FRENCH, 1499

Jean Puillois, whom this monument commemorates, is depicted in religious robes with a tonsured hairstyle, kneeling before a scene of the Crucifixion and holding a scroll inscribed ‘MISERE[RE] ME DE[US]’. Behind him stands a bishop, likely to have been a local saint important to Puillois during his lifetime although difficult to identify without further attributes. From the epitaph that follows we are able to infer details of the deceased’s life and occupation. The inscription, written in rhyming couplets, tells us that the ‘Maistre Jehan puillois’ who held the office of ‘procureur’ in the ‘chambres des Comptes’ (or Court of Accounts) died on 14th May 1499. The style of language of the piece is consistent with that of a funerary monument and ends by asking Jesus and the Virgin Mary for their prayers. Further research into contemporary church records has revealed that on 16th July of the same year, the chapter authorised Puillois’ widow to place ‘unum parvum epytaphium lapideum unius pedis in longitudine et latitudine’ (one small stone epitaph about a foot high and wide) in the Church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, Paris (Raunie and Verlet, loc. cit. ) where he had been Churchwarden. The monument is recorded as still within the church by 1741 and it has been suggested that the piece’s removal most likely took place a century later, in 1831, when the church was sacked.
Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois still stands today located in central Paris, opposite the Louvre. It boasts many artistic connections as the burial place of painters such as Chardin (1699-1779) and François Boucher (1703-1770), the sculptor Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720) and as the subject of a painting by Claude Monet in 1867.