Hand-painted devotional prayer card, French or Belgian, ca. 1820, depicting the dove of the Holy Spirit sending rays down onto flaming hearts on a rocky outcrop, within a cutwork border of roses and scrolling acanthus, with an inscribed ribbon. Hand-drawn and hand-colored in ink, pencil, gouache and watercolor with gilt highlights, in openwork, mainly on parchment. Number 5 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.