Hand-painted devotional prayer card, French or Belgian, ca. 1820, depicting an oval landscape vignette of a town on a riverbank, framed by a profuse border of roses, anemones and other flowers, with a two-line inscription in French below: "Le Lieu ne peut jamais Separer / Ceux qui s'avent s'agement aimer" [sic] (Place can never separate those who know how to love wisely). Hand-drawn and hand-colored in ink, pencil, gouache and watercolor with gilt highlights, mainly on parchment. Number 3 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.

Original French: "Le Lieu ne peut jamais Separer / Ceux qui s'avent s'agement aimer"