Image provided by FRAME

By Mary Abbe

Forty masterpieces of French medieval sculpture that have never before left their homeland will come to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in January 2011. The alabaster figures were carved in the mid 1400s for the tomb of John the Fearless, the second Duke of Burgundy, a powerful politician and art patron. They depict mourners lamenting the deaths of the Duke and his wife Margaret of Bavaria. Originally the figures were part of the ducal tomb that had life-sized effigies of the couple atop a slab of black marble with the mourners below in an elaborate Gothic arcade. Prized for their exotic material and sensitive carving, the 16 inch tall mourners wear hooded robes are shown wringing their hands, wiping tears, praying and bowed in sorrow.

At the time, the Burgundian rulers dominated large portions of France from their capitol, Dijon, and ruled territory in what is now Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. After the French revolution, their tombs were moved from a monastery to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon which is lending them. Organized by FRAME, a consortium of regional French and American museums, the show opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in March 2010 and will also travel to St. Louis, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Richmond, Va. It runs in Minneapolis from Jan. 23 - April 17, 2011.