Funerary chapel of the Seigneurs de Boussu
HISTORIC SITE AND MONUMENT
La chapelle des Seigneurs - Boussu
In Boussu, the chapelle des Seigneurs is one of those monuments we pass by without realising the treasures they contain.
On the walls of the Saint-Géry Church at a stone’s throw from the Grand-Place, a small sign indicates « la chapelle des Seigneurs ». Adjacent to the choir of the Church, the chapel could go unnoticed but the visitor will have a big surprise when entering and being up close with these mausoleums, gisants, urns and funerary slabs of which some date back to the 16th century!
A pantheon of local history, the building contains the last resting places of the counts of Boussu without whom the city would not look the same today. At the ground floor, the mausoleum of Jean de Hennin - Liétard inevitably attracts the attention of visitors. In marble, it is adorned with very large alabaster statues. Connoisseurs will recognise the expertise of Jacques du Broeucq, a Mons artist and architect, who had also designed the Castle located nearby. The imperial cavalry colonel, Jean de Hennin-Liétard was Senechal of the Emperor Charles V!
In the Hennin-Liétard family, you will also discover the polychrome mausoleum of Maximilien de Hennin-Liétard. Four white Avesnes stone statues are kneeling before Christ. Or that of Maximilien II, which is finely decorated.
A pantheon of local history, the building contains the last resting places of the counts of Boussu without whom the city would not look the same today. At the ground floor, the mausoleum of Jean de Hennin - Liétard inevitably attracts the attention of visitors. In marble, it is adorned with very large alabaster statues. Connoisseurs will recognise the expertise of Jacques du Broeucq, a Mons artist and architect, who had also designed the Castle located nearby. The imperial cavalry colonel, Jean de Hennin-Liétard was Senechal of the Emperor Charles V!
In the Hennin-Liétard family, you will also discover the polychrome mausoleum of Maximilien de Hennin-Liétard. Four white Avesnes stone statues are kneeling before Christ. Or that of Maximilien II, which is finely decorated.
Almost real gisants
Beyond the mausoleums, the 16th century gisants will not leave you stone-cold either... The first is a rotting corpse devoured by worms! Strange flattened animals like small snakes and leeches crawl on his emaciated body. The second features a dying man, laying down and partially covered with a sheet, his head resting on a mat. Different studies also see the work of Jacques Du Broeucq here.
On both sides of the choir, urns made of white and black marble date back to the 19th century. They contain the hearts of Joséphine de Mérode and Louis-Charles-Victor Riquet de Caraman, count of Boussu.
A Museum of religious art
The journey does not stop there... Upstairs, the two vaulted transepts each house a gallery: to the North, the so-called women’s gallery and the men to the South! These galleries allowed the Lord and his wife to attend mass separately without being in contact with other worshippers. Today, they are a small Museum of religious art that makes us travel in time. On the menu: polychrome wooden statues from the twelfth to the eighteenth century, fragments of the truth pulpit, lecterns, altar tables, candlesticks and osculatoires, incense burners and liturgic gowns. Most of the exhibits originate from the Saint-Géry de Boussu parish and the parish of Saint-Martin of Hornu.
