A book in English solely about one type of French funeral monument may seem an oddity as comparatively little has been written that encompasses this subject in French, although activity in that area has been increasing recently. Books in English devoted entirely to incised slabs are few: this book is the culmination of more than twenty-five years of research by Dr Cockerham and the recent pandemic gave the final spur needed to write and publish it. In the Preface he recalls his early experiences driving, and interpreting for, John Coales, FSA, as they visited many regions of France while they sought to update F A Greenhill’s list of effigial slabs published in Reference Greenhill1976. While Greenhill focused on costume, an approach since superseded in the work of more recent scholars on funeral monuments, Cockerham was from the beginning asking himself why slabs were chosen by patrons, how they wished to appear on them and why they chose where to locate them within the church. His book offers answers to these questions.
The Introduction explains the reasons for choosing to study the Pays del la Loire, a modern region consisting of five départements, rather than an historic province contemporary with the subject. There were 187 known effigial slabs in the region, of which seventy-seven are extant, surviving in greater numbers than other forms of memorials. The slabs are listed in chronological order in table 1. The drawings of Louis Boudan, the artist employed by the late-seventeenth-century antiquary François-Roger de Gaignières, form the bulk of antiquarian material, illustrating both those lost and those extant, yet they are not comprehensive for the locations which he visited. This is demonstrated by the writings and sketches made by the antiquary Jacques Bruneau de Tartifume for the city of Angers that record both other slabs and a large number of monumental brasses, now gone but representing an alternative but more expensive form of flat memorial. The succeeding five chapters deal with the slabs in broadly chronological order, beginning with a commentary on the earliest slabs, those of the thirteenth and earlier fourteenth centuries, followed by those of the mid-to-late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries. Slabs that appear to emanate from a sixteenth-century atelier are considered, while other slabs of that century and the demise of the incised effigial slab in the seventeenth are covered as a separate subject. A final chapter presents conclusions and final thoughts, followed by a well-detailed inventory arranged by commune within département and then chronologically. The départements covered are Loitre-Atlantique, Maine-et-Loire, Mayenne, Sarthe and Vendée. The detailed description of each slab is headed with the date of manufacture, name(s) and rank of the commemorated, if known. Description of the figure(s) and setting follows, with inscriptions transcribed and translated into English. The stone type of surviving slabs is given, with any evidence of polychromy. Original and current locations are listed, as are dimensions and the date of the author’s inspections. The French legal classification, if applicable, is followed by lists of manuscript and printed sources. Given the variability of condition of the extant slabs and how much is known of those represented on the various slabs, remaining or lost, the individual entries range in length from a couple of pages to half-a-dozen lines. A helpful glossary and extensive bibliography precede the index. The volume concludes with the illustrations: the figures are numbered to 213, many of them whole page. Some slabs merit more than one illustration, these being lettered within the number of the figure, either showing details or contrasting the current state of the slab with its antiquarian depiction. The first sixty figures relate to the matter within the chapters, most being of sculpted monuments, both lost and extant, of the region. The remainder of the figures are ordered as in the inventory. I found it frustrating that chronological discussions of the slabs do not reference the figures illustrating them, except in those few cases where additional illustrations of details are given, necessitating reference to the index to locate the relevant figure. Most of the illustrations are in colour, those illustrating lost slabs from the collections made by Gaignières are of line drawings on light-coloured backgrounds and those of the extant slabs themselves are generally equally monochromatic, with detail sometimes difficult to make out on particularly worn examples.
In examining the earliest slabs, the author comments on the relatively rapid transition from those comparatively crude examples commemorating abbots at Asnières to those probably produced at centres such as Le Mans and Nantes at the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century that were more refined and better designed. The effects of the Black Death and of the incursions into the Loire valley by both English and French armies in the following period meant that there are fewer slabs than might otherwise have been expected, with few potential clients motivated to buy them between 1340 and 1400. For the laity a mortuary chapel already in existence for a family may well have sufficed during this period of unrest. This apparent lack of demand continued into the following century, but there was a rapid increase in the number of mural epitaphs erected as an alternative or additional method of commemoration. One innovation on effigial slabs was the speech-scroll, enabling the deceased themselves to plead for intercession. Some evidence for a Le Mans workshop in the final quarter of the century is discussed. By the end of the century abbatial slabs depicting richly attired figures were projecting their subjects more as individuals than as heads of their communities.
Table 2, a list of twenty-nine slabs in the ‘Duval’ style, precedes the description of a new style of slab identified, albeit ‘hesitantly’ as products of a particular atelier thought to be the products of the Duval family, lasting through the first half of the sixteenth century and perhaps beyond. Figures are depicted standing on tiled floors beneath a canopy with a scallop shell head; the influence of the Renaissance also shows in the decoration of the pilasters and their capitals that support the canopy. The extensive use of taille d’épargne to cut away areas of the slabs so that colour could be added, together with the use of inlays of white marble and other material for faces, hands, etc and brass (often now lost) for fillet inscriptions and evangelical symbols, are encountered on these slabs. Two contracts, one of 1509 for a monumental brass to be engraved by Gervais Duval and another of 1523 with Nicolas Duval to engrave an effigy of a canon under a shell-headed canopy on stone with heraldic shields of copper at the corners, are cited in support. Gervais was a native of Le Mans but both contracts are with inhabitants of Tours, a little outside the area of the study. Tours is suggestive of contact with Michel Colombe, the innovative sculptor active there until his death in 1513. Although many of them lack their brass and other inlaid components, those in good condition are still very striking-looking, as the pair at La Chapelle-Rainsouin (figs 130–1) demonstrate, and must have been still more so when newly laid down. Gervais Duval’s signature can be found on a sculpted figure in the seigneurial at La Chapelle-Rainsouin, strengthening the claim that he was responsible for slabs in this style.
The records made in Angers by Bruneau de Tartifume provide evidence of a rapid upswing in commemorative inscriptions in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, increasing to a peak approaching the middle of the sixteenth and continuing at a good but lower level through to the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth. There is some suggestion that the more recent and thus less worn the slab, the easier he found it to read, but the increase in commissions does seem real and not just confined to Angers. Not all those of the period covered of increased production can be associated with Le Mans workshops and there is considerable variation in quality between these other slabs.
In his ‘Conclusions and final thoughts’ the author poses many questions that occurred to him in the course of his work on these slabs, some particular to commemorative practices in the Loire valley, some with a wider application, some dealing with workshops, others with destruction. To some he suggests answers, but others will only be answered by more wide-ranging research. Despite the seemingly narrow range of interest implied by the title, this impressive study is far-reaching in its scope.
