Hand-painted devotional prayer card, French or Belgian, ca. 1820, depicting the dove beneath the words "Veni Lumen Cordium" ("Come, Light of hearts," from the Pentecost sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus), sending rays onto two hearts and a cross above an open book inscribed "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam," among vines with grapes and flowers on an altar. Hand-drawn and hand-colored in ink, pencil, gouache and watercolor with gilt highlights, mainly on parchment. Number 10 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.