Henri Bellechose

In May 1415 the accounts of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, record pigments advanced to a new court painter in Dijon so that he could finish a picture of the life of Saint Denis. The painter was Henri Bellechose, from the southern Low Countries, who had just succeeded Jean Malouel, the duke's previous painter. With the post came the household title of valet de chambre.

The altarpiece, finished in 1416, was made for the Charterhouse of Champmol, the monastery outside Dijon where the dukes were buried. Against a gold ground, Christ on the cross fills the centre. On the left, Saint Denis, the first bishop of Paris, receives his last communion in prison. On the right, he is martyred with his companions Rusticus and Eleutherius. Because the accounts speak of completing the picture, some historians think Malouel began it, and how much belongs to each man is still debated.

It is the only surviving painting documented as his, although the ducal accounts list many more commissions. Under Philip the Good, John's son, his pay had been sharply reduced by 1426, and his last ducal salary came in August 1429, as the court looked increasingly to Flanders and to painters such as Jan van Eyck. He was still alive in 1440 and dead by January 1445. His altarpiece left Champmol around the time of the Revolution and was given to the Louvre in 1863 by Frédéric Reiset, one of the museum's curators.