View of gravestone showing sorrowing parents, 1766.

Description View of gravestone showing sorrowing parents, 1766.

Date c. 1980

Collection Papers of Betty Willsher, historian, St Andrews, Scotland

Catalogue Number SC 789844

Category On-line Digital Images

Scope and Content Gravestone of John, Agnes and David Fortune, Largo Parish Church and Churchyard, Upper Largo, Fife This monument features curiously elongated figural carvings, which nevertheless form a graceful composition around the stone, supplemented by scrollwork. The male and female figures represent the parents of the children buried here, and stand on skulls, emblems of death. The angel at the top of the stone is shown with a trumpet to call the dead from their graves on the Day of Judgement, and a pair of wide wings which echo the shape of the scrolled top of the stone. Scenes depicting believers rising from the dead to the call of angel's trumpets on the Day of Judgement are found on many Scottish gravestones. The imagery is derived from the following text from I Corinthians 15: 51-2: 'Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed'. This gravestone commemorates the children of John Fortune and Isbel Ermit. The stone records their son 'John, who was born verst' in 1755 and died in 1764; Agnes, who was born in 1763 and died 1766; and David who was born in 1765 and died 1766. A further inscriptions states: 'The two last inter'd in the same cheist and same grave'. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

External Reference BWA/54/S

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/789844

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap