Antique French Folk Art Devotional Wall Plaque W/ Saint Bernadette Soubirous

Details

Description

Medium: Mixed media; shell decoration, porcelain, hand-painted plaster, convex glass, wood or fabric backing
Nationality/Style: French folk art, devotional, late … Read more Medium: Mixed media; shell decoration, porcelain, hand-painted plaster, convex glass, wood or fabric backing
Nationality/Style: French folk art, devotional, late 19th century
Subject: Saint Bernadette Soubirous and the Apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes
Dimensions: 9.5" H x 5.75" W
Signature: Unsigned
Condition: Good, consistent with age. Chip to the seashell-shaped porcelain font. Shells in good shape. Diorama shows age.

Antique shell-decorated folk art wall plaque with a porcelain holy water font (bénitier). The plaque features a small round Catholic retablo or votive diorama in hand-painted plaster, housed under convex glass in a black case. The meerschaum figure depicts the body of Saint Bernadette Soubirous (1844–1879), who died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-five. Above the figure is a depiction of the apparition of the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception to Saint Bernadette, inscribed with the text "Je suis l'Immaculée Conception." The diorama is bordered by an arrangement of small seashells on a red fabric or painted wooden backing plate, itself decorated with a border of small natural sea snails and shells, a style common to 19th century European and pilgrimage-site devotional folk art. In good condition consistent with age. There is a chip to the seashell-shaped porcelain font. The shells are in good shape and the diorama shows age.

A Note on Saint Bernadette and Lourdes

Bernadette Soubirous was born in Lourdes, in the French Pyrenees, in 1844, the eldest of nine children in a family living in severe poverty. Between February and July 1858, she reported eighteen apparitions of a young woman in a grotto at Massabielle, on the bank of the Gave de Pau.

During the apparitions, the figure identified herself in the local Occitan dialect as "Aquero", "that one", before finally declaring, in French, "Je suis l'Immaculée Conception" ("I am the Immaculate Conception"). This declaration, made in March 1858, came four years after the Catholic Church had defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and it was received as confirmation of the apparitions' authenticity.

Bernadette later entered the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, where she died of tuberculosis in 1879 at the age of thirty-five. She was canonized in 1933. The grotto at Lourdes became one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the world, and the town developed an extensive trade in devotional objects,medals, statuettes, plaques, and fonts, produced for pilgrims. See less