Bust of Saint John the Baptist in limestone carved in the ro - Lot 30

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  3. Bust of Saint John the Baptist in limestone carved in the ro - Lot 30
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Lot n° 30
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Estimation :
15000 - 20000 EUR
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Result : 130 000EUR
Bust of Saint John the Baptist in limestone carved in the ro - Lot 30
Bust of Saint John the Baptist in limestone carved in the round. Clothed in melote, the holy hermit tilts his head slightly to the right; emaciated features, emphasized by numerous wrinkles, slit eyes with drawn pupils and tips tapering towards the temples, prominent cheekbones; thick locks of hair and beard, marked by regular waves. Burgundy, Dijon, attributed to Claus de Werve (Hattem, circa 1380 - Dijon, 1439), circa 1415/20 H. 42 - L. 39 cm (some restorations, notably on the lower right, fragment of a large sculpture) Provenance : - Former private collection from New Jersey (USA) Works consulted: - H. David, Claus Sluter, Les grands sculpteurs français, Paris, 1951, pp. 45 and 129-130. - Dijon 1976 exhibition, Claux de Werve et la sculpture bourguignonne dans le premier tiers du XVe siècle, Musée de Dijon, Palais des Ducs de Bourgogne, cat. 55 and 61. - M. Beaulieu and V. Beyer, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs français du Moyen Âge, Paris, ed. Picard, 1992, pp. 201-204. - J. Baudouin, La sculpture flamboyante en Bourgogne et Franche-Comté, ed. Créer, Nonette, 1994, Exhibition: - Dijon-Cleveland 2004/2005, L'art à la cour de Bourgogne, Musée des Beaux-Arts - The Cleveland Museum of Art, cat.89, p. 247-248. The author of this moving bust of St. John the Baptist was obviously well acquainted with the prophets in the Moses Well in the Chartreuse de Champmol near Dijon, a masterpiece by the renowned Burgundian sculptor Claus Sluter. Indeed, there are many similarities with the heads of these large statues featuring elderly men with singular expressions of powerful realism: the beards, particularly those of Moses and Isaiah, the wide horizontal mouths beneath the moustaches, and the many expressive wrinkles giving all their nobility to these old men's faces (fig.a and b). Here, they are depicted with precision, from the forehead wrinkles to the lion's wrinkles and crow's feet at the temples; under the eyes, a squared network of wrinkles evokes in a very personal way the withering characteristic of the thin skin of the lower eyelids. This intimacy with the art of the great Sluter can only be seen in his closest collaborator with whom he worked at the Moses Well, his nephew Claus or Claux de Werve. It was he who took over the construction of Philip the Bold's tomb after his uncle's death in 1406. With the exception of certain parts of the two tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy, there is no certified work by this great artist, who worked mainly in Dijon. Art historians have attributed to him several sculptures preserved in museums, such as a bust of Saint Anthony - comparable in size to his counterpart, Saint John the Baptist - belonging to the collections of the Dijon Archaeological Museum (fig.c), or a Virgin and Child from the Community of the Sisters of Charity, now in the city's Fine Arts Museum, which shows similar work in the undulations of the hair on the top of the head (fig.d). Finally, the hypothesis that this bust of St. John the Baptist and the bust of St. Anthony in the Musée Archéologique might be the upper part of the sculptures that Sluter is said to have made for the Champmol chapel does not seem to hold water. These works, framing a Virgin Mary, were still in place at the end of the 18th century. Described in 1790 by archaeologist-amateur Louis-Bégnine Baudot, the Virgin and the prophet were at that time "entirely gilded" and the "monk" wore a black robe. However, no traces of polychromy or gilding have been observed on these busts. We would also have to date these works to around 1390, when Sluter's statues were installed in the Champmol chapel.
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