FUNERAL FOR A YOUNG WOMAN ... AND AN OLD WIDOW
[FUNERAL NOTICE.]
[Incipit:] On recommande à vos charitables Prieres & saints Sacrifices, l’Ame de Mademoiselle Marie-Joseph Chapelle, Jeune-Fille, de la Paroisse Saint-Pholien …
[Liège,] L. Devillers, [1796].
Broadside (338 x 418 mm), printed within an elaborate macabre woodcut border in 4 blocks; creased where once folded, small hole at centre, but generally well preserved.
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[Incipit:] On recommande à vos charitables Prieres & saints Sacrifices, l’Ame de Mademoiselle Marie-Joseph Chapelle, Jeune-Fille, de la Paroisse Saint-Pholien …
A strikingly printed broadside funeral notice for Marie-Joseph Chapelle, ‘a young girl of the parish of St Feuillen, who, after having suffered a long and painful illness, with a perfect resignation to the will of her Creator, furnished with the Sacraments of our Mother the Holy Church, died piously on the 6 July 1796, aged seventeen’ (trans.).
The white-on-black woodcut border features the accoutrements of power in this life – crowns and coronets as well as a papal tiara, a cardinal’s galero, and a bishop’s mitre alongside sceptres, croziers, swords, and thuribles – strewn across a black background and surrounded by bones; in one corner are scythes, and above the memento mori motto ‘hodie mihi, cras tibi’.
[offered with:]
[FUNERAL NOTICE.] [Incipit:] On recommande à vos charitables prières et saints Sacrifices, l’Ame de Madame Jeanne-Sainte Dengis, Veuve de Monsieur Henri-Joseph Chapelle, negociante, de la paroisse de St. Pholien … [Liège,] Kersten, [1830].
Large broadside (415 x 540 mm), printed within an elaborate macabre woodcut border; creased where once folded with very short tears, slight offsetting, but generally well preserved.
A strikingly printed broadside funeral notice for another member of the same family, Jeanne-Sainte Dengis, ‘widow of Henri-Joseph Chapelle, shopkeeper, of the parish of St Feuillen, who, after a short illness, which she bore with a perfect resignation to the will of her Creator, furnished with the Sacraments of our Mother the Holy Church, died piously on the 10 February 1830, at the age of eighty-six’ (trans.). Much like the text, the motifs of the woodcut borders are remarkably consistent over a period of four decades: the scythes are joined by hourglasses, and the crowns and tiaras are joined by more instruments of this life – the tools of the trade of farmers, clerics, scholars, soldiers, and jurists, among others – and two vignettes, one showing a shipwreck and the other a city in destruction. At the foot is added a vignette of a grave, and on either side a large skull over crossed bones.
