My Burgundy Your Burgundy History, culture and nature

February 18, 2009

The Museums of Beaune: The Hotel-Dieu and the Wine Museum

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 5:34 pm

It’s hard to imagine now, that the Chambre des Pauvres (chamber of the poor) of the Hotel-Dieu was the ideal place for a poor ill person, for much of its history. No private rooms here: the huge church-shaped chamber, with its high ceilings and stark stone walls, could hardly ever have been quiet or peaceful, not when the ill were lying in head-to-toe rows along its walls, and the religious sisters who tended them were bustling around. Still, it was undoubtedly a beautiful place to be sick, and one of the few places where you could expect succour and the best medical care that the past five centuries could offer.

Should you recover enough to totter outside into the courtyard, you’d be able to view one of the most photographed sites of Burgundy, the spectacular patterned slate colours of the roof. And you’d be well-fed, from the kitchen across that courtyard, which still boasts its spectacular 17th-century automatic spit, and to judge from the display today, fed the hospital’s patients an extraordinarily rich meat diet.

For now of course this wonder of the Middle Ages is a museum (although it was in use as a hospital until 1971). It was founded in 1443 by Nicholas Rolin, Chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy, and his third wife Guigone de Salins. She’s often left off that equation, but it seems clear that she played a major role in its creation. (And her biography is on sale in the bookshop – I’m hoping that my French proves up to it…)

Clearly no cost was spared here, either in materials or labour. In the recently restored Salle St Nicholas, details of the construction are explained: more than 300 great trees, usually more than 120 years old, and up to 170, produced its great beams, and some were carried from up to 20km away. As for the artistry, the sheer splendour is amazing, but the detail is just overwhelming. You almost need a camera with a zoom; with it you can see the fine corbelled heads the line the grand chamber, and the monsters whose heads “swallow” the ends of the beams. And sanitation got more attention than usual in this era – in the Salle St Nicholas a small section of glass flooring allows visitors to see the stream that ran beneath the building, carrying away its waste.

But there’s more than just the great building and its charitable heritage here, there’s also great art, indeed possibly one of the finest paintings of the Middle Ages: Van Der Weyden’s polyptyque of the Last Judgement. All the usual religious personages are finely done, but the real grabbing virtue of this piece is in the (mostly anonymous) saved and the damned who populate its lower reaches. In their tortured bodies and faces there’s something of Hieronymus Bosch, but there’s more real individual humanity here, in the desperate grabbing hands of those plunging into the devil’s depths, and the beatific joy of those waiting in the queue for heaven. Okay, there is the odd identified pope and other of “those who must be placated”, but it’s still a supremely humane piece of art.

Superb too are the portraits on the other side of the assemblage, now displayed beside it. Guigone looks like a serious, sober woman, the marks of a life at the top of society in the honest bags under her eyes and grim expression.

The polyptyque is displayed in a room with spectacular medieval tapestries that lose nothing in the comparison, particularly the early 16th-century mille-fleurs tapestry depicting the mystery of St Eligius. He was apparently a real historical character, born in 590 in nearby Limousin and working for the Merovingian kings. Here he looks like a rather callow youth, from whom the Virgin Mary is turning her head. But to my mind the real masterpiece of the tapestry is the “femme assise”, a “personage profane”. She looks like she’s lived a real life, and had an awful lot more fun than the Virgin.

That’s undoubtedly the single stand-out site of Beaune – the don’t miss, even if you have the misfortune to visit in peak tourist season. Even in February it’s pretty busy.

That’s not the case, however, with the Museum of Wine (or Musée du Vin de Bourgogne to be formal), just five minutes across the city, which is something of a pity. Not much is made of the spectacular architecture here — this was the home of the Dukes of Burgundy, dating mostly from the 15th and 16th century — by the displays on wine, although they are interesting enough in themselves, although perhaps a little dry for some tastes (and labelled largely in French).

You’ll get a French take on wine history: the original “appellation” was Egyptian: on display here is an amphorae from the 13th century BC, complete with verification that this was “from the year 24 in the vineyard of…” But mostly it’s the Burgundian version – the region’s wine having first been mentioned in the 4th century AD Constantin panegyric, in which Eumene, rhetor of Autun, speaks of his local drops.

Having been forced by my stomach to give up red wine, I’m on a crash course of learning about whites, and here’s all the basics I need: Chardonnay grapes go into Chablis, Corton-Charlemagne, Mersault, Montrachet, Ruilly and Pouilly-Fuisse, while Aligote is grown where chardonnay grapes don’t do so well. (It’s usually the first up from “house white” on the local menus, although to my taste highly drinkable. But the Mersault I tried at lunch was clearly in another class altogether.)

There’s details on the manner of pruning, the tools for the jobs, and a reminder that for much of history the small vineyard owner/operator was a poor man or woman: a living room from 1880s reacted here certainly represents a simple life. There’s reminders too that regulation started early: a poster from 1840 sets out the dates the harvest is to begin in the various villages.

A display of bottles is more interesting than you might think – the shape was squatter in the 17th century, but by the 19th the shape was much as today’s classic form – although the name of the vineyard (or perhaps the café that sold it) was stamped into the neck. Nearby are on display a curiously appealing collection of early to mid-19th century marriage cups. Silver, double-handled, not very exciting in form, they nevertheless maintain for history the names and hopes of the long-dead.

This isn’t a museum for everyone – but it’s certainly worth popping into the courtyard and seeing the buildings and the giant wine presses on free display: who says the Middle Ages weren’t inventive? There are some great contraptions here. And if you enjoy wine, or social history, or both, you’ll probably this the entry fee worthwhile, even if there might be a little regret that this aristocratic history wasn’t so well preserved as the Hotel-Dieu’s.

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