Northern French, Tournais, circa 1440-1460

with armorial shield

Numerous scratches, chips and wear consistent with age. Overall surface dirt
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The three female donor figures kneel facing proper right, behind are two armorial shields, one fragmentary but showing three martlets in the bottom quartile, the other with the arms of  the Charmont family of Normandy or the Felins family from the Vendome. The stone, a blue black limestone is distinctive of a type quarried on the banks of River Scheldt near the town of Tournai, now in Belgium.

The present fragmentary relief can be compared to the epitaph, also in Tournai stone, to the Sasquepé family in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Arras and dating to the first half of the fifteenth century, illustrated by Steyaert.  Steyaert records that such epitaphs where a speciality of Tournai workshops.

RELATED LITERATURE
J.W. Steyaert, "Sculpture in Tournai, circa 1400-1480", in Late Gothic sculpture, the Burgundian Netherlands (Ghent, 1994) p. 53, fig. 12