(d 8 Oct 1439). Netherlandish sculptor, active in France. He was the nephew and follower of CLAUS SLUTER. From his arrival in Dijon in December 1396 he was principal assistant to his uncle on the monumental Calvary group, the Moses Well, commissioned by Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, for the cloister of the Charterhouse in Champmol near Dijon. After Sluter's death in 1406, de Werve was named 'tailleur d'ymages et varlet de chambre' to Duke John the Fearless, a position renewed under Philip the Good. Between 1406 and 1410 he completed the marble and alabaster tomb of Philip the Bold (Dijon, Mus. B.-A.) begun by Jean de Marville and Sluter. De Werve travelled to Savoy in 1408 at the request of Duke Amadeus VIII, possibly to work on the Sainte-Chapelle at Chamb?ry. He was in Paris in 1411-12 and was sent to Grenoble in 1436 in an (unsuccessful) attempt to find alabaster for the tombs of John the Fearless and Philip the Good. Among the few commissions documented from these later years is a stone votive group with a central Trinity for the Maison du Miroir, Dijon (1414; destr. 1767).

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(klous vän də vĕr'və) , d. 1439, Flemish sculptor. The nephew and student of Claus Sluter, Werve succeeded his uncle as chief sculptor to Philip the Bold, whose tomb he designed. His squat, chunky figures were close in style to Sluter's.