UNKNOWN MASTER, French
(active c. 1480 in Citeaux)

Monument to Philippe Pot

c. 1480
Stone, 180 x 265 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

A final statement of the tradition of Burgundian funerary art that began with Sluter's Tomb of Philip the Bold is the Monument to Philippe Pot (d. 1493), lord high steward of Burgundy, for his burial chapel in the Abbey of Citeaux. Here the realism of the ceremonial spectacle is vividly presented to the viewer with hooded figures, lifesize, marching in solemn procession, their heads hidden,and inclined in prayer, bearing the tomb slab for Philippe Pot's sarcophagus on their shoulders. The traditions of the past are being reshaped here for another, very different, age in French art.