At the end of the Middle Ages, the recumbent effigy (gisant) is the most common form of funerary art for the kings of France and their family. For reasons of conservation of the flesh, the corpse (corps), the heart (coeur) and the entrails (entrailles) are kept in three separate graves located in different ecclesiastical places.
The specialized sculptors are the tombiers. During the reign of Charles V the Wise, these monuments are commissioned to two competing artists : André Beauneveu and Jean de Liège.
The identification of the represented person does not allow a precise dating. On one hand, some monuments have been completed or redone long after the death. As an example the monument of Marie de France who died in her youth in 1341 was completed by an assistant to Jean de Liège after the death of the artist which occurred in 1381. Conversely, the recumbent statue of Charles V was commissioned in his lifetime to Beauneveu as early as 1364.
The double corpse monument of Charles V, died in 1380, and of his wife Jeanne de Bourbon, died in 1378, was one of the most opulent in the royal funerary basilica of Saint-Denis. During the exhumation of the kings of France in 1793, the statue of the king was saved but the queen's was dismantled, certainly to facilitate a commercial use of the fragments.
On December 11 in Paris, PIASA sells a marble head of a woman from a gisant, lot 26, estimated between € 500K and 1M.
The idealized lines of the face do not allow an identification but their style enables the attribution to Jean de Liège or his workshop. The high forehead and the braided hairstyle are in the fashion iof the 1370s and the relatively large scale is the same as for the Beauneveu statue of the king. All these elements converge to consider that this fragment 23 x 21 x 19 cm recently rediscovered is the head of the gisant de corps of Queen Jeanne in Saint-Denis.
The press release from the auction house is linking to an important dossier in French and English by the specialist Laurence Fligny.
The specialized sculptors are the tombiers. During the reign of Charles V the Wise, these monuments are commissioned to two competing artists : André Beauneveu and Jean de Liège.
The identification of the represented person does not allow a precise dating. On one hand, some monuments have been completed or redone long after the death. As an example the monument of Marie de France who died in her youth in 1341 was completed by an assistant to Jean de Liège after the death of the artist which occurred in 1381. Conversely, the recumbent statue of Charles V was commissioned in his lifetime to Beauneveu as early as 1364.
The double corpse monument of Charles V, died in 1380, and of his wife Jeanne de Bourbon, died in 1378, was one of the most opulent in the royal funerary basilica of Saint-Denis. During the exhumation of the kings of France in 1793, the statue of the king was saved but the queen's was dismantled, certainly to facilitate a commercial use of the fragments.
On December 11 in Paris, PIASA sells a marble head of a woman from a gisant, lot 26, estimated between € 500K and 1M.
The idealized lines of the face do not allow an identification but their style enables the attribution to Jean de Liège or his workshop. The high forehead and the braided hairstyle are in the fashion iof the 1370s and the relatively large scale is the same as for the Beauneveu statue of the king. All these elements converge to consider that this fragment 23 x 21 x 19 cm recently rediscovered is the head of the gisant de corps of Queen Jeanne in Saint-Denis.
The press release from the auction house is linking to an important dossier in French and English by the specialist Laurence Fligny.
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