Andre Beauneveu
(b Valenciennes, c. 1335; d ?Bourges, 1401–3).
South Netherlandish sculptor, painter and
illuminator. He possibly trained with, or in the circle of, Jean
Pépin de Huy. He is presumably the ‘Master Andrieu the painter’
mentioned in the accounts of Yolande, Duchesse de Bar, as working
intermittently between 1359 and 1362 in the chapel of her castle at
Nieppe (destr.). In 1361–2 ‘Master Andrieu the carver’ restored the
console of a statue (both destr.) in the aldermen’s hall in
Valenciennes. By October 1364 and until June 1366 he is recorded in
Paris, working with assistants for King Charles V, who spoke of him
as ‘our esteemed Andrieu Biauneveu, our sculptor’. The monarch
commissioned from him four tombs for Saint-Denis Abbey, for which he
paid 4700 gold francs: tombs for his paternal grandparents Philip VI
(reg 1328–50) and Joan of Burgundy (1294–1348); for his father, John
II; and for himself (first mentioned on 12 December 1364). Of the
actual cenotaphs nothing survives except for fragments of that of
Charles V (Paris, Mus. A. Déc., AD 12.260), which, for reasons not
made clear in the documents, was designed only in 1376, probably by
Jean de Liège (i). Of the three extant recumbent figures—that of
Joan of Burgundy was destroyed in 1793 but is recorded in a drawing
of Roger de Gaignières (Paris, Bib. N., Cab. Est., Pe 11 c, fol.
91)—only that of Charles V is generally considered to be entirely by
Beauneveu. The King, 27 at the time, is movingly portrayed ad vivum
(the first French royal recumbent figure so depicted), and his
coronation garb is fluidly rendered with a soft play of drapery. The
other figures, though more schematic, have individualized features
that break away from stereotypes of earlier royal monuments—Philip
VI’s corpulence is convincingly rendered—and are attributed, perhaps
unjustly, to assistants.
