priant

plural priants

1. A kneeling figure, in French sepulchral art.

   2 more examples

   page 139: It is an established fact that Anequin de Egas gave shape to the new conception of the priant in about 1467, when Juan […], the architect of the famous convent church of Guadalupe in Estramadura, died. page 144: We begin to ask ourselves whether the priants were intended to depict souls or human portraits.

   1954, Henriette Eugénie s' Jacob, Idealism and Realism: A Study of Sepulchral Symbolism

   page xiii, List of illustrations: 84. Priant of Louis XII (cast). Photograph: A. Neury, Paris. 85. Priants of Francis I (d. 1574) and Claude of France (d. 1524) […] page 166: The royal tombs were related to earlier French tombs which had shown kneeling figures symbolizing the soul contrasted to representations of dead bodies below. The earlier representations had commonly shown the priants kneeling in front of the Virgin asking for mercy. […] The royal priants, by contrast, […]

   1973, Kathleen Cohen, Kathleen Rogers Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol: The Transi Tomb in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Univ of California Press, →ISBN