The panel, a rectangular slab of fossiliferous limestone measuring 1.7 metres across and 0.65 metres tall, belongs to the monument of George Bryan, who died in 1843. But the carved surface itself is considerably older, dating to the sixteenth century, and the combination of its original purpose and its later context gives the piece a quietly layered quality that most visitors would walk past without realising.

The frontal is carved in low relief with the Arma Christi, the instruments of the Passion, arranged from left to right across the surface. A leaning Latin cross appears at the left, flanked by three flagellation whips of knotted cord, a hammer and pincers, three nails, and an upright ladder. The centre of the panel is dominated by the sacred heart of Christ encircled by a crown of thorns. Moving right, the composition continues with the flagellation column and its ropes, the spear of Longinus, and a vessel said to contain vinegar and gall. At the far right, the seamless robe of Christ lies beside three dice and the container the soldiers used to cast lots for it. The imagery is devotional and didactic in equal measure, a kind of visual inventory of the events of the crucifixion. The scholar Phelan attributes the work to the Kerin school of monumental sculptors, a workshop tradition active in the region during the sixteenth century. Two circular iron handles have since been inserted into the panel, a practical alteration that underlines the transformation from carved frontal to functional tomb face.

The tomb sits in the north-east of what the Bryan family called their vault, though the structure is properly a mausoleum, adjoining the east wall of the south transept of the church. That space itself has an older history: the Bryan family apparently modified what had been the medieval Lady Chapel of St Mary's when they adapted the area in the eighteenth century. George Bryan, for whom the monument was eventually assembled, was a prominent advocate for Catholic emancipation, a cause that dominated Irish political life in the decades before his death. The decision to reuse a piece of sixteenth-century craftsmanship for his memorial may have been practical, or it may have carried some deliberate resonance, though the record does not say which.