Philippe le Hardi, clothed in a white robe and a blue mantle lined with ermine, lies, with folded hands, upon a slab of black marble. Two angels with outspread wings hold the helmet over his cushioned head, and his feet rest upon a lion's back. The form and face are realistically done, even to the veins on the hands. But, so far, all is conventional, traditional. It is when we look at the white-robed figures beneath the sculptured tabernacles of the gallery, that we recognise a new motif, dramatic realism, in the monumental art of the period. Claus Sluter and his nephew had developed the individuality of portraiture that made the success of the "Puits de Moïse." Their great patron Duke was dead; and all Dijon had followed weeping in his funeral procession. Claus reproduced that procession, perpetuated it in living stone. They are all there--the high functionaries, the praying monks, the plebeian, wiping his nose on his fingers, all done with a felicity and truth unequalled in any sculpture that has come down to us. Here is a hooded mourner comforted by a priest with finger on text, there an obstinate one receiving exhortation; and an old bourgeois, chin in hand, pondering the way of life. The attitudes alone are so significant that, though the face be hidden, you do not wish to look beneath the cowl. Resignation, despair, faith, argument; all are expressed in pose; the figures behind the pillars are treated with as much sincerity as those which are fully seen.[153] Look up from them to the figure above their heads, and you will see at once that, while the angels have only a decorative function, the _pleurants_ are both decorative and dramatic. [Illustration: ·CORNER OF THE TOMB OF PHILIPPE LE HARDI·] And what of Jean San Peur's tomb, with which young Claus had dreamed of outdoing his uncle? A glance will show that, as a whole, it is greatly inferior to that of the father. The recumbent figure and the decorative angels are equally well done; are, perhaps, even superior in the matter of draperies, which were not Sluter's strong point; but the alabaster gallery lacks the harmonious simplicity of the earlier monument: the detail has been over-elaborated in the fashion of the period, and in a not unnatural though ineffectual attempt to improve upon a chef-d'œuvre. The _pleurants_ directly imitative of those of Philip's tomb, are, without exception, less natural, less restrained, and less felicitous. Yet, despite all these faults, the monument remains a not unworthy companion of its predecessor. Would we could say that Jean sans Peur himself was equally worthy of the first Valois Duke. In that case the whole course of French history might have been different and happier.