Revisiting the Monument Fifty Years Since Panofsky’S Tomb Sculpture
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REVISITING THE MONUMENT FIFTY YEARS SINCE PANOFSKY’S TOMB SCULPTURE EDITED BY ANN ADAMS JESSICA BARKER Revisiting The Monument: Fifty Years since Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture Edited by Ann Adams and Jessica Barker With contributions by: Ann Adams Jessica Barker James Alexander Cameron Martha Dunkelman Shirin Fozi Sanne Frequin Robert Marcoux Susie Nash Geoffrey Nuttall Luca Palozzi Matthew Reeves Kim Woods Series Editor: Alixe Bovey Courtauld Books Online is published by the Research Forum of The Courtauld Institute of Art Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN © 2016, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. ISBN: 978-1-907485-06-0 Courtauld Books Online Advisory Board: Paul Binski (University of Cambridge) Thomas Crow (Institute of Fine Arts) Michael Ann Holly (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute) Courtauld Books Online is a series of scholarly books published by The Courtauld Institute of Art. The series includes research publications that emerge from Courtauld Research Forum events and Courtauld projects involving an array of outstanding scholars from art history and conservation across the world. It is an open-access series, freely available to readers to read online and to download without charge. The series has been developed in the context of research priorities of The Courtauld which emphasise the extension of knowledge in the fields of art history and conservation, and the development of new patterns of explanation. For more information contact [email protected] All chapters of this book are available for download at courtauld.ac.uk/research/courtauld-books-online Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of images reproduced in this publication. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. All rights reserved. Cover Image: Detail of tomb of Jacopo de Carrara © Luca Palozzi. CONTENTS List of Illustrations 5 Notes on Contributors 8 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction 11 JESSICA BARKER Erwin Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture: Creating the Monument 16 SUSIE NASH I. REASSESSING PANOFSKY From the ‘Pictorial’ to the ‘Statuesque’: Two Romanesque 30 Effigies and the Problem of Plastic Form. SHIRIN FOZI Memory, Presence and the Medieval Tomb 49 ROBERT MARCOUX Panofsky's Tomb Sculpture and the Development of the Early 68 Renaissance Floor Tomb: The Tomb Slab of Lorenzo Trenta by Jacopo della Quercia Reappraised. GEOFFREY NUTTALL II. MONUMENTS AND THEIR VIEWERS Petrarch and Memorial Art: Blurring the Borders between 89 Art Theory and Art Practice in Trecento Italy LUCA PALOZZI Stone and Bone: The Corpse, the Effigy and the Viewer in 113 Late-Medieval Tomb Sculpture JESSICA BARKER Competing for Dextro Cornu Magnum Altaris: Funerary 137 Monuments and Liturgical Seating in English Churches JAMES ALEXANDER CAMERON III. MONUMENTS AND MATERIALS Panofsky: Materials and Condition 155 KIM WOODS Revealed/Concealed: Monumental Brasses on Tomb Chests— 160 The Examples of John I, Duke of Cleves, and Catherine of Bourbon ANN ADAMS Veiling and Unveiling: The Materiality of the Tomb of 184 John I of Avesnes and Philippa of Luxembourg in the Franciscan church of Valenciennes SANNE FREQUIN ‘Nostre sépulture et derrenière maison’: A Reconsideration of the 201 Tomb of Jean de Berry for the Sainte-Chapelle at Bourges, its Inception, Revision and Reconstruction MATTHEW REEVES Deconstructing Donatello and Michelozzo’s Brancacci Tomb 226 MARTHA DUNKELMAN Bibliography 240 Photograph Credits 257 CHAPTER 11 'NOSTRE SÉPULTURE ET DERRENIÈRE MAISON': A RECONSIDERATION OF THE TOMB OF JOHN, DUKE OF BERRY, FOR THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE AT BOURGES, ITS INCEPTION, REVISION, AND RECONSTRUCTION MATTHEW REEVES As part of his wide-reaching 1964 study Tomb Sculpture, Erwin Panofsky attempted to 11.1 Jean de Cambrai, reconstruct what he saw as a distinctive ‘Northern’ temperament, which shaped the fash- Tomb effigy of Jean de ions and conventions of medieval funerary sculpture in France and the Low Countries. He Berry on black marble tomb-slab (c.1410, with suggested that gothic tombs carved in these regions were both ‘literal’ and ‘prospective’, c.1450 additions). placing the identity and personage of the deceased ‘in the center of a more or less complex Marble, effigy narrative’ concerning personal salvation.1 His reading is particularly apt for our percep- dimensions including the bear 205 x 65 x tion of the visual and spiritual agencies invested in the marble effigy of the Valois prince 35 cm. ‘Height’ of the John, Duke of Berry (1340-1416), which is today preserved in a vandalised but remarkably duke alone 177 cm, Bourges, Cathedral of intact state in the crypt of Bourges cathedral (figs 11.1-11.3). Berry’s life and patronage Saint Etienne. are the subjects of extensive study, but curiously the artistic and patronal decisions that MATTHEW REEVES | A RECONSIDERATION OF THE TOMB OF JOHN, DUKE OF BERRY 202 informed the design of his tomb continue to be overlooked.2 Indeed, Panofsky’s own survey touched upon the tombs of the Duke’s brothers, Charles V and Philip the Bold, as well as stylistically related sepulchral monuments made for the Bourbon dukes at Souvigny, but omitted any discussion of Berry’s tomb, and his tendency towards creating what Georges Didi-Huberman has described as a ‘deductive synthesis’ leaves many of its key features, which are highly atypical in the context of French tomb statuary, unexplained.3 The prob- lem was implicit in the scope of Panofsky’s lectures, which could not fully explore specific questions relating to the contexts, visibility and audience(s) of individual tombs, or their physical and material properties, including the role of applied and painted decoration (a stance also made emphatic through the 1964 publication’s blanket use of black and white photography).4 Nevertheless, Panofsky’s succinct highlighting of what he saw as some of the paradoxes inherent to northern European funerary portraiture in the later Middle Ages have tremendous importance for the present study: the blending of a certain truth to nature with idealism is interpreted as an attempt to bridge the gap between the existence of the individual on earth and their existence in heaven; and the depiction of the deceased body is entwined with the suggestion of a simultaneous readiness for the afterlife—open eyes become symbolic of a prepared soul, rather than a miraculously awakened corpse.5 Such notions will be considered here as having a crucial bearing on the Berry tomb, carved as we shall see, for a patron fully conversant with themes of life and death and highly re- ceptive to the nuances of their visual and linguistic representation. In studies undertaken since Panofsky, his charting of the rise of ‘realism’ and ‘natural- ism’ in medieval tomb sculpture has been critically re-analysed, and they are now recog- nised as problematic and heavily-loaded terms with regards to late-medieval portraiture.6 Naturalism will be discussed here as a device employed amongst others in a wider system of representation, and in combination with the realities of the Duke’s ceremonial and com- memorative wishes, to ratify the spiritual agencies of the tomb for a carefully defined con- temporary audience. Looking more closely at its surviving fragments, and with particular focus on its effigy, carved under his patronage during the first period of the project, this chapter will address how Berry sought to craft in this most personal of commissions a highly complex, dualistic identity. Although hampered by its state of incompletion upon the death of its debt-ridden patron (to be finished by his grand-nephew over thirty years Following page: later), as well as its subsequent relocation, destruction, and dispersal, Berry’s tomb will be re-presented as a carefully structured conduit for the Duke’s spiritual, social, and cultural 11.2 Jean de Cambrai, ambitions, and one of astonishing beauty and immediacy. This chapter will also touch Tomb effigy of Jean de upon the various reconstructions attempted after its relocation to Bourges cathedral and, Berry, detail. with reference to other aspects of the Duke’s commemorative patronage, will analyse the 11.3 Jean de Cambrai monument as part of personal, social and political performances, and consider how these Tomb effigy of Jean de changed with the completion of the project over the course of the fifteenth century. Berry, detail. MATTHEW REEVES | A RECONSIDERATION OF THE TOMB OF JOHN, DUKE OF BERRY 203 MATTHEW REEVES | A RECONSIDERATION OF THE TOMB OF JOHN, DUKE OF BERRY 204 THE DUKE OF BERRY’S DEATH AND THE SEARCH FOR A SEPULCHRAL SITE On the afternoon of 15 June 1416 John, Duke of Berry, aged 76, died in his Parisian chateau the Hôtel de Nesle.7 That evening, in the presence of John’s household and physi- cians, the master surgeon André Martin embalmed his corpse. Separating the entrails and heart from the body, he treated each with honey, mastic, spices, flour, and other preserv- ing and perfuming agents, before the heart was taken to the royal mausoleum of Saint- Denis, and the entrails to the Duke’s parish church of Saint-André-des-Arcs close to the Hôtel.8 Shrouded in black serge and surrounded by candles, the body lay in the grande salle until the evening of 19 June, while 200 prayers were said for the Duke’s soul. Then, accompanied by the Duke’s staff, representatives of the four mendicant orders of Paris, the Archbishop of Bourges, and other notables dressed in black mourning robes, the body was transported to the nearby church of the Augustins. Following funerary convention reserved for the nobility, it was placed on a catafalque in the choir, within a coffin draped with fur-trimmed black cloth, and a double-weight pall of blue, red and gold, representing the arms of the Duke.9 On Saturday 20 June, after 152 further prayers, Berry’s coffin was carried on a lavishly-decorated hearse to the churches of Étampes, Toury, Chaumont-en- Sologne and Vierzon, and on to his chateau at Mehun-sur-Yèvre, before arriving at the cathedral of Saint Etienne in Bourges, 200 km south of Paris, on the evening of Saturday 27th.