ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the levels of significance of this motif are explored by employing an interpretative methodology which is linked to Bakhtian ideas on the rudiments of laughter in funeral rituals and the grotesque body situated within the religious context. It explores various layers of significance of the putto-and-skull motif within an iconographic context. The chapter discusses the Nigel Llewellyn has suggested that the ordered construction of funeral monuments was a conscious attempt to correct the subversive disorder occasioned by death and epitomised by some in the Rabelaisian carnivalesque. The significance of the sleeping putto motif was explored within the framework of carnival laughter and the grotesque, which were widely known and appreciated during the Renaissance, not least through the work of Rabelais. This is precisely the subject of this discussion: the iconographic use of the putto and skull as a commemorative motif and what this tells us about attitudes to child death.
