Tomb effigy
Statue on top of a tomb
A tomb effigy is a sculpted effigy of a deceased person usually shown lying recumbent on a rectangular slab, presented in full ceremonial dress or wrapped in a shroud, and shown either dying or shortly after death. Such funerary and commemorative reliefs were first developed in Ancient Egyptian and Etruscan cultures, and appear most frequently in Western European tombs from the late 11th century, in a style that continued in use through the Renaissance and early modern period, and is still sometimes used. They typically represent the deceased in a state of "eternal repose", with hands folded in prayer, lying on a pillow, awaiting resurrection. A husband and wife may be depicted lying side by side.
The public source identifies “Tomb effigy” as statue on top of a tomb. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tomb, effigy and Statue.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tomb effigy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.