Tomb of Philippe Pot, Grand Seneschal of Burgundy
Attributed to Antoine Le Moiturier (1425-1480) · 1477-1483
Eight hooded mourners, life-size and swathed in black, carry a heavy slab on their shoulders. On it lies Philippe Pot in full armour, hands joined in prayer, wearing over his breastplate a tabard painted with his coat of arms. Each mourner holds a shield, and together the eight shields display the eight quarters of nobility of the knight's ancestry. The faces of the pallbearers are hidden deep in their hoods, which makes the procession feel both anonymous and unbearably sad. The French inscription round the slab announces that here lies Messire Philippe Pot, knight, grand seneschal of Burgundy, raised in the household of Duke Philip the Good.
Philippe Pot, who died in 1493, ordered the tomb in his lifetime, between 1477 and 1483, for a chapel in the abbey church of Citeaux. It is usually attributed to Antoine Le Moiturier, the leading Burgundian sculptor of the time, and it turns the small weeping figures of earlier ducal tombs into monumental bearers. When the abbey was sold at the Revolution the tomb was kept back and moved to Dijon. The Louvre bought it in 1889. The hands, the visor and the edges of the hoods are restorations.
Did You Know? Philippe Pot commissioned his own funeral procession in stone more than a decade before he died, and lived to see it finished.
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