Sherry Chandler » Sedlec Ossuary
Sedlec Ossuary
The Sedlec Ossuary is a small Christian chapel decorated with human bones. It’s located in Sedlec, a suburb of the Czech town Kutna Hora.
In 1278, the Cistercian abbot of Sedlec made a pilgrimage to Palestine and brought back a bit of soil from Golgotha, a typical tourist impulse. By sprinkling this soil around, he transformed the local graveyard into a bit of the Holy Land and, coincidentally, into prime real estate for dying Europeans. During the 14th century especially, and the years of The Black Death, the terminally ill flocked to Sedlac for burial and brought their dead relations with them.
After a while, as often happens in old European cemeteries, it became necessary to dig up the old corpses to make room for the new. Thus the ossuary, built in about 1511.
But it was left to a 19th century woodcarver (ahem) named Frantisek Rindt to turn 40,000 sets of human bones into a macabre sort of architectural ornamentation. Decorating with bones does seem such a 19th century sort of thing.
A man named Frisco Ramirez has gifted us with a gallery of photographs of what I can only call bone bas-relief in this chapel. I am not going to reproduce one here because they are proprietary (and for sale) but I do recommend that you click through on the banner above and take a look. The image I’ve included here is from Wikipedia. Click the thumbnail to see it full sized.
It will cause you to contemplate your mortality here in the closing days of the year, now that we have reached “meteorological winter.”
Or perhaps odd ways to find immortality through art.
As usual, a hat tip to Donna Marder, my guide to art on the web.
Ossuary, a short black & white film by the Czech animator Jan Svankmajer takes a tour of Sedlec, using the Jacques Prévert poem “How to Make the Likeness of a Bird” as soundtrack.
How to make the likeness of a bird…
how to make a likeness
First draw a cage
with an open door…
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2 Comments
1. Tommy replies at 4th December 2006, 10:33 am :
I saw the ossuary in Rome. It’s under a little church, I can’t remember the denomination; but it was morbid. Little angels decorated the vaulted ceilings, with shoulder blades for wings. Someone sure was obsessed with death.
And tourists being what they are, I’m surprised there’s a hill left at Golgotha….
2. sherry replies at 4th December 2006, 11:08 am :
So is this standard ossuary decor, then? I know nothing from such things. I thought they mostly just piled the bones up under the cathedral floor.
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