The Ministry of Culture welcomes the restitution to the city of Dijon and to the public at the Museum of Fine Arts of Dijon, Saturday, July 11, 2020, of the statuette called «Crying 17» from the tomb of the Duke of Burgundy Philippe II, dit le Hardi (1342-1404).

Removed from the public domain during the revolutionary period, this alabaster statuette adorned, with about forty other mourners, the funeral procession depicted in the basement of the tomb of Philip the Bold, built in the early 15th century in the chapel of the Chartreuse de Champmol, necropolis of the dukes of Burgundy, in Dijon.

The reunion of this statuette at its original tomb after more than two centuries is the result of the mobilization of the services of the Ministry of Culture in order to claim the right of ownership of the State over cultural property in the public domain, held by private persons without legal basis. 

The State having conclusive evidence to claim this work, the Council of State confirmed by a decision of 21 June 2018 that the Crying 17 belongs to the public domain, inalienable and imprescriptible.