funerary portraits

Gáspár Illésházy
Funerary portrait of György Thurzó
A seventeenth-century genre of art, popular in Protestant circles in Hungary, whose intellectual background was provided by literature concerned with death and the ars moriendi proclaiming a resigned attitude about death. These portraits were hung in family chapels and exemplified the Christian virtues in the eyes of the living members of the family. Among the earliest known examples are the portraits of György Thurzó and his wife, Erzsébet Czobor in the chapel of the castle of Árva (Orava, Slovakia).