My daughters and I were planning to take lots of photos Saturday ~ (we were in Bellefontaine and Calvary Cemeteries in Saint Louis), but it was just too meltingly HOT...we all felt wilted before we could even begin...
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Here are a few photos I did manage to take despite my rapidly fogging lens...
(with the exception of the photo in the bottom right and top middle left ~ she is actually my favorite; taken in Soldier's Rest Cemetery, Vicksburg, Mississippi)...
I know to some it may be strange, but I absolutely adore memorial statuary; looking at it, touching it ~ (the decades, or a century or more, of weathering, lichens and moss...human touch)...
The Victorians had death down to an art, I believe.
On the cusp of so much happening in the world...so many new inventions, their world was changing...yet there was still so much that they had no control over.
Death still came to their families, to old folks and babies, as well. So, if they had the means, they had their loved ones immortalized by the best artists...to me, many of the memorials of that time are as intricate and well-crafted as sculptures by the Old Masters...
I don't understand why this beautiful statuary fell out of favor, really. Maybe during the Depression, most were lucky to have any sort of memorial or marker...
Then, mid-twentieth century, I think ~ death became a taboo subject.
Many of the illnesses that had befallen children earlier had become a thing of the past, with new vaccines...
People were living much longer...
Cemeteries became "gardens" of artificial flowers in handy little bronze vases that could be folded down for ease of maintence. Cemeteries were now Memorial Parks...
Death had become sanitized.
Personally, I prefer the Victorians' way.
(I'm working on a second blog that is mostly about memorial statuary, with a little genealogy thrown in for good measure...)
Another week begins, another opportunity to accomplish great things!
(As for me, I just hope to complete a couple of watercolors!)
Happy Monday!
♥ ♥ ♥
Anne
(I've linked this to Little Red House's Mosaic Mondays); check it out!
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