400‑Year‑Old Mourning Pendant Found in 1635 Portrait
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- Pendant is a Hamnet‑era mourning jewel that appears in John Souch’s 1635 portrait “Sir Thomas Aston at the Deathbed of His Wife”.
- Painting hangs in the Manchester Art Gallery, where the pendant was rediscovered after four centuries.
- John Souch painted the work predominantly in black and white, depicting a grieving Sir Thomas Aston and his dead wife Magdalen.
- Sir Thomas Aston stands with his three‑year‑old son Thomas, who points to an inscription reading “Grief is immeasurable.”
- Magdalen died in childbirth months earlier, and her baby lay dead beside her in the painting.
- Thomas (the son) died a year later, while their other children Robert, Elizabeth, and Jane also perished in childhood.
Why it matters: The pendant’s rediscovery gives historians a rare physical artifact to study 17th‑century mourning customs and the personal tragedy of the Aston family, while the Manchester Art Gallery gains a newly verified object that deepens visitors’ understanding of the painting and enriches the museum’s narrative of early modern grief.
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