Champmol: A Carthusian Monastery and Valois Dynastic Foundation in Dijon
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Burgundy, French
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page16 sections
History
Champmol, formally the Chartreuse de la Sainte-Trinité de Champmol, is a former Gothic Carthusian monastery in Dijon, France, founded by Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, as a religious foundation and burial place for the Valois dukes. Its foundation was recorded on 15 March 1385, while the building project had begun in 1378 and construction started in 1383. The monastery was intended to rival the dynastic burial establishments of Cîteaux and Saint-Denis, and its location near Dijon presented the city as the center of Philip’s Burgundian territories.
Foundation and construction
Philip acquired the Champmol estate, then outside Dijon, from Hugues Aubriot, a former bailiff of Dijon. The purchase and quarrying of building materials began in 1377 or 1378, at a stated price of 800 francs. By choosing Dijon rather than Lille, Philip emphasized the distinct identity of the new Valois dynasty. Earlier Capetian dukes had generally been buried at Cîteaux, so Champmol created a new dynastic focus close to the Burgundian capital.
The first stone of the church was ceremonially laid on 20 August 1383 by Duchess Margaret and her twelve-year-old son, John, Count of Nevers. Drouet de Dammartin directed the work, while a committee of councillors from Dijon supervised the project during the duke’s frequent absences. More than 250 workers from different regions and trades took part, including sculptors, painters, tile makers, glaziers, carpenters, bell founders, and other craftsmen.
The church was consecrated in May 1388, and the monks moved into the cloister in October of that year. Press buildings were completed in 1399, after which the community began cultivating the monastery’s vineyard. Champmol was established for twenty-four choir monks, twice the usual number in a Carthusian house. Two more monks were endowed in 1433 to commemorate the birth of Charles the Bold. The community also contained non-ordained monks, novices, servants, and other workers.
Dynastic monastery and artistic patronage
The Carthusians combined communal worship with highly secluded, semi-hermitic lives in individual cells or small houses. Champmol nevertheless welcomed visitors and pilgrims, with the dukes paying the costs of hospitality. Papal indulgences granted in 1418 to those visiting the Well of Moses further encouraged pilgrimage to the monastery.
Philip the Bold stated in his testament of 13 September 1386 that he wished to be buried at Champmol. He died on 27 April 1404 before his tomb was finished. His embalmed body was carried from the Château of Hal to Dijon in a procession of nearly 150 people and was buried at Champmol on 15 June 1404.
John the Fearless commissioned the completion of his father’s tomb and ordered a related double monument for himself and Margaret of Bavaria. The monument was completed in 1470 after work by Claus Sluter, Claus de Werve, Jean de la Huerta, and Antoine Le Moiturier. No later ducal monument was made for Champmol.
Philip the Good continued to enrich the monastery during the fifteenth century. Henri Bellechose, court painter to John the Fearless, worked in Dijon from 1415 to 1444 and was paid in 1416 for the Saint Denis Altarpiece, made for the monastery church. The dukes and other donors commissioned paintings and other works through the early fifteenth century. Major commissions continued until about 1415, after which additions proceeded more slowly. The surviving ducal accounts also illuminate the changing position of court artists in the early modern period.
Damage, dissolution, and later use
Champmol remained highly admired from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. It suffered damage during the siege of Dijon in 1513 and during the French Wars of Religion, a series of conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in France, but it largely retained its fifteenth-century appearance until eighteenth-century modernization. Medieval works regarded as outdated were removed or replaced. In 1741, the Saint Denis and Saint George altarpieces were replaced by paintings commissioned from Carle Van Loo.
The French Revolution dissolved the monastery in 1791. The Chartreuse became national property, and the Carthusian monks were expelled in April. Emmanuel Crétet purchased the buildings and land on 4 May 1791 and demolished much of the complex, including the church, to reuse its stone. The ducal tombs were moved to Dijon Cathedral in 1792 because of their recognized historical importance. After the cathedral became a Temple of Reason in 1793, the effigies were vandalized and many elements were removed.
In 1833, the department of Côte-d’Or bought the estate to convert it into a psychiatric asylum. Under Louis-Philippe, an asylum for up to 250 patients was established under the direction of the prefect Chaper. It opened definitively on 1 January 1843, and its chapel was blessed on 17 November 1844. The former monastery is now occupied by a specialized hospital for psychiatry, addiction treatment, and mental health.
French historic-monument designations made in 1840, 1902, and 1996 protected the site and surviving medieval sculpture. Restoration in 1999–2000 included planting the present hornbeam walk to indicate the former extent of the great cloister. The Well of Moses was restored from 2001 to 2003, preserving traces of its original painted surface. Other surviving works are dispersed among museums in Dijon and collections in France, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, a distribution that remains essential to understanding late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French and Burgundian art.
Remains
The original Gothic monastery comprised a church, conventual buildings, a small cloister, and a large cloister with spacious two-storey cells and attics. A chapter house, sacristy, ducal private oratory, central calvary fountain, and press buildings completed the complex. Much of the medieval fabric was demolished after 1791, while later hospital buildings occupy approximately the area of the vanished great cloister.
Hospital complex and surviving medieval portal
Hospital buildings
The present hospital complex was designed by Pierre-Paul Petit as long buildings arranged in a square with two small entrance pavilions. It was among the early architectural projects to apply new hygienist theories. The arrangement occupies roughly the former area of the great cloister, linking the modern institutional complex to the footprint of the Carthusian foundation.
Patient chapel and church portal
Petit built a patient chapel on the western part of the former Carthusian church. The chapel is shorter to the east than the original church, leaving the former ducal-oratory turret isolated beside it. Its painted and sculpted Neo-Gothic interior includes a gallery and older reused elements. An armorial shield carried by two angels, originally from the former Chamber of Accounts of Burgundy, was incorporated into the decoration.
The surviving medieval portal is enclosed by a covered porch that protects it from water and weather. Its conception is attributed to Drouet de Dammartin and Jean de Marville, and its design may have been enlarged or revised by Claus Sluter to include figures of the dukes and their saintly intercessors. Philip the Bold kneels before Saint John the Baptist on the left, while Duchess Margaret appears before Saint Catherine on the right. The Virgin and Child occupy the central trumeau, or supporting pillar between the doors, and Doctors of the Church stand on the consoles of the side jambs.
The portal figures are carved fully in the round. The Virgin’s movement, deeply projecting forms, complex drapery, and the converging gazes toward the Child create a unified dramatic composition. Gestures and sharply articulated folds further connect the figures across the entrance.
Great cloister and sculptural fountain
Well of Moses
The Well of Moses was made principally by Claus Sluter and Claus de Werve around 1405. It formed the base of a polychrome calvary, a sculptural representation of Christ’s Crucifixion, and a fountain placed at the center of the great cloister. The surviving lower group includes six life-size, fully modeled Old Testament prophets. Each holds a scroll bearing a passage from Scripture, while mourning angels rise above them.
The stone sculptures retain traces of the colors originally applied by Jean Malouel. Most of the upper calvary was destroyed, apparently chiefly through exposure to weather. The former cloister is now indicated by lawns surrounding the seventeenth-century protective edicule. A copy of the Well of Moses was erected in 1508 by Guillaume Sacquenier at the former General Hospital of Dijon. The anonymous copy was never painted, and a plaster cast made by Jules Fontaine in 1880 is displayed in the cast gallery of the Musée des Monuments Français at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine.
Ducal tombs
Tomb of Philip the Bold
Philip the Bold’s tomb originally stood in the choir of the monastery church. Jean de Marville received the commission in 1381, work began in 1384, and Claus Sluter directed the monument from 1389. Claus de Werve completed it in 1410, while Jean Malouel painted the effigy. The painted alabaster figure rests above small unpainted mourners, or pleurants, arranged among Gothic tracery. A lion lies at the duke’s feet, and an angel with spread wings appears at his head.
Tomb of John the Fearless and Margaret of Bavaria
The tomb of John the Fearless and Margaret of Bavaria was begun after 1435. Jean de la Huerta continued the work from 1443, Antoine Le Moiturier took it forward from 1461, and the monument was installed in 1470. It follows the related design of Philip’s tomb, with painted alabaster effigies, lions, angels, Gothic tracery, and small mourning figures. Some of its pleurants reproduce figures from the earlier monument, although the nearly century-long execution produced stylistic differences.
The two monuments are now reconstructed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon. Earlier drawings and prints guided the reconstructions after the original effigies were vandalized and damaged during the Revolution. Approximately ten of the mourning figures are copies, while others were removed or lost.
Altarpieces, paintings, and dispersed works
Altarpieces
Champmol contained two painted and gilded wooden altarpieces carved by Jacques de Baerze between 1390 and 1391 and painted and gilded by Melchior Broederlam at Ypres between 1393 and 1399. The Altarpiece of the Saints and Martyrs and the Altarpiece of the Crucifixion were installed at Champmol in 1399.
Henri Bellechose painted the Saint Denis Altarpiece for the monastery church in 1416. It is now divided between the Louvre, which holds the Martyrdom of Saint Denis, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, which holds the Saint Denis Altarpiece’s other surviving elements. The Saint George Altarpiece, painted in the early fifteenth century and probably donated by a Carthusian monk, is in Dijon. Its donor portrait appears near the foot of the Crucified Christ. The two older altarpieces were replaced by paintings commissioned from Carle Van Loo in 1741; those later paintings are also in the Musée des Beaux-Arts.
Paintings and sculpture
Other works made for or associated with Champmol include Jean de Beaumetz’s paintings of the Calvary with a Carthusian Monk, one now in the Louvre and another in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Jean Malouel’s large round Pietà is in the Louvre, while a Crucifixion by an anonymous Burgundian artist is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon.
Panels from an anonymous Burgundian four-part altarpiece of Christ’s life, including the Baptism of Christ, the Annunciation, and the Crucifixion, are in the Walters Art Museum. Jan van Eyck’s Annunciation, dated around 1434–1436, is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Two other panels recorded at Champmol in 1791 are lost. The Orsini Polyptych by Simone Martini is in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. The Walters Art Museum holds half of the Antwerp-Baltimore Polyptych, while the other three scenes are in Antwerp.
The Musée de Cluny holds two bone and ivory relief triptychs made by the Embriachi workshop and donated by Philip the Bold in 1393. The Art Institute of Chicago holds a figure from a gilded and painted wooden cross made by Jacques de Baerze and painted by Melchior Broederlam. These works, together with sculpture by Jean de Marville, Claus Sluter, Claus de Werve, Jean de la Huerta, Antoine Le Moiturier, and other artists, preserve the artistic range of the former monastery beyond the surviving buildings.
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