Corpus of Christ from the Altarpiece of the Crucifixion

This representation of Christ crucified was removed from the center of a much larger work, the “Altarpiece of the Crucifixion” commissioned by Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, for the Charterhouse of Champmol outside Dijon. Founded as the dynastic burial place, this monastery housed extraordinary artistic treasures made for the dukes, who commanded rich territories in Flanders and eastern France. The altarpiece, still preserved in Dijon, was first carved by the Flemish sculptor Jacques de Baerze of Dendermonde and then sent to the workshop of the noted painter Melchoir Broederlam in the nearby city of Ypres to be gilded and polychromed and to receive the innovative painted scenes of the life of the Virgin visible when the altarpiece was closed. Both sculpture and painting combine realism and elegance in a manner that foretells the innovations of Flemish art in the fifteenth century.