Tag: Relief

  • Art Deco Devotion in Calvary Cemetery

    Franklin monument

    In the middle twentieth century, a certain style of monument that combined traditional devotional imagery with Art Deco streamlining became very popular in Catholic cemeteries. Above and below, St. Mary prays for the Franklin family.

    Mary with a Franklin tree
    Manculich monument

    A Good Shepherd relief adorns the Manculich monument, with the head of Christ coming out of the relief to be rendered in three dimensions.

    Aloe monument

    In many ways Art Deco is similar to Gothic styles in art, and here we have an incised Crucifixion that transports the medieval spirit to the twentieth century. Without diminishing the agony of Christ, the cross is beautified and adorned with passionflowers, so that the very moment of death is transformed by the beauty of redemption. The praying figures at the sides are models of effective simplicity, although old Pa Pitt can’t help worrying that their foreheads are too close to the candle flames.

    Casey monument

    The Casey plot is guarded by two Deco archangels dressed as medieval knights. The inscription—“I am the resurrection and the life,” etc.—runs all the way around the bottom of the monument.

    Casey monument
    John F. Casey

    Ledgers for John F. and Mary Lee Casey bear bronze inscriptions in lettering that matches the inscription on the main monument.

    Mary Lee Casey

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  • Clergy Monument, St. Peter’s Cemetery (Arlington)

    Clergy plot

    St. Peter’s Cemetery is a small German Catholic cemetery in Arlington. (The German Lutherans have a cemetery, St. Paul’s, right behind this one in Mount Oliver, and they seem almost to have chosen their patron saints confrontationally.) This elaborate monument presides over the priests’ plot in the cemetery.

    Clergy plot
    Clergy monument
    Clergy monument
    The Good Shepherd
    Inscription

    “For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I will see my God.” (Job 19:25–26, the English translation taken from the Douay-Rheims version.)

    “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” (Psalm 89:14 in the Vulgate numbering, or 90:12 in the numbering used by most Bibles today. The English is from the King James Version; the Douay-Rheims version, following the Vulgate, is quite different.)

    Clergy monument
  • McKeown Mausoleum, Calvary Cemetery

    McKeown mausoleum

    A Romanesque cube with an unusual apse in the back. The decorations in relief are particularly fine. The effect would have been better with bronze doors, but bronze doors tend to go missing, and their place has been taken by concrete.

    Blind arch
    McKeown moausolem
  • Lockhart Cross, Homewood Cemetery

    Lockhart cross

    A simplified Celtic cross with more than a whiff of Art Deco; it was probably put up in the 1930s, since the earliest Lockhart here died in 1936. The cemetery’s site attributes the monument to the Campell-Horigan company of Pittsburgh.

    Lockhart cross
    Reliefs
  • Hax-McCullough Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    A row of Haxes and McCulloughs rests in front of this angel under identical slabs. C. C. Hax died in 1927, and this monument was put up in 1928 (according to the cemetery’s Web site). The Haxes made their money in leather goods and the McCulloughs in electric equipment, so this was what you would call a mixed marriage.