Jean de Berry’s Croix Couverte at Beaucaire (Gard) in its Pan-European Architectural-Cultural Contexts

Abstract

This contribution explores a remarkable but very much understudied late medieval roadside monument, the so-called Croix Couverte near Beaucaire in the eastern Languedoc. not only is it one of the earliest extant structures erected in the novel Flamboyant Gothic style, it can also be conclusively linked to the patronage of Jean de Valois, Duke of Berry from 1360, and resident as Lieutenant du Roi at Beaucaire from 1382 to 1384. This study investigates the Croix within several rings of inquiry, which gradually widen as the discussion proceeds, beginning with its local context, and proceeding with a detailed examination of the monument’s place within several architectural traditions (roadside furniture, covered crosses especially; ciboria and honorific baldachins). In order to better comprehend its cutting-edge design, the Croix is then positioned within broader (micro-)architectural trends around 1400, a period often referred to as the age of International Gothic. The final part is devoted to some of the architecturally themed miniatures in Jean de Berry’s famous book of hours, the Très Riches Heures, which reflect and refract many of the broader themes of this study, including the “signing” of landscapes through roadside monuments; the simultaneous control and sanctification of certain locales; and the late medieval fascination with turriform and ciboriform structures in the framing of both the sacred and the political.