16/1/07 - History of Art - New Dimensions for Looking c.1400: The Chartreuse de Champmol at Dijon

Dijon is the capital city of Burgundy. Here Claus Sluter, a naturalistic artist worked. He was chosen by Philip the Bold to sculpt his portrait in a lifelike way, and therefore he would be recognisable. Compare this change of style to the style of Jean Pucelle in his portrait of Jeanne d'Evreux. Pucelle seems to have worked from a template which he used for all the female figures, as catching likenesses was not deemed important then. Pucelle later accepted a naturalistic style in the Belleville Breviary, for example on the page of 'David Threatened by Saul' c.1327. It is different, however, to depict human likeness rather than copying nature, because if the artist makes a mistake in a picture of a person, that mistake would be more easily perceived than if a mistake were made in a picture of nature. For example, the portrait of King Jean le Bon, mid-14th century, looks nothing like Sluter's portrait of Philip Bold, although Philip was the son of Jean le Bon. This illustrates how humans are more sensitive to human faces than to pictures of plants and animals. Jean le Bon's portrait was the first known royal portrait to be based on the actual man, although the features are more stiff and stylised than Sluter's sculpture of Philip the Bold.

Naturalistic portraiture became more important in the 1360s. Why at that time? This was at the time when spectacles were first worn. Philip the Bold was the first member of the royal family to wear spectacles for reading devotional texts. Jean Pucelle worked on an incredibly small scale (manuscripts as small as two and a half inches high) so it's likely that he wore spectacles. With the invention of spectacles came a greater interest in detail that people could see.

For example, Sluter took into account the space between his sculptures of the Duke and Duchess kneeling before the Virgin and Child, because viewers had to participate in the piece by walking between them to enter the Chartreuse de Champmol. Sluter was also the first artist to build a tomb that invited viewers to walk all the way round it rather than focusing on the front of the tomb alone.

Melchior Broederlam made use of space in his altarpiece. The figures are placed in space; the landscape trails into the distance. Space is also sensed by contrasts between light and shadow alternatively within the picture.

Jean Malouel (his name literally means "paint well") was interested in dimensions of space in a more spiritual way in his Altarpiece of St Denis at the Chartreuse de Champmol.

Sluter sculpted a Well of Moses which also encourages us to walk all the way round the sculpture. Originally there was a crucifixion scene on the top of it, but now all that remains is the base. Prophecies are written on the scrolls held by the various figures, and they relate the truth of Christ's death. Sluter represents the angels grieving, just as he had shown the monks on Philip's tomb grieving. Such things suggest that Sluter had observed such actions realistically rather than simply representing them fainting or waving their arms as was previously conventional though not realistic. Similarly, Moses is represented as an old man of wisdom with realistic wrinkles and other attributes of old age. The prophecy on Jeremiah's scroll asks us to 'see'; Jeremiah used to wear spectacles himself but they have now disappeared. Sluter hid a transliterated Latin inscription on Jeremiah's clothing stating his own name. It has since been suggested that the figure is a portrait of Sluter.

Van Eyck, the painter of Philip the Good (the grandson of Philip the Bold) was the most naturalistic painter of the time. Notice in his Madonna of Canon van der Paele the patron holds his spectacles in his hand.