Tomb of Philip the Bold

The monument shows the duke recumbent on a black marble slab with his eyes open, his hands clasped, and his helmet held by two angels as a lion rests at his feet.

[4] Below him, positioned in alternating double archways and triangular niches, pleurants (mourning figures) walk as if part of a funeral procession.

[5] Philip's son, John the Fearless (d. 1419) commissioned a similar tomb and set of figures for both himself and his wife, Margaret of Bavaria.

[8] Although Philip spent much of his time in Paris, Dijon had been home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th to the late 15th centuries, and he wished Champmol to become its ducal palace.

[10][11][12] In 1380, Philip commissioned Jean de Marville to make an alabaster sepulcher for him in Dijon,[13] and in 1386 asked to eventually be buried in the choir.

[9] De Marville began to work on the tomb in 1384, employing a number of artisans to cut and shape the alabaster for the arcades.

[23] The upper reliefs contain Philip's sarcophagus effigy, set against highly polished back Tournai stone, purchased by Sluter in 1391.

The extensive inscriptions on the sides of the slabs record his name, position and date of death: "VERY NOBLE AND POWERFUL PRINCE AND FOUNDER OF THIS CHURCH...WHO PASSED AWAY AT HALLE IN BRABANT ON THE XXVIITH DAY OF APRIL, YEAR OF OUR LORD ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND FOUR".

[3] The pleurants (or "mourners", the word translates in English to "weepers") are regarded by art historians as by far the most interesting aspect of the tomb, and among Claus Sluter's finest work.

[27] A total of 40 mourners, each measuring between 39 and 42 cm in height,[27] stand in pairs in elaborate Gothic niches below the slab, arranged as if in procession.

When Philip was being returned to Dijon following his death in Brussels, a group of around 100 paupers were paid to wear mourning cloaks and greet his body outside the city.

[3] The mourners are grouped in a procession of one or two figures,[3] led by a priest and two choirboys carrying holy water, an acolyte, a deacon and bishop, three cantors and two Carthusian monks.

[26] According to the art historian Jeffrey Chipps Smith, de Marville and Sluter placed them on an elevated black marble platform so that their mourning features would be more visible.