Chartreuse de Champmol
Philip's capital was Dijon, which he embellished with works of art. The buildings of the palace of the dukes of Burgundy are located in the centre of the old city. The original medieval palace was largely rebuilt and extended in the 17th and 18th centuries. The palace is now the hôtel de ville (town hall) and contains the Musée des Beaux Arts. The magnificent tombs of Philip the Bold (1342-1404) and John the Fearless (1371-1419), dukes of Burgundy, are found there. In the chapel of the Carthusian monastery, the Chartreuse de Champmol, he planned a dynastic necropolis, and until the French Revolution his tomb and those of his son and grandson could be seen there. Claus Sluter (c. 1340/50-1406) was his chief sculptor. Sluter, the greatest realist of his day, carved portraits of the Duke and Duchess in kneeling positions (1385-93) for the portal of the monastery, and for the garden he designed an elaborate and symbolic fountain known as the Well of Moses (1395-1404/05). Six full-length, life-size, polychromed prophets flank the central pier. A psychiatric hospital now stands on the site of the Chartreuse de Champmol, a Carthusian monastery founded by Philip the Bold in 1383, but the doorway of the chapel and other fine vestiges survive from the original building. |
In 1363 John II of France titled his son Philip, surnamed the Bold, duke of Burgundy. By marriage to the heiress of Flanders, Philip added to his duchy, on the death of his father-in-law in 1384, the countship of Flanders. The formidable Flemish-Burgundian alliance remained intact until 1482, when Philip the Bold's great-granddaughter Mary of Burgundy died.