The revolutionary mob destroyed both monuments; but they were pieced together again and restored; and there they stand, for all time let us hope, worthily housed in that magnificent Salle des Gardes. There is nothing in all Burgundy that so conveys, in one coup d'œil, the magnificence of the Valois Dukes.
Philippe le Hardi, clothed in a white robe and a blue mantle lined with ermine, lies, with folded hands, upon a slab of black marble. Two angels with outspread wings hold the helmet over his cushioned head, and his feet rest upon a lion's back. The form and face are realistically done, even to the veins on the hands. But, so far, all is conventional, traditional. It is when we look at the white-robed figures beneath the sculptured tabernacles of the gallery, that we recognise a new motif, dramatic realism, in the monumental art of the period. Claus Sluter and his nephew had developed the individuality of portraiture that made the success of the "Puits de Moïse." Their great patron Duke was dead; and all Dijon had followed weeping in his funeral procession. Claus reproduced that procession, perpetuated it in living stone. They are all there—the high functionaries, the praying monks, the plebeian, wiping his nose on his fingers, all done with a felicity and truth unequalled in any sculpture that has come down to us. Here is a hooded mourner comforted by a priest with finger on text, there an obstinate one receiving exhortation; and an old bourgeois, chin in hand, pondering the way of life. The attitudes alone are so significant that, though the face be hidden, you do not wish to look beneath the cowl. Resignation, despair, faith, argument; all are expressed in pose; the figures behind the pillars are treated with as much sincerity as those which are fully seen.[153] Look up from them to the figure above their heads, and you will see at once that, while the angels have only a decorative function, the pleurants are both decorative and dramatic.
And what of Jean San Peur's tomb, with which young Claus had dreamed of outdoing his uncle? A glance will show that, as a whole, it is greatly inferior to that of the father. The recumbent figure and the decorative angels are equally well done; are, perhaps, even superior in the matter of draperies, which were not Sluter's strong point; but the alabaster gallery lacks the harmonious simplicity of the earlier monument: the detail has been over-elaborated in the fashion of the period, and in a not unnatural though ineffectual attempt to improve upon a chef-d'œuvre. The pleurants directly imitative of those of Philip's tomb, are, without exception, less natural, less restrained, and less felicitous. Yet, despite all these faults, the monument remains a not unworthy companion of its predecessor.
Would we could say that Jean sans Peur himself was equally worthy of the first Valois Duke. In that case the whole course of French history might have been different and happier.
But the fact is that the Dukes' characters, ethically considered, are of the same relative merit as are their tombs. The contrast between the features of father and son is most striking. Philip has an open, almost handsome face, with a noble, though very Jewish, nose, and a generous mouth revealing kindliness and good intentions. Jean's head, on the contrary, is ill-proportioned, flatter, with a weaker chin, and meaner nose. The cheek-bones are too prominent, and the crafty mouth and eye, and "disinheriting" expression, bid the student of physiognomy beware.
Yet, stained though he was by one bloody crime, we shall judge wrongly if we conceive as wholly bad this little chétif, crafty, inarticulate, careful man, who, in days of unbridled luxury, dared to be seen, like Louis XI., in mended clothes, and never risked large sums at play.[154] He was a working prince—brave, intelligent, interested; with his finger always upon the pulse of public opinion. A hardy campaigner, he knew how to endure patiently hunger and thirst, heat and cold, rains and winds; and he possessed the gift, inestimably valuable in those days, of winning and holding the loyal devotion of his immediate friends and servants.[155]