Cadaver Tomb - France

France

France also has a long history of cadaver tombs, though not as many examples or varieties survive as in England. One of the earliest and anatomically convincing examples is the gaunt cadaver effigy of the medieval physician Guillaume de Harsigny (d. 1393) at Laon. Kathleen Cohen lists many other extant examples. There was a revival in the Renaissance, as testified by the two examples to Louis XI and his wife Anne of Brittany at Saint-Denis, and of Queen Catherine de Medici who likewise had her husband Henry II buried in a cadaver tomb.