in the 19th century, as evidenced by comparison to earlier reproductions, such as an engraving that shows Pot's fingers as being badly damaged.[46] Early drawings show his feet and the animal in very poor condition until c. 1816. Some of the letters and words on the inscription were restored before 1880 by the archivist Jean-Baptiste Peincedé.[1] The tomb underwent a major restoration between 2018 and 2019 in a project led by Sophie Jugie, director of the Department of Sculptures at the Louvre.[7] It had been in poor condition, covered by accumulated layers of brown dirt around the heraldry, and had layers of gloss and polyvinyl alcohol from earlier cleanings. The restoration was preceded by an in-depth technical analysis conducted between 2016 and 2017 by the Centre for Research and Restoration of Museums of France. Surface layers of bleach, gloss and brown fouling of the blazons were taken off, the unpainted stone was cleaned, and additions from earlier restorations were removed.[51]

The monument had a significant influence on later funerary tombs. It transformed the conventional size and placement of pleurants, which previously had mostly been relatively small figures standing in niches. The motif of eight mourners carrying an effigy's slab can be seen on the tombs of Louis de Savoisy (d. 1515) and Jacques de Mâlain (d. 1527).[27][52] The tomb was photographed several times in the mid-19th century before it was acquired by the Louvre,[45] It was portrayed in 2010 by the American sculptor Matthew Day Jackson in a wood and plastic installation showing astronauts carrying a glass box containing a human skeleton.[53][54]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tomb of Philippe Pot.

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