Grave beauty

Claude de France

They are monuments - there for us to look at and remember the life that once was, yet we may feel we are intruding if we try to look too closely. Photographer Antoine Schneck has given us a large scale study of the gisants or recumbent funerary sculptures at the royal necropolis at the Basilique de Saint Denis just north of Paris. As isolated subjects on a black ground, we are called to pierce the intimate sphere of these departed kings and queens in a way that still inspires hushed respect.

Louis XII

Catherine de Medici

Catherine de Medici

Valentine Visconti

for more:
http://saint-denis.monuments-nationaux.fr/

http://www.schneck.fr/

http://uk.tourisme93.com/basilica/  (in English)