Heraldic mourning panels are in fact the funeral cards and gravestones of the past. A heraldic mourning panel is a wooden panel with the coat of arms of the aristocratic deceased painted on a dark background. It contains the date of death and occasionally some additional information about the deceased. The panels were hung on the façade of the deceased person’s house, later to be removed and placed on the wall of the church in or near which the deceased had by then been buried. Painters of the panels were usually anonymous. The older mourning panels are very plain ones. So is this one, in fact. Though it does show us, that it is a later version. There is a quite lavish coat of arms with a lot of gilding. The panel shows that the deceased was Count of Bergh and Hohenzollern. In the centre we see the Bergh coat of arms with the lion and surrounding it, the coat of arms of the German Hohenzollern dynasty. All this is held high by two lions and topped with a count’s crown.
For more information on the count’s antics, press A For more information on heraldic mourning panels, press B