das haten wir schon mal-hier noch mal etwas mehr Details...
http://anonymousworks.blogspot.com/2010/10/19th-century-post-mortem-painting-of.htmlein gemaltes Postmortem -mit wunderschöner Kleidung-wohl ein Junge,
das war zu der zeit sehr üblich sowohl bei lebenden als auch verstorbenen männlichen Kindern, bis zu einem gewissen alter eine "ART" Kleid zu tragen
@Alarmi kann ich nicht sagen- aber es wird so gesagt, dass es wohl so war um der Familie ein "lebendiges Abbild "n diesen Tagen zu geben um den Schmerz geringer zu halten...
es ist imer schwer da eine entgültige meinung zu haben...aber ich habe nochmal einen Originaltext dazu gefunden:
About a month ago, I got an e-mail from a visitor to our Web site, taking issue with me for describing a real photo French postcard as a post-mortem card of a little girl, in the company of her mother and sister. When I wrote the description, I had hesitated to call the card a post-mortem -- because the card is, remarkably, a Christmas card, as well.
The little crib is beautifully draped with curtains and flowers, the late child’s toys are hanging all around her, her sister grasps the favored poupee. The mother and sister appear unutterably sad. And yet there is that "Joyeax Noel" in the right corner. And the fact that the child’s eyes are half open.
The site visitor informed me that the child was very much alive, citing the eye situation and the position of the child’s arm on the side of the crib. He told me that I ought to change the description from morbid to "delightful", and file it under my Christmas topic instead.
So, at the New York Metropolitan Post Card Club show last week, I approached several expert postcard dealers, including probably THE most revered real photo postcard authority in the world. I want you to give me your opinion of this card, I’d say. Then I'd ask, Dead or alive? Although everyone was confused and bemused by the card, eventually all the experts agreed: "dead".
Admittedly having put the cart before the horse, I then did the research.
I knew that 18th century Americans often made photographic postcards of people in coffins. What I didn't know was that the earliest post–mortems were made with the deceased outside of a coffin and posed, perhaps, in a parlor. They were arranged in a lifelike fashion, often with a parent, sibling or other family member. Special stands held them up; with all these contortions being commonplace, posing an arm on a crib rail would not be difficult. Sometimes eyes were propped open, and sometimes eyeballs were actually painted on closed eyelids. (For more examples, Google "post-mortem photography" or see YouTube.) Again, be warned.
Later in the 18th century, the deceased were most often photographed inside coffins, and these are the cards we see most today.
Why this out-of-coffin practice, which strikes us today as weird at best and disrespectful at worst? Commentators suggest that because of the era's high mortality rate, particularly among babies and children, families were much more "used to" death and thus "accepted" it better than we do. I wonder, too, if Matthew Brady’s photographs of Civil War battlefield dead had the effect of making death more "public" than before. I don’t know; some of the live people in the photos look pretty creeped out to me.
Moreover, with news travelling more slowly than today and distances’ preventing funeral attendance, post–mortem photographs would have spread the news of a death and satisfied the desire for a keepsake. In particular, the posed out-of-coffin photos might be intended for the deceased to look "just as if s/he were alive", and thus comfort the recipient.
Given these details, my assessment of this postcard is that the little girl is indeed dead, and that the mother was combining the news with her Christmas greeting. The result is a card that is ironic, sad, in questionable taste and — with a bow to my correspondent — maybe even "delightful" in a strange way.
This card is a vintage tinted French real photo postcard ($45), used (1910), with an unreadable message. It was sent from inside France to someone in Paris. You can find more vintage postcards about death on www.iconicpostcards.com.
