By happy accident - gallery renovation - The Mourners, tomb sculptures from the Court of Burgundy, have been removed from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon and digitized by the French Regional & American Museum Exchange (FRAME), a consortium of museums in France, the U.S., and Canada. The Mourners were originally created for the tomb of Jean sans Peur (John the Fearless), one of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy and installed in the Charterhouse of Champmol in 1470. The tomb was moved but did not escape vandalism during the French Revolution and was restored in 1819 in what was then the ducal palace in Dijon, now the Musée des Beaux-Arts. Around the base of the tomb is a sculpted arcade of white alabaster, in which figures of the mourners, also white alabaster, seem to march in a processional. There are choirboys, a cross bearer, a deacon, a bishop, three cantors, and two Carthusian monks, followed by members of John the Fearless' family. At the website, individual mourner's figures can be viewed in 360-degree and 3-D views, as well as in the arcades. There are also overviews of the tomb and its history, and links to additional information about the Dukes of Burgundy and their works.
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