Hand-painted devotional prayer card, French or Belgian, ca. 1820, depicting the Sacred Heart surmounted by a cross and encircled by the crown of thorns, set in a radiant panel within a densely painted floral border and dark outer frame. Hand-drawn and hand-colored in ink, pencil, gouache and watercolor with gilt highlights, mainly on parchment. Number 2 of the group of hand-painted devotional cards from the same collection. Condition. Measurement.

Some of these early nineteenth-century devotional cards were made as canivets, so called after the small knife used to cut their intricate patterns. Cloistered nuns made them to support their convents and charities (such convent work is also known as Klosterarbeiten). Entirely hand-cut and painted, they were the precursors of the machine-made lace-paper holy cards of later generations.