Tomb - effigial, Gowran, Co. Kilkenny

This type of monument, known as a cadaver tomb, was a fairly deliberate rejection of worldly vanity, a reminder carved in stone that even the most respectable burgess ends up the same way. The inscription running in Roman capitals across the top and around the border of the lid records the burial of James Kealy, described as an honourable burgess of the town of Gowran, who died in 1626, and his wife Ellen Nash, whose year of death was left unfinished in the original carving.

What makes the tomb remarkable beyond its cadaver lid is the density of imagery carved across its front and side panels. The long front panel is divided into four round-headed niches separated by fluted pillars, each filled with symbols of the Passion, the instruments and events of Christ's crucifixion. These arma Christi, as they are known in medieval iconography, appear here in considerable detail: a ladder, a hammer, a spear, an axe, the thirty pieces of silver arranged in two vertical lines beneath a lantern on a crooked staff, and in one spandrel what is probably the head of Judas, a draw-string purse below him and a twisted cord around his neck. Other niches show Peter's sword alongside a severed ear, a scourging pillar with ropes and a cock perched on top, and Veronica's towel bearing the face of Christ alongside the basin and jug used by Pilate. The east side panel includes a crucifixion scene and a figure of St Peter rendered in a noticeably naive style, wearing what appears to be an Irish mantle and possibly a felt hat, his feet turned oddly to one side. The west panel depicts St Patrick in episcopal robes, his right arm raised in blessing, holding a double-armed cross-staff with trefoil terminals. A large IHS monogram on the same panel, a Christogram used widely in late medieval Catholic devotion, anchors the whole programme of imagery in orthodox piety, even as the skeletal Death above watches over all of it.