Framing life in death: metapictures from Danish printed funeral sermons

This article deals with the presence of metapictures in engravings from Danish printed funeral sermons, on the assumption that this hitherto unnoticed aspect will provide a new insight into the role of images within this literary genre. More than a mere pictorial convention of the Baroque era, the metapicture can be seen to operate as a visual strategy through its juxtaposition of life on earth with that in heaven. As a visualization of an eschatological promise, the illusionistic portrait of the deceased—an image within an image—frames life in death for those who carry Jesus in their hearts. The portrait serves a commemorative purpose, but its ontological instability also accentuates its eschatological significance, whereby the belief in the afterlife of the deceased can be seen as being coined by the illusionistic metapicture itself: dead, and yet as if alive. Finally, the article investigates the relationship between image and text and shows how the engravings and their inscriptions serve as a mise en abyme of the book in which they were embedded.