Northern French tomb monuments in a period of crisis, c.1477-1589

Despite the frequently world-class nature of French funerary monuments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a period of prolonged social, cultural and military upheaval in France, no English-speaking scholar has studied them in any depth since Anthony Blunt in the 1950s and 1970s. This neglect is partly due to the impact of the iconoclasms, mutilation and destruction of monuments during the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion and the French Revolution in the eighteenth century. In consequence, most literature has focused on a limited selection of high-status sepulchres, mainly preserved in the Louvre and Saint-Denis. Although some of the best works of their kind, these monuments are not representative of sixteenth-century French funerary sculpture as a whole, as they were placed into artificial repositories in the process of revolutionary iconoclasm and post-revolutionary nationalism. In consequence, they have been alienated from their original locations, their architectural frameworks and historical contexts, which distorts their significance and meaning. Drawing upon a much wider database of monuments assembled during an extended research trip, this thesis challenges these preconceptions, demonstrating that France’s early modern sepulchral heritage is richer than previously assumed. By analysing a broader base of samples from a multitude of geographical locations against their historical circumstances and architectural settings, this thesis attempts to reconstruct some of the socio-political and religious contexts which led to noble patrons’ preference of a specific mode of tomb at a certain point in time. Using a chronological approach focusing on key critical events, it promises to provide a fuller understanding of the variety of sixteenth-century tomb sculpture and its significance in French history.