Crucifixion Retable

This is the outside of a folding altarpiece made in the 1390s for the Charterhouse of Champmol, a monastery Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, built just outside Dijon as his family's burial place. The carved and gilded interior was the work of the sculptor Jacques de Baerze. When the wings were closed, what the monks saw was Melchior Broederlam's painting, and he also gilded and coloured the carvings within. Broederlam sets his sacred scenes in delicate architecture and rocky landscape, gold grounds still glowing behind them, in the ornate manner later called International Gothic. Burgundy was one of the richest courts in Europe, and the duke could afford to let a painter spend years on two panels. The finished ensemble travelled by cart from Broederlam's workshop in Ypres to Dijon in 1399.