The distinction here taken between a dead and a sleeping figure, and the reason assigned for the latter, show, I think, that at that time a recumbent figure generally was supposed to represent death. In a monument of Sir Roger Aston, at Cranford, Middlesex, in Lysons' Environs of London, the knight and his two wives are represented praying, and by the side of the knight lies the infant son who had died in his lifetime. In the monument of Pope Innocent VIII. (Pistolesi, Il Vaticano, vol. i. plate 63.), the Pope is in one part represented in a living action, and in another as lying on his tomb, and from the contrast which would thus be afforded between life and death, the latter representation seems to indicate death.
The hands raised in prayer are accounted for by C. T. Open eyes, I think, may be intended to express, by their direction towards heaven, the hope in which the deceased died. This is suggested by the description of the funeral car of Henry V.
"Preparations were made to convey the body of Henry from Rouen to England. It was placed within a car, on which reclined his figure made of boiled leather, elegantly painted. A rich crown of gold was on its head. The right hand held a sceptre, and the left a golden ball. The face seemed to contemplate the heavens."—Turner's Hist. of Eng., vol. ii. p. 465.
I must, however, add that on referring to Monstrelet, I doubt whether Turner does not go too far in this last particular. Monstrelet merely says, "le visage vers le ciel." (Monst. Chron. vol. i. 325. ed. 1595.) Speed adds an additional circumstance: "The body (of this figure) was clothed with a purple roabe furred with ermine." From the mutilated state of the tomb it is impossible to say how far the recumbent effigy resembled this boiled figure, but it is evidently just such a representation of the king as might have been laid on his tomb, and so far it tends to support the opinion that the effigy on a tomb represents the deceased as he had lain in state, or was borne to and placed in his tomb, an opinion fully borne out by the agreement which, in some cases, has been found to exist between the effigy on a tomb and the body discovered within it, or between the effigy and the description of the body as it had lain in state. See the tombs of King
John, Robert Lord Hungerford, and Henry II., in Stothard's Monumental Effigies of Great Britain, and the Introduction to that work.
I think it is not irrelevant to remark that at a very early period a recumbent figure was sometimes placed on a tomb as in a state of death. The recumbent Etruscan figures generally represent a state of repose or of sensual enjoyment; but there is one given by Micali (Monumenti inediti a Illustrazione degli Antichi Popoli Italiani, Tav. 48. p. 303.), which is, undoubtedly, that of a dead person. In his description of it, Micali says, "On the first view of it one would say it was a sepulchral monument of the Middle Ages, so greatly does it resemble one." Mrs. Gray, too (Tour to the Sepulchres of Etruria, p. 264.), mentions a sepulchral urn, "very large, with a woman robed, and with a dog upon it, exactly like an English monument of the Middle Ages." If it were not for the dog, I should suppose this to be the one given by Micali. Though it may be too much to suppose that this form of representation may have been not uncommon, and may have passed into early Christian monuments, the instance in Micali at least shows that the idea of representing a dead body on a tomb is a very ancient one. It may be added, perhaps, that it is an obvious one.
Though the reasons for thinking that the ordinary mediæval figure represents death may not be conclusive, still that opinion is, I think, entitled to be looked upon as the more probable one, until some satisfactory reason is given why a living person should be represented outstretched, and lying on his back—a position, as it seems to me, more inconsistent with life than the open eyes and hands joined in prayer are with death. For too much weight is not to be attached to slight inconsistencies. These would probably be disregarded for the sake of expressing some favourite idea or sentiment. Thus, in the proposed monument of Henry VIII., though the king and queen are directed to be represented as living, their souls are to be represented in the hand of "the Father."
In modern tombs the mediæval idea has been entirely departed from, and the recumbent position sometimes expresses neither death, nor even sleep, but simple repose, or contemplation, resignation, hope, &c. If it is proper or desirable to express these or other sentiments in a recumbent figure, it seems unreasonable to exclude them for the sake of a rigid adherence to a form, of which the import is either obscure, or, if rightly conjectured, has, by the change of customs, become idle and unmeaning.
F. S. B. E.