Drape of Death

Phillip II : Tomb
Mourners from the tomb of Phillip the Bold by Claus Sluter and Claus de Werve
completed 1411
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, France
40.6 cm.
image-Brittanica.com

Showing a student where to find books on "old" sculpture, gotta love generic research, I scanned the Cs (the home of sculpture in the Classification system we use, the only library left in the country to use it as I've been told, Library of Congress: NB, Dewey: 730s) and saw Claus Sluter (Flemish sculptor) nice and big on the spine of a hefty book. No one can every convince me it makes sense to store libraries for retrieval upon request, the argument of serendipity will always stand. I remembered his name from an art history class or 2 (My knowledge of "old" (aka pre 1500, which oddly enough almost coincides with Gutenberg though that doesn't really mean anything but there goes my train of thought) art is a bit shoddy, never been my forte when it comes to details but doesn't mean that I am not still draw to it.

I love the mourners in on this tomb, they're kind of creepy aren't they? Pretty understandable considering the theme of death and all :). The work was designed by Sluter, who had done previous work for Phillip in the Well of Moses (the work focused on it that art history course of mine). The tomb was executed by Sluter's nephew, de Werwe (Sluter died before it could be completed) who surely brought his uncle's plans to genius fruition. The individuality of the figures and the artistry of the drapery which conveys the drama of the situation (see link in Tomb title) is awesome. This image only shows 4 of the 40 mourning figures. See a couple of more images here.

This week has been a little off in it's days. I really only missed yesterday, sorry about that, taking a printmaking class on Wednesday night now.