Love this monument in St Margaret’s Uxbridge to Dame Leonora Bennet.
She lies there resting on her arm with an insouciant air. She had three husbands before spending the rest of her life on good works. And the sculptors John and Matthew Christmas seem to me portray her as an attractive woman.
Love the contrast with the glimpse into the Charnel House below with the jumbled bones almost fighting to get out.
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Quite the juxtaposition!
Yes, it is isn’t it. One rather cheerful and the other like the opening sequence of s zombie film!
I don’t know anything about that style of internment. Is it typical to show the nightmares below?
There was a ‘fashion’ 16th/17th Centuries to have stark reminders of the reality of death (memonto mori). I think the main reason was because the body was an empty vessel and the person was, presumably, in heaven.
Dances of death too.
According to Whikipedia, the first reported one dates from 1424 in Paris, in the Cloister of the Cemetery of the Innocents…
‘Danse macabre’ in French…
The Dance of Death is found on the walls of the Chapel in Stratford upon Avon, and there was also one in the Cloister at St Pauls in London – copied I think from the french original.
They show a pope dancing with a skeleton dancing with a King dancing with a skeleton dancing with a Lord Dancing etc etc. showing that everyone faces death.