Cuckoo for Claus
My train from Paris to Dijon pushed along, strained and reluctant. It was early May, and the daisies and forget-me-nots which crowded the tracks seemed to bend under the close spring air. I soon arrived in a city whose sandstone buildings seemed to blend into the yellow-grey sky, and thought, “What the fuck am I doing here?”
My first day or so in Dijon was spent trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. This was, I should say, the second stop on a solo trip around Europe, and I felt like an alien. Especially in a city like Dijon, handsome and interesting but certainly not on the regular tourist route. When I become anxious I feel like I look like a crippled beggar, the kind who make you avert your eyes out of pity and revulsion, who you only encounter in those childhood memories indistinguishable from dreams. I wanted to draw a cloak up to my eyes like a brigand, and stand flat against the walls of the cathedral in the hope that I’d be mistaken for a gargoyle. See in Paris I’d had the comfort of the masses, the chatter of Americans, puzzled looking Spanish tourists on the Metro. In Dijon it felt like just the locals and me. I arrived on Victory Day, and everything was closed, except thankfully for the city’s many grand churches. Like a criminal taking refuge, I spent the day skulking around the Church of Our Lady (great jacquemart), the Cathedral of St Benignus (stumpy towers), and St Philibert’s (very shapely), trying to understand why I had come to this impenetrable place.
I was reminded of my reasons the next day when I set out to see so-called ‘Well of Moses,’ a colossal statue by Netherlandish sculptor Claus Sluter (c.1340-1405.) It was commissioned by Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, as part his new pet project, the Chartreuse de Champmol, a Cartusian monastery just outside of Dijon. Champmol was an opulent complex, decorated with many works now visible in Dijon’s Musée des Beaux-Arts such as the magnificently otherworldly 1390s altarpiece by Melchior Broederlam and Jacques de Baerze. It was intended as Philip’s final resting place, but his cenotaph and that of John the Fearless are now in the museum too. The tombs are both supported by flanks of pleurants, hooded alabaster figures whose largely invisible faces betray inconsolable mourning. The pleurants on Philip’s tomb are of particular interest and are thought to have been carved by Sluter and his collaborator/ nephew Claus de Werwe (active c.1380-1439.) These works typify Sluter’s ability to render dynamic, emotionally-realised characters in the round, a far cry from the static, stylised figures you’d typically find on monuments from this time. This ability was typified by the ‘Well,’ not a well at all but a monumental work consisting of a now lost crucifixion scene mounted on a hexagonal base, faced by the prophets Moses, David, Jeremiah, Zachariah, Daniel and Isaiah.
You see I’d read all this in books and on the internet, but I wanted to see for myself. I suppose the whole trip was driven by a wish to understand more, to understand better. To reassure myself that I am interested in the world and so the world is interested in me. I imagined I’d get there and Sluter’s Moses would slowly bend forward and usher me closer and congratulate me on my pilgrimage, and I’d say thanks and he’d offer me a devilish wink, some words of enlightenment, and set me on my way. So I woke up with a single-minded optimism. The well was the beacon of the knowledge I was travelling for. The well would be an oasis in the landscape of my spoony self-doubt.
But first I’d have to find the bloody thing. I left my little Dijon garret with an umbrella I found in a cupboard, and marched up through the town centre, past the squalid station and the groups of listless smokers who guarded it, under a pungent railway bridge, all the while narrowly avoiding angry buses and trams. After a rainy twenty minutes following an A-road, I turned into Dijon’s modern suburbia just as my umbrella contracted, contorted, and took its last breath. It looked like a dead bat in my hands.
I felt flattened between the rising smells and falling rains. After a few more minutes of swampy journeying I found a small sign marking an austere gate. Champmol! But my dog-turd odyssey wasn’t over yet.
The auspicious entrance to the Chartreuse, just as Philip envisioned it.
The Chartreuse de Champmol is now a psychiatric hospital, with the sprawling, verdant grounds peopled with wards such as ‘Père-mère-bébé’ and ‘Unité de la Dépression.’ Apparently these days locals use “aller à la chartreuse” to mean “to go crazy.” I quickly found myself agreeing. Poorly signed, I scrambled between buildings and over grassy banks, hunched against the rain and walking briskly for the lingering sense that I was trespassing. The site was deathly quiet, apart from the construction workers near the entrance who seemed puzzled at the sight of me and my idiot’s umbrella. I was sure that any second I’d be mistaken for a lost patient and ushered into a nearby ward, and frankly I’m not sure how much I would’ve protested.
Finally crossing through a courtyard I found a quad with a tell-tale hexagonal hut. Thank god! And suddenly there I was, pushing open a creaky glass door, face to face with Moses et al. The whimpering wooden walkway around the well suspended me over a slimy pool, so I had one eye on my prophets and another on my feet. I shook the rain off like a dog and started my many laps of the well, meeting and greeting each character as I went round. And they were, as the textbooks told me, all completely individualised. By carving them almost fully in the round, Sluter’s figures step off their pedestals and seem to reach out to you over the water. You can feel each of their disapproving glares, David’s aloof, Jeremiah’s cynical, Moses’ despairing. They engage you, entreat you, but also seem to gaze above one’s head, lost in that common thought which binds them together. Because of course, these are the prophets who foresaw Jesus’ death, as represented by the missing vision of Calvary which would have sprouted from their heads. It was just as gripping as I’d hoped, for all the drama as well as Sluter’s shocking craftsmanship. The details were very fine, from the drapery to the distinct, charismatic faces. I did want to clamber up Zachariah’s legs to feel the manifold textures, from Moses’ horns to Jeremiah’s puckered eyes. One of my favourite details were the different types of leaves under each pedestal. I’m still trying to identify each one, David’s seems to be something hawthorny.
Claus Sluter with Claus de Werve and Jean Malouel, The Well of Moses, 1395-1405. Photo mine. Visible here: David (L) and Jeremiah (R)
I should say that Jeremiah is said to have been modelled on Duke Philip himself, and boy does he look like a shrewd little freak next to erect King David! But what an interesting choice on Philip’s part, both politically and theologically. I’d recommend this lecture at the Frick by Susie Nash (queen) for far more detail than I can offer, as well as her series of articles in Burlington.
Another angle, with Moses in the centre. Look at the delicate columns and angels, again all different!
That evening I took myself to a nice restaurant overlooking the cathedral, and daintily ate asperges vinaigrette and guzzled down some pinot noir. Despite my rain-hair, ill-fitting shirt, and the Champmol mud still on my shoes, I thought over the “well” and Philip and Claus and felt just for a moment, like I knew where I was going. Though it may have been the well, it was probably the wine.
- Reilly