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The extraordinary blossoming of Romanesque tympana and capitals, from Cluny to Vézelay and Autun, Claus Sluter and his unique monument, The Well of Moses in Dijon, and much later, François Rude with his Départ des Volontaires at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris or François Pompon with his Ours blanc, are proof through the centuries: Burgundy is a land of sculptors.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE COLLECTION

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The collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts go some way towards reflecting this: while the diverse interests of collectors have brought the museum Italian, Flemish, German, Swiss and Spanish works of the 14th to the 16th centuries, and allocations from the French state have given it a fairly complete picture of French Academy sculpture in the 19th century, the museum's focus is principally on the great names and moments in Burgundian sculpture from the 15th to the early 20th century.
The centerpieces of the Medieval collections, the two tombs of Philippe le Hardi (Jean de Marville, Claus Sluter then Claus de Werve, 1381 to 1410) and Jean sans Peur and Marguerite de Bavière (Jean de la Huerta then Antoine La Moiturier, 1443 to 1470) came from the Charterhouse at Champmol, and are among the finest princely tombs of the late Middle Ages.
One of the most interesting features of the museum's sculpture collection is that for some artists, it is able to show not only a group of pieces giving a representative overview of their work, it also owns some elements of their studio collection, sketches and even designs, taking the visitor right to the heart of their creative researches.
Such is the case with Jean Dubois (Dijon, 1625 - Dijon, 1694), an important figure in Dijon sculpture in the time of Louis XIV, or Claude-François Attiret (Dole, 1728 - Dole, 1804), active in Dijon as well as his birthplace. And, to mention only a few names from the 19th and 20th centuries, François Rude (Dijon, 1784 - Paris, 1855), Emmanuel Fremiet (Paris, 1824, Paris, 1910), François Pompon (Saulieu (Côte-d'Or), 1855 - Paris, 1933), Henri Bouchard (Dijon, 1875 - Paris, 1960).
With the creation of the Ecole de Dessin de Dijon by François Devosge, several sculptors went on to study in Rome after 1776, sending back to Dijon copies of famous Classical statues, still on display in the museum's Salle des Statues.
The students of François Devosge, of whom Rude is the most famous, and later on Henri Bouchard, became part of a master-student genealogy as a tradition was created. The sense of belonging to an artistic movement deeply rooted in their home region has resulted in a number of gifts and bequests from the artists and their families. Their commitment to maintaining a tradition has given the museum's sculpture collection a certain form and coherence: with only a small part currently on display, this will no doubt be one of the major rediscoveries of the renovated museum.