Headed South

         The day we left Paris was a big travel day! We drove five hours down to Beaune, making a pitstop in Dijon, France, an adorable town and home to the art of Claus Sluter, a significant early Renaissance sculptor renowned for his ability to capture emotion and realism. Our first stop was the Musee des Beaux Arts to look closely at the funerary monument of Philip the Bold, an important duke of Burgundy and patron of Sluter, and particularly the pleurants or grieving monks that walk among the decorative arcading along the base. We were all asked to choose one monk to draw, and the one I picked was A) the best EVER and B) turned out to be one of only two rendered by the hand of the actual artist. Yay! I liked him because, even though he is sad, he is looking up hopefully, hand reflectively behind his head.

The museum had an extensive collection, so we looked a while longer and then i went downstairs to have a French coke out of a bottle and buy a postcard with my monk on it :) 

       After the museum we drove the short distance out to the monastery of Chartreuse de Champmol, which is now a psychiatric hospital and home to several of Sluter's more large scale sculptural programs: the sculpture that was once in the now-destroyed mausoleum of the Dukes of Burgundy and the Well of Moses, a large and complex well in the center of the monastic cemetery. The Well used to have a crucifixion on top but it was destroyed and now all that remains are the WEEPING ANGELS (yes there are crying angels on it oooh scary) and the prophets that line the base. These sculptures portray the realism and humanity of the pleurants but now on a monumental scale. 

        When we arrived in Beaune sometime later, it was almost immediately time to go to our "special dinner in France" for which we all dressed up. Only just down the road, the restaurant was very nice, and we were seated down in a cellar-like room to eat. There was wine, cheese bread, two kinds of regular bread, then an AMAZING starter of escargot (I could eat 50 of those little snails right now!) which was served in a pesto and those little dishes with the special snail holes, then a chicken with a side of pasta, then a cheese course (I was the only one brave enough to eat the super regional white cheese, which was soft, mild, and served with sugar!) and finally a chocolate lava cake. What a dinner! It was literally 11 o'clock when we made it back to the hotel.