Les Adieux – 8 memorial libraries (Testudo)

Peter De Cleyn Les Adieux – 8 memorial libraries

baked and smoked earth, engobes, wood

(27 x 33 x 19 cm)

From TESTUDO:

"Dirge, Elegy, Lamento, Lamentation, Adieu, Complainte, Lamentation, Lamentation... It is timeless. Lamenting the passing of a loved one, a friend, a client, a duke, a king, an emperor. Wailing for an unrequited love or the end of a relationship. Grieving for the loss of one's homeland, forced deportation, having to flee, the destruction of what is sacred. Weeping for one's own death that is imminent... Until the 17th century, all this was lament a 'dreamed' theme in the music with the iconic example: Dido's Lament from the opera Dido and Aeneas (1688) by Henry Purcell. Dido, queen of Carthage, mourns the unexpected departure of her beloved Aeneas, the hero from Troy. She takes her own life.
'When I am laid in earth,
May my wrongs create,
No trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, but ah! f
orget my fate.'

Peter De Cleyn made eight 'memory libraries', urns to store memories - good and bad."