The Tomb of Louis of Mâle and the Materiality of Brass in the Burgundian Netherlands

The Tomb and Its Contract

On 29 October 1453, Philip signed the contract for the tomb that Isabella had negotiated “for and in the name of my lord the Duke” with the brass founder Jacob van Gerines of Brussels.^[13] The founder was charged with procuring blocks of Antoing stone for the tomb slab and chest, to be carved with mouldings and polished, and to make three brass effigies to set on top: “an image figured as a prince in arms, seven feet long” in the centre and two princesses positioned at either side of him. Two kneeling angels were to be placed behind the effigies’ heads, holding the princesses’ heraldic shields with one hand and the prince’s helm and crest in the middle with the other. An inscription recording their titles and death-dates, formed from brass letters set into black cement, was to go around the tomb slab above the moulding. Around the sides of the chest was to be a brass arcade, into each archway of which would be placed a brass statuette, each identified by a heraldic shield at their feet and an inscription inserted into the arcade. The document concludes with stipulations regarding the quality of brass, Van Gerines’s responsibilities for delivery and installation, and arrangements for his payment: 2000 gold crowns worth 48 Flemish groats per crown, disbursed in instalments, beginning with 1000 crowns paid up front. A record in the ducal accounts dated 29 December 1454 authorizes payment to the founder of an instalment of 500 crowns “for a tomb of brass and Antoing stone,” and indicates that its completion was expected within a two-year timeframe.^[14] A receipt submitted by Van Gerines the following year confirmed that “I have finished that tomb.”^[15]

Before its destruction, the tomb captured the attention of a succession of travellers, antiquarians, and artists, beginning with the Swiss physician Thomas Platter, who admired the tomb in August 1599, and the portraitist-genealogist Antoine de Succa who in February 1602 made drawings of its sculptures and noted the inscriptions and coats of arms (fig. 4).^[16] The tomb was described by the Jesuit priest Jean Vincart in his account of the cult of Notre Dame de la Treille published in Latin in 1636 and in French in 1671; he even composed a short poem about the tomb written in the voice of Louis of Mâle.^[17] The earliest pictorial representations of the tomb in its entirety date from the eighteenth century, beginning with Bernard de Montfaucon’s Les monumens de la monarchie françoise (1731), which includes an engraving showing its south side, based on a drawing he had received (fig. 2).^[18] In the 1790s, Aubin-Louis Millin published the most thorough and apparently most accurate images in his Antiquités nationales, with views of the whole tomb from its north-east corner and details of the effigies and mourners (figs. 1, 3, 5 – 6).^[19] The statuettes, mainly because of the evidence they offered for historical costume, were sketched by several other artists before the French Revolution.^[20] Collectively, these sources confirm that the 1453 contract was followed closely while documenting aspects that were left unspecified, like the lion and dogs under the effigies’ feet, the inscribed plaque at the foot of the count, and the evangelist figurines at the four corners of the tomb chest, rather like those on Mary of Burgundy’s tomb. They also show how some of the monument’s design challenges were met: even though Flanders came to Burgundy via Margaret of Flanders, the risk that her and her mother’s effigies would impair the visibility of Louis of Mâle’s evidently had to be mitigated by raising his on an additional narrow plinth in the middle of the tomb slab.^[21] Likewise, Montfaucon’s engraving and De Succa’s drawings of the two angels by the effigies’ heads show how Louis’s helm rested on a slender column elevating it above the women’s shields at either side (figs. 2, 4).

Making the Tomb

The inscription encircling the upper part of the tomb not only identified “the high and powerful prince and princesses” represented by the effigies, listing their names, titles, and death-dates, as stipulated in the contract, but it also elucidated their relationship to the ‘mourners’ below, stating that, “From Philip, Duke of Burgundy, and Margaret of Flanders are descended the princes and princesses whose representations are around this tomb, and several others.”^[22] Unmentioned in the contract, though, was a second inscription at Louis’s feet, which identified both the tomb’s patron and, remarkably, its maker: “This tomb has been made by the very excellent and very powerful prince Philip, by the grace of God, Duke of Burgundy… [a list of his other titles follows] in remembrance of his predecessors, in his city of Brussels by Jacob van Gerines, burgess of there, and completed in the year 1455.”^[23] The particular emphasis here on Brussels as the site of creation is discussed later in this essay, but it was a major centre for metalworking in the fifteenth century and Jacob van Gerines (d. 1463 or 1464), known as ‘de Coperslager’ (‘the coppersmith’), was one of its leading brass founders.^[24] Little is known about his non-tomb-related work, other than an elaborate candelabrum-lectern he made for a Cambrai abbey in 1438,^[25] but in common with other founders, his expertise was not confined to casting sculpture: he also acted as a surveyor for the court and in 1450 advised Philip on the feasibility of conveying water from its source in Anderlecht to the Coudenberg, an interaction that possibly led to him being awarded the Lille tomb contract.^[26] Van Gerines’s activities brought him considerable status and wealth: he served twice on the Brussels magistrature, as communal councillor in 1428 and receiver in 1435; he was a churchwarden of the Chapel Church; and he and his wife were generous patrons of the Augustinian priory of St. Elizabeth on Mount Sion, to which two of their daughters belonged.^[27] This may have brought him into contact with Isabella of Portugal, who maintained an ongoing interest in the convent having aided its establishment in 1432, and spent the majority of her time in Brussels in the years immediately prior to the commission, particularly during the Ghent war.^[28]

Since the tomb consisted predominantly of cast brass sculpture, Van Gerines was given sole responsibility in the 1453 contract, but an undertaking of this scale and complexity necessitated collaboration with others. He would have had to engage a stone merchant to obtain the “single, sound slab of Antoing stone, ringing true as sound stone ought to ring” on which the effigies lay.^[29] The contract recognized the difficulty of obtaining a slab of such size (stated as twelve feet by nine) by allowing “two pieces suitably joined together” if a single block could not be sourced (as appears to have been the solution for Isabella of Bourbon’s slab, now in Antwerp Cathedral). Three-foot-high blocks of the same stone were also needed for the sides of the tomb chest. Antoing was the site of one of several quarries around the city of Tournai – an enclave of the French crown about 25 km from Lille – that yielded the celebrated black ‘marble’ (actually a carboniferous limestone) for which Tournai was renowned. Antoing’s stone was commonly employed for funerary monuments; it was used, for instance, for the tomb of the last lords of Leuven from the house of Brabant, commissioned from a Tournai sculptor in 1339 – 1341 for the Brussels Friars Minor convent. As with the Lille tomb, “good, sound Antoing stone… well carved, well polished,” was stipulated for this monument.^[30]

Van Gerines’s contract also specified that the Lille tomb slab was to have “a nicely carved moulding all round it,” and the bases of the four supporting blocks “should be carved with a fine moulding,” for which the services of a mason or sculptor would have been required.^[31] There were multiple craftsmen in Tournai to whom Van Gerines could have subcontracted the carving and who might have supplied the stone too. The sculptor and stone merchant Pierre Tuscap is one such candidate: in 1451, he fulfilled an order from Duchess Isabella for carved Antoing stone destined for the ducal palace in Bruges; another is the sculptor and tomb engraver Jean Génois, who delivered six stone pillars to St. Peter’s, Lille, in 1447. Moreover, in 1460 both Tuscap and Gé-nois were contracted to make the tomb – also ordered by Isabella – for Philip the Good’s illegitimate son Corneille (d. 1452), killed in the Ghent war.^[32] Obviously, there was no shortage of capable sculptors and masons in Van Gerines’s home-town of Brussels too, but given the proximity of Tournai and Antoing to Lille, it would seem logical that that the stone would have been locally procured, carved, and delivered straight to the church in Lille.^[33]

The contract stipulated that the tomb slab was to “be well and truly polished as smoothly as possible,” and the supporting blocks were to be “likewise well-polished.”^[34] Archaeological excavation in 1985 at the site of the monument at St. Peter’s revealed a carefully polished piece of moulding in Tournai stone, likely a fragment of the destroyed tomb.^[35] Polishing would transform the rather greyish ‘raw’ limestone into the lustrous black ‘marble’ suitable for funerary monuments. Whoever executed the mouldings could have ensured that the slab and blocks were suitably polished too. For example, the Dinant stonecutter Hubert Nonnen was subcontracted by the brass founder Renier I van Thienen to supply the ‘marble’ (in that case, black Dinant stone) for Mary of Burgundy’s tomb: in 1494, he was paid for both cutting and polishing the stone for the tomb and base, as well as for its delivery and installation in Bruges.^[36] It is equally possible that specialized polishers were recruited to achieve the desired finish on the Lille tomb, as had been the case with Philip the Bold’s first tomb at Champmol.^[37]

The contract makes repeated reference to the pattern or patron to be followed: it is mentioned in relation to the mouldings, effigies, and the arcade into which the statuettes were placed. This patron has not survived, but a late fifteenth-century Netherlandish drawing for a knightly effigial tomb provides a sense of what it might have looked like (fig. 8).^[38] Although unspecified in the contract, additional drawings would have been needed for the statuettes around the sides of the tomb and their accompanying heraldry. Making such drawings would usually have been the purview of a painter, and the fact that a design existed when the contract was drawn up indicates that his services had already been engaged, although his identity is unrecorded. Additionally, large-scale metal sculpture like this was typically indirectly cast from wooden models, and so Van Gerines would have subcontracted a sculptor to translate the drawn designs into three-dimensional models from which moulds could be taken, a substantial undertaking given the number of figures and other components to be cast.^[39]

8

Southern Netherlandish, Design for a Funerary Monument, ca. 1490 – 1500, pen and brown ink over preparatory drawing in black chalk, 248 × 166 cm. Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett, inv. no. C782

The identities of some of Van Gerines’s collaborators can be deduced from the documentation for the closely related tomb of Louis of Mâle’s sister-in-law, Joanna, Duchess of Brabant (d. 1406), and William of Burgundy (d. 1410), also commissioned by Philip the Good (Joanna’s great-great nephew and William’s cousin), for the Carmelite church in Brussels in 1458 – 1459. Damaged by the Calvinists and then restored in 1607, it was destroyed in the 1695 bombardment of Brussels, although its appearance was recorded before its disappearance, including in a drawing by De Succa (fig. 9).^[40] Here, Van Gerines supplied the duchess’s effigy, two escutcheon-bearing angels, and twenty-four ploranten, but as Lorne Campbell demonstrated, this much cheaper tomb was made of wood rather than brass, and the figures Van Gerines delivered were actually the wooden models previously used for casting the Lille tomb.^[41] The wood and stone sculptor Jean Delemer, who relocated from Tournai to Brussels in the 1430s, repaired these recycled models and carved a new figure of William (who died in infancy, so Louis’s model could not be reused). Delemer may have also carved the original wooden models for the Lille tomb, and given his Tournai origins, he might even have helped Van Gerines procure the Antoing stone for it too.^[42]

9

Antoine de Succa, Effigies from Tomb of Joanna, Duchess of Brabant, and William of Burgundy, 1602, drawings from the Mémoriaux, fol. 74r. Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium – Manuscripts Department, MS II 1862/1

The Tournai – Brussels connection is also apparent in the polychromy of the wooden images for Joanna’s tomb, since this task was entrusted to Rogier van der Weyden, who likewise moved to Brussels from Tournai in the 1430s, becoming the city’s painter and the court’s preferred portraitist.^[43] For all its dependency on the Lille tomb – which has caused confusion in the past – the Brussels tomb must have looked very different, since Rogier’s rich polychromy, evoked in later depictions, would have made it a great deal more colourful than its monochromatic predecessor in Lille.^[44] Campbell convincingly argued that Rogier had supplied designs for the Lille tomb, noting particularly the varied poses and gestures of the ‘mourners’, and suggested that they were perhaps based on a lost set of full-length princely portraits.^[45] The patron mentioned repeatedly in the 1453 contract refers only to the tomb chest, effigies, and arcade, and not to the ymaiges placed within the arcade – perhaps another artist had drawn up the patron and then Rogier supplied the necessary drawings for the statuettes. What may have been something comparable occurred later with Mary of Burgundy’s tomb, whereby the Bruges painter Jan de Hervy seems to have been the overall designer, but the detailed designs for its extensive heraldic program were delegated to the court artist Jan van Lathem.^[46]

“Good, Fine, and Excellent Brass”

The Lille tomb is periodically described in existing literature as being of ‘gilt-bronze’, but the documents clearly state that the tomb was made of brass (laton in the 1453 contract, leton in the 1454 payment) and give no indication that it was ever intended to be gilded.^[47] Furthermore, the contract is exceptionally specific about the quality of the alloy, stating that “this brass work must be of good, fine, and excellent brass,” adding that it “must be purified three times and poured in the mould on the fourth time.”^[48] No other such document of the period has come to light that is as precise in its stipulations about brass.

The making of brass was a highly skilled undertaking. Zinc, which gives brass its golden yellow colour, was the defining ingredient of the cupreous alloys cast in the Low Countries, but it was not produced industrially as a metal in Europe before the mid-eighteenth century.^[49] Instead, it was obtained indirectly, either from tutty, an impure zinc oxide that accreted on the walls of lead and silver smelting furnaces, or from its mineral form, zinc carbonate, “a kind of stone of a yellowish colour, sometimes reddish, which is called calamine,” according to the Mosan monk known as Theophilus, and aptly described as “the earth… that colours copper yellow like gold” by the Sienese metallurgist Vannoccio Biringuccio.^[50] Calamine rather than tutty was preferred in the Low Countries due to its local availability; it also tended to produce a purer, yellower alloy. Founders transformed copper and calamine into brass by means of cementation, a technically complex (and noxious) process known since antiquity but first described in detail by Theophilus in his twelfth-century treatise.^[51] The Dominican scholar Albertus Magnus, writing about a century later, also gave an account of the procedure, as did several sixteenth-century metallurgists like Biringuccio; all are broadly in agreement with Theophilus.^[52] In the southern Netherlands, founders typically formulated their own brass: recent analysis of crucible fragments from a fifteenth-century Brussels workshop specializing in small brass accessories – located steps away from Van Gerines’s parish church – indicated that cementation was undertaken on site using calamine in crucibles formed from imported Mosan refractory clay.^[53] Mastery of alloys was clearly a source of prestige for founders – Van Gerines’s contemporary, Guillaume Lefèvre of Tournai, proudly titled himself fondeur de laiton on his signed works.^[54]

According to the sources, the process began with calcining the calamine by roasting it, after which it was ground up and mixed with powdered charcoal dust, which acted as a reducing agent, its carbon reacting with the calamine to produce zinc vapour once heated.^[55] Pieces of copper – the smaller the better to increase surface area for zinc absorption – were then heated in the crucible with the charcoal-calamine mixture. Zinc evaporates at 907 °C, the point at which it is released from the calamine, and so attaining the correct furnace temperature was crucial, since it needed to be above 907 °C and below copper’s melting-point of 1083 °C. If it was too high, the forming alloy would melt, thereby reducing its capacity for zinc absorption as it sank to the bottom of the crucible.^[56] At lower temperatures, the process should ideally be undertaken using a closed crucible so that the vaporized zinc could be collected and condensed. In order “to produce a lustre like gold,” Albertus Magnus and Biringuccio both describe the use of crushed glass as a flux sprinkled on top of the mixture in the crucible to reduce escaping zinc vapour, thus creating a brass that was “much more brilliant than it would have been without it.” ^[57] A tightly-fitting lid was probably more important for minimizing vapour loss, although archaeological evidence indicates that brass makers in the Meuse valley used open crucibles.^[58] Finally, the resulting matter was melted and stirred to homogenize the alloy, but care was needed as prolonged heating would cause the zinc to evaporate and the loss of the alloy’s most distinctive quality: its “smooth and lovely yellow” colour, “almost like 24-carat gold,” in Biringuccio’s words.^[59]

While no other contract is as specific as the Lille tomb’s about the formulation of its brass, stipulations about metal occasionally occur in later documents for similarly prominent projects. In 1535, the abbot of Tongerlo ordered from Niklaas Coopmans of Zichem three large candlesticks “of finer brass” (lattoen), defined as “fine stuff without any lead mixed in.” Three years later, the founder supplied St. Eustace’s Church, Zichem, with a baptismal font “of good dry stuff, called arca.”^[60] Similarly, Renier II van Thienen’s 1509 contract for the Coudenberg balienhof statuary stipulated that they be cast from “the better material called arka,”^[61] and the 1519 contract for a screen cast by Jan van den Eynde of Mechelen for Utrecht’s Dom Church specified use of “the best material called arckaell.”^[62] Both arka (underlined in the 1509 document) and arckaell come from the Latin aurichalcum, literally ‘golden copper’, although it actually derives phonetically from the Greek oreichalkos (mountain copper), thought to refer to brass.^[63] Aurichalcum is used by Albertus Magnus to mean copper combined with calamine through cementation, and by Theophilus for brass that had been refined to remove its lead content.^[64] Conceivably, this superior alloy – a purified high-zinc brass with a low lead content and an especially golden appearance – corresponds with the “good, fine, and excellent brass” specified for the Lille tomb. Moreover, the contract’s specification that the brass “must be purified three times” echoes the instructions found among the Le Bègue recipes to melt brass with tutty three times, adding more tutty each time, “If you wish to make brass as beautiful as gold.”^[65] Similarly, Lazarus Ercker noted in his 1574 treatise how, “Some brass melters return the brass again to the furnace, especially if they wish to give it a higher colour,” although he added pragmatically that “there is no gain or profit” to this, “since the expense exceeds the advantage.”^[66] While it would require additional calamine, fuel, and labour, the concern for the quality (and implicitly the colour) of the Lille tomb’s laton, and the means to achieve it, indicates a clear notion of what was most suitable for the monument, regardless of the higher costs entailed. Indeed, the contract’s stipulation about purifying the alloy just three times before pouring into the mould demonstrates a precise understanding of the risk of overdoing it, causing zinc loss; as Biringuccio warned, “its fine color evaporates… and it is returned to red copper and almost to its former nature by four or six meltings.”^[67]

Brass and Gold

By adding zinc, the melting point of copper is lowered and its fluidity increases, producing an alloy that is durable yet malleable and ductile, but it was primarily its visual proximity to gold that set brass apart from other alloys, as theorists and practitioners repeatedly commented.^[68] Examples of such technical writings from the Burgundian Netherlands are lacking, but works of art offer unequivocal evidence for the optical equivalence of brass to gold. As H. K. Cameron noted regarding heraldry engraved on monumental tomb brasses, the various tinctures used in coats of arms were denoted by appropriately pigmented gum mastic inlaid into the brass plate, or by inlaid lead or pewter for the metal argent (silver), but in the case of or (gold), the metal was conventionally represented simply by the polished brass alone.^[69] This is apparent on the brass foundation memorial plaque of Isabella of Portugal from the Basel charterhouse (fig. 10), commissioned by the duchess in the 1440s to commemorate the pious foundation she established there in 1433.^[70] Although most of its inlaid colours have been lost, it is clear from what remains that it relied on inlays for all the heraldic tinctures other than or, which was represented only by the brass itself (fig. 11). Brass, then, was not only evocative of gold, but could act as a conceptual substitute for it too.

10

Southern Netherlandish, Foundation Memorial of Isabella of Portugal, Duchess of Burgundy, after 1440, engraved brass in black limestone frame, 122.5 × 102.5 cm (excluding frame). Basel, Historisches Museum, inv. no. 1870.673

11

Southern Netherlandish, Detail of Heraldry on Foundation Memorial of Isabella of Portugal, Duchess of Burgundy, after 1440, engraved brass in black limestone frame, 122.5 × 102.5 cm (excluding frame). Basel, Historisches Museum, inv. no. 1870.673

When polished, the Lille tomb’s refined alloy would have had a sumptuous, golden appearance. Despite the contract’s specificity about stone and metal, it makes no provision for gilding too, which would be a remarkable omission if the Lille monument was actually to be gilded, given the time, expertise, and cost involved. This is vividly exemplified by Mary of Burgundy’s gilt tomb, on which the goldsmith Pieter de Backere “worked and toiled with five or six assistants over six or seven years,” according to his petition for additional compensation years later due to the financial and physical toll of the undertaking.^[71] Admittedly, it is conceivable that a goldsmith was contracted separately to gild the Lille tomb after Van Gerines had completed his work on it.^[72] However, that the tomb’s metal surfaces were not intended to be coloured with any other substance is also implied by the contract’s stipulation that the shields bearing the arms of Louis and the two Margarets, “must be done in relief like the wax of a seal” (Millin also confirmed that these shields were left uncoloured).^[73] By contrast, the dozens of heraldic shields adorning Mary of Burgundy’s tomb were all executed in coloured enamels, a task entrusted to the court goldsmith Lieven van Lathem, brother of their designer.^[74] In 1599, Thomas Platter described the Lille tomb as “of purely brass” (“von eytel meßin”), confirming that it must have been a monochromatic monument.^[75]

Further evidence that the Lille tomb was enhanced by burnishing rather than gilding comes a few years after its completion. In 1463, Philip the Good made arrangements with the chapter of St. Peter’s, “to clean and scour four times a year forever the brass figures which are on top of and around the tomb, which we have had newly made and placed in the chapel of Our Lady.”^[76] The chapter used money given by Philip for this purpose to acquire a fief, the revenues from which funded the tomb’s maintenance in perpetuity. In December 1461, when the duke first conveyed the funds to the dean and chapter, the tomb had been in place for six years and was likely starting to show signs of needing regular upkeep; meeting the challenge and cost of preserving it in a suitably splendid state must have become a pressing concern.^[77] Philip only spent a few days in Lille that year, but it was perhaps the experience of seeing the royal tombs at Saint-Denis earlier that autumn that prompted his action.^[78] The regularity of the tomb’s prescribed cleaning schedule echoes instances found elsewhere, like the brass fixtures of St. Piat’s Church, Tournai, recorded as being “scoured and cleaned” twice a year in 1446,^[79] or those of the collegiate church at Saint-Omer, whose six brass altar columns were being cleaned quarterly from 1412–1413, while its lecterns in the choir, both acquired in 1431, were to be cleaned only twice-yearly.^[80] In 1539, the churchwardens of St. Bavo’s, Haarlem, contracted a woman to maintain its brass-work, including Jan Fierens’s pelican-lectern, which was cleaned four times a year.^[81] Regular schedules were employed for brass funerary monuments too: the tomb of the heart of John of Burgundy in Cambrai was cleaned every year on the anniversary of his death,^[82] and in the endowment provided by Mary of Burgundy in 1478 to fund the anniversary of her mother, Isabella of Bourbon, at St. Michael’s Abbey, Antwerp, the abbey agreed, “to clean at our cost and expense,” Isabella’s tomb, “every year, three or four times, or as often as required.”^[83]

The Lille tomb’s quarterly cleaning regime reflects both the physical complexity of the tomb and the demands and financial resources of its patron, as well as its continuing importance for him. Since gold does not tarnish and fire-gilding (the standard method for gilding copper alloy tombs) produces a robust finish, it would be extremely unlikely that the tomb would have necessitated such frequent upkeep if it was actually gilded (the same applies to Isabella’s tomb in Antwerp). Moreover, the burnishing of the metal surface with mild abrasion suggested by the word escurer (literally ‘scour’) in the 1463 document indicates a procedure that was appropriate for brass but would be highly detrimental to gilding, given the softness of gold. Similar vocabulary is used in other references to maintenance of brass tombs: in 1532, a metalworker was paid for having “nettoyé et rescuré” John of Burgundy’s tomb in Cambrai,^[84] and in Bruges, payment is recorded in 1595–1600, “van tschuere van de tombe” of Louis of Gruuthuse (d. 1492).^[85] It is clear, then, that the Lille tomb (and others like it) was neither patinated nor gilded; instead, its visual impact was dependent on its overt materiality – its brass was meant to be seen.^[86] By preserving and enhancing the alloy’s distinctive yellow hue and gold-like gleam, the cleaning regime instituted by the duke perpetually reasserted the metallic nature of the tomb.

The Flemish Context

The Lille tomb was the most splendid of a series of monuments erected or restored by Philip the Good to commemorate past rulers of his territories and bolster the legitimacy of his own rule. A number of them, like the Lille tomb and that of Joanna of Brabant (fig. 9), deliberately emphasized female lines of succession, the route by which many of these territories came into Burgundian hands.^[87] Philip’s decision in 1453 to memorialize his long-dead Dampierre forebears was chiefly motivated by the recent war in Flanders – the contract for the tomb was signed just three months after his crushing victory at the Battle of Gavere.^[88] The conflict was sparked in 1447 when Ghent refused Philip’s request for a new salt tax, and soon deteriorated into a bitter dispute over comital authority and civic autonomy, marked by internal upheavals within the city and open defiance of the duke. Hostilities broke out in the spring of 1452 and reached their devastating conclusion in July 1453 at Gavere, south of Ghent on the Scheldt river, when thousands of Ghenters were killed in battle or drowned in attempting to flee.^[89] Although he succeeded in suppressing the Ghent revolt, the episode represented a serious challenge to the duke and inflicted great damage on one of his wealthiest, most populous territories; it also saw the death of his illegitimate son Corneille in June 1452, and his wife Isabella’s narrow escape from capture while travelling to Bruges in March 1453.^[90] In the war’s immediate aftermath, the Lille tomb was an opportune vehicle for Philip to reassert his authority as count of Flanders, not only for the chastened Ghenters but also for other potentially rebellious factions elsewhere in Flanders – in declaring war, Philip had accused Ghent, “by lies and false advice,” of attempting “to suborn and seduce our good people of Flanders and incite them to rebellion with them and on their behalf against us.”^[91] The Lille tomb’s expense might even have been met from the compensation extracted from Ghent: the harsh settlement included not only a public ceremony of penance (the amende honorable) but also an enormous indemnity of 350,000 gold riders.^[92] In November 1455, the city paid off its final instalment as a lump sum of 180,000 riders, of which the total cost of the tomb, also finished that year, would have represented about 1.1 %.^[93]

The duke’s decision to honour the last Dampierre count of Flanders at this moment was especially pointed given that Louis of Mâle too had had his comital authority challenged by Ghent, also resulting in civil war and the city’s bloody defeat, at the Battle of West Roosebeke in 1382 (won thanks to the intervention of his Burgundian son-in-law).^[94] Memories of previous conflicts remained strong in Ghent, and Richard Vaughan aptly described Gavere as “a sequel to Roosebeke.”^[95] The significance of a monument to the victor of the latter – shown in full armour – erected by the victor of the former would not have been lost on his Flemish subjects. An additional factor might also have been the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, an event which intensified Philip’s attempts to launch a new crusade.^[96] Several Dampierre counts had been crusaders, notably Guy of Dampierre (d. 1305) and his son Robert (d. 1322), who both fought with St. Louis, and Philip identified himself with Baudouin IX (d. 1205), briefly Emperor of Constantinople, whose daughter Margaret (d. 1280) was countess in her own right and mother of the first Dampierre counts of Flanders (including Guy).^[97] Hence, the Lille tomb enabled the current count, the “very powerful prince Philip,” to emphasize his links with a dynasty closely associated with previous crusades, at a moment when he was making the case for launching a new one. Indeed, the absence of the request for prayers for the deceased with which tomb inscriptions typically conclude suggests that the monument’s aims were as much propagandistic as they were commemorative. It ostentatiously memorialized “his predecessors” while reminding Philip’s subjects of his rightful inheritance of their title via his grandmother, Margaret of Flanders, represented on the tomb alongside (and second only in scale to) his great-grandfather (figs. 3–4). Not only was Philip’s agency inscribed on the tomb but he featured prominently with his father and son among the statuettes of descendants arranged around its sides (figs. 5–6).^[98] The choice of progeny rather than weepers reflected regional tradition and echoed other kinship tombs in his domains, such as that of Henry III of Brabant (d. 1261) and Alix of Burgundy (d. 1273) in Leuven, restored at Philip’s behest in 1435,^[99] or the series of genealogical tombs at the abbey of Flines near Douai, established by Margaret of Constantinople as a Dampierre necropolis.^[100]

Although the war with Ghent provided the impetus for making the tomb, its location in Lille was simply because that was where Louis of Mâle and Margaret of Brabant were interred upon Louis’s death in 1384, joined by their daughter following her death in 1405.^[101] Lille is on the French side of the linguistic frontier but was part of the county of Flanders: along with Douai and Orchies, the city had been transferred to the French crown in 1305 but all three were restored to Flanders as a condition of Philip the Bold’s marriage to Margaret of Flanders in 1369. Lille never gave the Burgundian dukes the trouble that its fractious neighbours to the north did, in part because it was one of the principal administrative centres following the establishment of the Chamber of Accounts there in 1386.^[102] Lille was particularly favoured by Philip the Good around the time of the tomb’s commission. His troops were mobilized at Lille for the Ghent war and he resided there almost continually from August 1452 until March 1454 and for several stints in 1455.^[103] In the same year that the tomb was ordered, he purchased property for what became the site of the Palais Rihour.^[104] This new palace – a mark of ducal favour towards his loyal city – provided him with a second Lille residence in addition to the Palais de la Salle, seat of the counts of Flanders, which served in 1454 as the venue for Philip’s infamous Feast of the Pheasant, staged to galvanize support for the crusade.^[105]

Lille’s loyalty and stability are probably also why Louis of Mâle elected to be buried there. His intended entombment site had been the St. Catherine chapel he founded in 1374 at Our Lady’s Church, Kortrijk, the tomb for which was begun by the sculptor André Beauneveu. However, this was abandoned after Kortrijk was sacked in the aftermath of Roosebeke and in a new will made the day before he died, Louis opted to be laid to rest at St. Peter’s in Lille instead.^[106] In doing so, he followed his Dampierre forebears who had long favoured Lille and its vicinity for their burials.^[107] Beauneveu’s unfinished tomb components were moved to Lille and stored at the comital palace, where they were inventoried in 1388 and 1395 but remained unused. It has been proposed that Louis’s figure on the Lille tomb was copied from Beauneveu’s effigy, but it remains to be seen if the abandoned sculptures in Lille would still have been available to Van Gerines and his collaborators in Brussels half a century after they were last recorded.^[108] Gilles Blieck suggested that a reference to “a large casket like a tomb” that Margaret of Flanders ordered to be placed over her father’s grave in 1394–1395 indicates that she commissioned a sepulchre for him, although rather than a permanent tomb, this sarqueu seems to have been a temporary wooden monument used for services held in memory of her parents.^[109]

The placement of the tomb at St. Peter’s situated both Louis and Philip within a longstanding tradition of close ties between the counts of Flanders and the collegiate church.^[110] Located next to the Palais de la Salle, the chapter was founded in 1055 by Baudouin V (d. 1067), Count of Flanders and Regent of France, whose effigial tomb, datable to ca. 1360 and also showing him in armour, stood in the choir.^[111] It may be no coincidence that 1455 – the date inscribed on the Mâle tomb – was the four-hundredth anniversary of Baudouin’s foundation, especially as Philip had previously sought to associate his patronage with that of his predecessor: the duke’s foundation in 1425 of a maîtrise or choir school at St. Peter’s was specifically framed as an augmentation of Baudouin’s original foundation.^[112] Philip’s benefaction was commemorated by a weekly mass of the Virgin, followed in 1426 by annual masses for himself and his late wives, and the donation in 1435 of a house for the choirboys and their master.^[113] He also gave thanks at the church in 1423 for his victory over France at the Battle of Cravant, and had masses celebrated in memory of those killed.^[114] Philip’s esteem for St. Peter’s is perhaps most clearly reflected in his choice to hold the first chapter of his newly founded Order of the Golden Fleece there in 1431, as well as the fifth chapter in 1436, making the church the only venue that hosted the Order twice during his lifetime.^[115]

Philip also left his own physical imprint on St. Peter’s: by the time he died, at least three different likenesses of him in three different media were on view within the church, one being his brass statuette on the Mâle tomb. There was also a stone statue of him attached to the first column of the nave facing the choir, commemorating the nave’s rebuilding that he had funded in the 1440s.^[116] Engraved by Millin, it showed the armoured duke kneeling in prayer accompanied by a bearded saint with a heraldic shield and an identifying plaque (fig. 12).^[117] The sculpture looked towards the chapel of Notre Dame de la Treille (‘Our Lady of the Trellis’) in the north transept, which housed a much-venerated statue of the Virgin surrounded by an iron fence. Along with several other cult images elsewhere, Philip was devoted to Notre Dame de la Treille; Hugo van der Velden suggested that the duke’s reconstruction work at the church may well have been a votive gift to her.^[118] Having survived a fire at the church in 1254, the image became associated with miracles shortly thereafter and soon became the focus of a major cult. Margaret of Constantinople instituted an annual procession in honour of Notre Dame de la Treille in 1270, the year after a papal indulgence was granted for pilgrims visiting the site. In 1433, Pope Eugene IV, at Philip the Good’s request, accorded indulgences to those who visited St. Peter’s during the week of the procession and gave money for its maintenance and repair.^[119] Philip himself attended the procession in 1448 and 1453, which had evolved into an event that was as much civic as it was religious in character.^[120] It must have been the prospect of being interred close to the revered image that led Louis of Mâle to specify its chapel as his burial site when he made his deathbed will in 1384.^[121] Philip confirmed in 1419 the foundation of daily masses there established by his grandparents in memory of Louis and Margaret of Brabant,^[122] but their grave apparently remained without a monument for another quarter-century, which might partly have been due to building work in the chapel. Archaeological evidence has determined that the chapel was reconstructed in the fifteenth century, for which Vincart and others credit Philip the Good; a document recording his reimbursement to the Notre Dame de la Treille confraternity for the cost of its winged retable notes that the duke had done so, “after several gifts and constructions made in the aforesaid chapel.”^[123] This altarpiece’s painted wings depicted Philip kneeling wearing his Golden Fleece collar with Duchess Isabella on the facing wing, further cementing the duke’s association with the church’s revered Marian image.^[124]

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Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, with a Saint, ca. 1450 (?), stone, dimensions unrecorded. Formerly Lille, St. Peter’s Church, engraving from Millin 1790 – 1799 (as in note 19), vol. 5, pt. LIV, pl. 9

Not only did the grandeur of the Mâle tomb reflect the importance of those it commemorated, but it must also have honoured Notre Dame de la Treille in whose chapel it stood. Our reliance on depictions showing the monument and its statuary in isolation means that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that it existed within a rich visual setting and, moreover, that it was not the most important object within that space. If, as Van der Velden proposed, Philip’s funding of reconstruction work at St. Peter’s was a votive gift to the cult image, then in some sense, perhaps the Mâle tomb was an extension of this gift. To be sure, the tomb was unequivocally commemorative and not in itself votive – it was not made of the consumable materials of gold, silver, or wax associated with such offerings – but its impressive appearance would have enhanced the environment in which the miraculous image was enshrined. Perhaps decorum even factored in the decision not to gild the tomb, so that it would not detract from, or compete with, the shrine itself. In any case, the burnished tomb would have amplified the splendour of its setting and reinforced Notre Dame de la Treille’s association with the counts of Flanders and their Burgundian successors.

Material Choices

The contractual specifications concerning brass, and the measures subsequently taken to maintain it, leave no doubt that it was a considered and meaningful choice for the Lille tomb, especially as Philip’s prior monumental commissions indicate that he was keenly attuned to the messages conveyed by materials.^[125] For instance, the juxtaposition of white marble or alabaster with black stone for the tombs of his sister, Anne, Duchess of Bedford (d. 1432), in Paris, and his first wife, Michelle of Valois (d. 1422), in Ghent, both underway within a year or so of the Treaty of Arras (1435), deliberately evoked Valois sepulchral conventions, reflecting Philip’s reconciliation with France sixteen years after the murder of his father at the hands of the Dauphin.^[126] In 1443, Philip ordered his parents’ tomb at Champmol to be made “of such or better stone and materials” as Philip the Bold’s, which, while in accordance with John the Fearless’s wishes, suggests that he, too, shared his father’s desire to affirm dynastic continuity at what became their mausoleum with a monument that closely echoed Sluter’s innovative tomb for the first of their line.^[127] Philip’s sensitivities regarding the suitability of materials even affected the construction of the Palais Rihour in Lille: in 1462, he rejected its walls of exposed brickwork insisting that they be dressed in stone despite the expense, as his new palace was “too sumptuous” for brick.^[128]

Just as the rapprochement with France influenced the materiality of his late wife’s and sister’s tombs, the events of 1453 in Flanders informed that of his predecessors’ monument in Lille, although the associations conjured by its brass were situated firmly within the duke’s territories to the north. Copper is the alloy’s principal component, but the absence of copper ore deposits in the Low Countries meant that the metal had to be imported from its sources, primarily the Harz Mountains in Saxony and Falun in Sweden, mainly via coastal commercial centres like Bruges, Antwerp, Bergen-op-Zoom, and Dordrecht, which were all within Philip’s domains.^[129] However, because up to two times more calamine than copper was needed to make brass, it was actually the local availability of calamine that fuelled the development of cupreous metallurgy in the southern Netherlands.^[130] Philip’s northern provinces thus were renowned across Europe for their brass – as reflected in the deliberations in 1440 to buy “in Flanders… 17,000 lbs of fine brass” for Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Florence Baptistery doors^[131] – and for their brass founders’ products, like the “very large brass chandelier from Flanders” inventoried among a Barcelona merchant’s possessions in 1448.^[132]

Access to calamine was crucial to the Netherlandish brass industry. It was extracted along the Meuse River between Andenne and Huy, but once these sites were depleted it was sourced from further east in Limburg, at Moresnet and Kelmis (La Calamine), near Aachen.^[133] The Duchy of Limburg, together with Brabant, had passed to the Burgundians via Louis of Mâle’s sister-in-law, Joanna of Brabant (commemorated with the recycled models from the Lille tomb), and so it was listed among Philip’s titles in the Lille tomb’s inscription. The duke was highly cognisant of the economic importance of Limburg’s calamine mines and as sovereign vigorously exercised his regalian rights to control their exploitation and levy tithes upon their output. His interest in calamine extraction is nowhere more apparent than in his annexation of the valuable “Calmeybergh” mine, later known as the Altenberg/Vieille-Montagne, the most important zinc ore source in Europe, which continued to be worked well into the twentieth century.^[134] Its calamine was renowned for its quality – modern analysis indicates that it is particularly high in zinc (65 %) with a negligible amount of lead (0.04 %), although the amounts are likely variable.^[135] Situated at the disputed far eastern edge of the duchy, control of this enormously productive mine has long been a source of contention. In 1423, the German king Sigismund had adjudicated against John IV, Duke of Brabant and Limburg, and confirmed the free imperial city of Aachen’s sovereignty over the mine. However, Philip the Good (who inherited the duchy from his cousin in 1430) confiscated the mine in 1438 – 1439, and despite attempts at negotiation and appeals in vain to Sigismund’s successor, according to an anonymous Aachen chronicler, “the Duke of Brabant retained the Calmeybergh by force.”^[136]

As Maurice Yans showed, calamine extraction in Limburg was transformed under the Burgundian dukes: the allocation of mining concessions was overhauled, abandoned mines were reopened, inactive pits were confiscated from their operators, and new pits were prospected. The business of mining underwent a general shift too: rather than being independent partners who shared in the profits of the pits they worked, calamine miners effectively became wage-earning employees of whoever had been granted the mining concession; moreover, from 1446, the duke awarded all the concessions to a single entrepreneur, effectively laying the groundwork for what became a state-backed monopoly.^[137] It is particularly intriguing, then, to find that on 7 October 1438, Philip gave “the mountains called Kalmynbergen situated in the land of Limburg and the lead mine situated in the said lands of Limburg called Ezelbach,” to his wife Isabella in order for her “to use these mountains at her pleasure and to profit from these said mountains.”^[138] The duchess thus had a stake in the capitalistic exploitation of Limburg’s mineral resources; moreover, that she took a keen interest in them is apparent from the letters she sent in August and November of that year to a local nobleman to enlist his assistance regarding the duke’s claims to the mines.^[139] Her concerns in calamine mining might also help explain her proclivity for monuments made of brass: in the 1440s, she decided to commemorate the pious foundations she had established over the previous decade at several Carthusian monasteries (including Champmol) with engraved brass plaques depicting her with Philip and their sons before the Pietà, accompanied by lengthy inscriptions detailing the foundations. Only the Basel charterhouse’s plaque survives (fig. 10), but records of the others indicate that they were virtually identical to each other.^[140] We should recall too with regards to the Lille tomb that it was Isabella who negotiated its contract with Jacob van Gerines in 1453, a time when she was otherwise starting to withdraw from her role as the duke’s second-in-command, ahead of her departure from public life entirely in 1457.^[141] Philip no doubt entrusted this task to his wife because of her demonstrated financial acumen and skills as a negotiator, but the contract’s unique specificity about the quality of alloy is suggestive of a discriminating patron’s consultation with a knowledgeable practitioner, and given Isabella’s appreciation of calamine and its usage, it is reasonable to credit her engagement in the matter. Such discernment was evident in 1451, when the sculptor Pierre Tuscap went to Brussels to inform her that he had delivered to Bruges the carved Antoing stone she had ordered for the ducal palace, only to be sent back to Bruges to retrieve a sample of his work to show her in Brussels for approval.^[142] Always an effective proponent of her husband’s priorities, she habitually juggled affairs of state with pursuit of her private interests – perhaps the opportunity to showcase the product of an industry in which she was a stakeholder was an added advantage of using brass for a monument of this prominence.

With the calamine mines under Burgundian control, brass also made a forceful statement in the immediate aftermath of war about the ducal command of costly, useful materials. Metal always has an implicit potential value, far in excess of marble and alabaster, on account of its inherent recyclability and versatility, and even though the Lille tomb was conceived only as a permanent monument, its ostentatious display of metal tacitly reminded beholders that its named patron had ample means to obtain plenty more, to be deployed however he saw fit. While the tomb’s polished surfaces emphasized its materiality, the inscription called attention to its creation: by naming the craftsman responsible, it advertised the duke’s access to the specialised expertise that could convert metal into purposeful objects. Louis’s armoured effigy, and the fact that he too had fought Ghent, gave the tomb a martial undertone, and audiences likely understood that the copper alloy on display could be put to military use, and that founders like Van Gerines were as adept at casting artillery – like the “veuglaires, ribaudequins, culverins” with which the Burgundians had “engaged the Ghenters hotly” at Gavere – as they were tombs and church furnishings.^[143] In 1469, an abbey in Cambrai (for whom Van Gerines had made a candelabrum-lectern in 1438) ordered four altar columns from Jean de Malines in Brussels, who in 1474 signed an extant Burgundian bombard, later captured by the Swiss at the Battle of Grandson.^[144] The Dinant founder Colart Joseph, who cast various items for Champmol, had been Philip the Bold’s cannonier,^[145] while the Tournai founder and public official Michel Le Maire, who represented his city in several negotiations with Philip the Good, supplied it with veuglaires and other weapons.^[146] In fact, given the casting expertise available nearby in Tournai – Le Maire and Guillaume Lefèvre are just two of Van Gerines’s contemporaries working there, and Lille patrons typically turned to Tournai for all things brass – it may seem curious that the tomb commission went instead to a founder from Brussels. As part of Brabant though, Brussels was firmly in Philip’s possession whereas Tournai (which had offered arms-length support for Ghent in the recent conflict) remained under the French crown, despite being surrounded by his territory and subject to Burgundian-affiliated bishops. This explains why the Lille tomb inscription, which includes Philip’s title as Duke of Brabant, emphatically states that the monument had been made “in his city of Brussels” by a founder residing there.

Why, then, was the tomb’s metalwork commissioned from Brussels but its stone ordered from the Tournai area? Antoing, on the outskirts of Tournai, is actually located in Hainaut, of which Philip had been count since the forced abdication of Jacqueline of Bavaria in 1433. Moreover, its quarries were owned by Jean IV de Melun, Lord of Antoing, one of Philip’s most trusted councillors, a knight of the Golden Fleece, and (perhaps not entirely coincidentally) the constable of Flanders and viscount of Ghent.^[147] Although it could be polished to a shiny black finish, Antoing stone is more susceptible to fracture and less deeply black and mirror-like than polished Dinant stone, which was the preferred option for royal monuments and used for other Burgundian tombs;^[148] however, in this instance stone from Antoing offered the distinct advantage of proximity to Lille. That this was a concern can be inferred from the tortuous saga of bringing the monument of John the Fearless (d. 1419) and Margaret of Bavaria (d. 1424) to completion. In 1435, following the Treaty of Arras, Philip had attempted to restart his parents’ tomb and acquired blocks of Dinant stone to be sent to Champmol. They were shipped as far as they could go by water, to Mézières, but then remained stuck there for the next twenty-five years, only finally making it to Champmol in 1461.^[149] In negotiating the Lille tomb commission, Isabella must have been wary of the enormous logistical difficulties and cost of transporting huge stone blocks by land, and of working them once they arrived (on arrival, it took two masons four years to carve and polish the Dinant stone for the Champmol tomb).^[150] Indeed, the contractual stipulations about stone “ringing true as sound stone ought to ring” and the provision permitting the slab to be created from two pieces if a single block was unobtainable hint at the pragmatism underpinning the project.

The problems and delays besetting Philip’s parents’ tomb must have factored into the choice of brass for the Lille tomb too, as obtaining alabaster for the Champmol effigies also proved to be challenging.^[151] The first sculptor Claus de Werve travelled in vain to Grenoble to find suitable alabaster in 1436, and blocks procured by his successor Juan de la Huerta and others for the effigies were repeatedly found to be unsatisfactory due to breaks or to veins and faults.^[152] Consequently, in 1453 the Champmol tomb had been underway for nearly two decades and was still nowhere near completion: by De la Huerta’s departure in 1456, the effigies were still not done and the mourners and arcade were unfinished. In fact, it was not completed until after Philip’s death, by Antoine le Moiturier who received the final payment only in 1470.^[153] Philip’s frequent presence in Lille and increasingly long absences from Dijon meant that the stalled tomb of his parents was out of sight and out of mind, whereas his grandmother’s and great-grandparents’ tomb was a more pressing matter. Given the need to assert his comital authority and Dampierre blood ties following the Ghent war, a monument in brass and Antoing stone could be made much more quickly than one in alabaster and Dinant stone since its principal materials were readily available: the stone came from nearby, while the brass could be manufactured on demand to the standard stipulated in the contract. Indeed, sourcing a single, usable alabaster block for Louis’s seven-foot effigy must have seemed practically impossible, but a figure in metal of that size posed no such problem. The decision paid off: the Lille tomb was completed in just two years, around half the time typically envisaged for such undertakings – Philip’s parents’ tomb was supposed to have been done in four years according to Dela Huerta’s 1443 contract, within the normal range of three to five years for sculpted effigial tombs.^[154] In the end, it took more than thirty-five years for John the Fearless’s tomb to be completed, in excess of the two decades it took for Sluter’s tomb of Philip the Bold to be done.^[155] In the meantime, Philip the Good’s tomb for the last of the Dampierres was on view and serving his purposes in Lille with the memory of his Ghent victory still fresh in its audiences’ minds.

A Netherlandish Tomb

In the second half of the fifteenth century, cast brass tomb sculpture became part of Burgundian elite identity, used for other prestigious monuments to members of the ducal family and the upper nobility.^[156] One such tomb, dependent on the sepulchral tradition inaugurated by Louis of Mâle’s monument, is imagined in the Office of the Dead miniature in the Spinola Hours (fig. 13). The bas-de-page shows an effigial knightly tomb comprised of cast and engraved brass components – polished but evidently not gilded – attached to a blue-black stone slab and tomb chest.^[157] While the available depictions of the Lille tomb do not convey its colouration, this miniature provides a reasonable general impression of how it would have appeared. With its combination of golden-looking metal set against dark stone, the look of the Lille tomb was strikingly different from the chromatic effect of Philip the Good’s prior commissions, which depended primarily on the contrast between the whiteness of the marble or alabaster and the black stone of the slab and chest, a sculptural palette derived from French royal tradition (albeit modified with polychromy at Champmol).^[158] Thus, the Lille tomb may be regarded as part of a general shift at the Burgundian court, which accelerated under Philip, away from the traditions of Valois France in favour of a distinctive identity all of its own, one that was forged in the histories and traditions of the dukes’ northern territories. This phenomenon has been well-documented in Burgundian literature: Elizabeth Moodey has described, for example, how Philip’s manuscripts chronicling the Crusades deemphasize the role of St. Louis in favour of local heroes, like Godefroy of Bouillon (d. 1100) and Thierry, Count of Flanders (d. 1168).^[159] Similarly, in commemorating his Flemish forebears in Lille, Philip eschewed French tradition in favour of a monument of restrained opulence, the materiality of which conferred a distinctively Netherlandish identity upon the tomb. Its colouration even calls to mind the sober elegance of Rogier van der Weyden’s court portraiture, perhaps pointing to a certain Burgundian visual aesthetic associated with Philip’s reign.

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Master of James IV of Scotland, Detail from Office of the Dead miniature from the Spinola Hours, fol. 185r, ca. 1510 – 1520, tempera, gold, and ink, 232 × 167 mm (leaf). Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig IX 18 (83.ML.114)

Three-dimensional metalwork tombs certainly existed in northern Europe before the tomb of Louis of Mâle, but were often the preserve of monarchs, most notably in England.^[160] The brazen grandeur of the Lille monument would thus seem to elevate Louis and his wife and daughter to a level akin to royalty, which was not unwarranted given that Louis was the grandson of a king and his daughter married a prince of the blood. However, in contrast to the gilt-copper alloy tombs for English royalty, the Lille tomb’s metal was emphasized through polishing rather than concealed with gilding.^[161] In fact, rather than deriving from other royal traditions, whether they be English or French, the Lille tomb responded to local sepulchral conventions associated with those lower down the social scale. While there are few direct Netherlandish precedents for cast brass sculpture on a free-standing tomb like this, its combination of materials evoked the flat engraved monumental brasses set into black stone grave slabs that abounded throughout the southern Low Countries, especially in Flanders. When the Nuremburg physician and humanist Hieronymus Münzer visited St. Donatian’s Church in Bruges in 1495, he noted that, “throughout the choir and church there are large grave slabs, some of brass, some of very hard black marble which is brought from the province of Hainaut; some of them are twelve feet long and seven in breadth – it is marvellous to see.”^[162] Effectively, then, the Lille tomb is a reformulation, in three dimensions and on a grand scale, of the kinds of monuments that Münzer admired, which typically commemorated high-ranking clergy and urban elites. Contemporary churchgoers would have been very well acquainted with such tomb brasses, like those that marked the graves of Jan van Zynghene (d. 1372) and Michiel van Assenede (d. 1382) and their wives, formerly in St. Walburga’s Church, Bruges, and recorded in eighteenth-century drawings (figs. 14–15),^[163] or that of Maarten de Visch (d. 1453 n.s.) still in St. Saviour’s Cathedral, Bruges (fig. 16).^[164] On the Van Zynghene brass, the heraldry and diminutive mourners and relatives (probably children) surrounding the couple anticipate on a modest level the statuettes around the Lille tomb, while the placement of the evangelists on the corners of the Lille tomb chest echoed the evangelist symbols conventionally engraved at the corners of flat tomb monuments, like De Visch’s brass. With its inventive blend of the familiar and the extraordinary, the Lille tomb re-imagined a distinctively Netherlandish – and, arguably, specifically Flemish – form of funerary monument to create a sumptuous, innovative tomb that not only conferred prestige upon those it commemorated but asserted their regional identity too through its appearance and its materials. By appropriating and transforming a type of monument with which its Flemish audiences commemorated themselves, the Lille tomb made an emphatic statement about Philip the Good’s own heritage and the authority it conferred upon him as their rightful ruler.

14

Monumental Brass of Jan and Margaret van Zynghene, ca. 1372, engraved brass plate on black limestone slab, dimensions unrecorded. Formerly Bruges, St. Walburga’s Church, drawing from Bruges Public Library, Hs. 455, 59

15

Monumental Brass of Michiel van Assenede, Adriane Stat, and Elisabeth van Aertrycke, ca. 1382, engraved brass plate on black limestone slab, dimensions unrecorded. Formerly Bruges, St. Walburga’s Church, drawing from Bruges Public Library, Hs. 455, 59

16

Monumental Brass of Maarten de Visch van der Capelle, ca. 1453, engraved brass, 244 × 126 cm. St. Saviour’s Cathedral, Bruges

The Lille tomb offers a rich case study in the intersection of materiality and identity in the Burgundian Netherlands. The historical context – the recent Ghent war and Philip’s assertion of comital power in its aftermath – helps explain not only why he resolved to memorialize Louis of Mâle, Margaret of Brabant, and Margaret of Flanders in 1453, but also why the decision was taken to do so with “a tomb of brass and Antoing stone.” The use of locally available materials evoking Flemish sepulchral traditions and Burgundian-controlled resources resulted in a visually impressive, speedily executed monument that glorified the duke’s Dampierre forebears and befitted its setting before the Marian cult image at St. Peter’s. The inscription on the tomb declared Philip’s agency in its creation, but it is now clear that Isabella of Portugal deserves much of the credit too. Always a shrewd negotiator, the duchess played a key role in the project, one that has not been previously fully recognised, but which further confirms her to be a discriminating patron and an effective proponent of ducal interests. While the political motivations for the commission were primarily Philip’s, the pragmatism that underpins its materiality can in large part be attributed to Isabella. His impetus and her interventions produced a forceful avowal of Burgundian strength in monumental form, one that was to change the course of Netherlandish tomb sculpture.

I thank Emily Pegues, Dylan Smith, Deanna Wilson, and the staff of the National Gallery of Art Library for their generous assistance with the research and preparation for this article, and I am most grateful to Ann Adams, Jessica Barker, Susie Nash, and the journal’s two anonymous readers for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of it.