The Holy Shroud in contemporary hand-color. Unrecorded etching.

[Holy Shroud]. Le Saint Suaire. De notre seigneur Jesus Christ. Paris: chez M.me V.e Cherau rue S.t Jacques N.o 10, s.a. [1810s]. Folio [41.8 x 27.0 the sheet; 28.4 x 20.5 cm the platemark]. [1] f. etching, with contemporary hand-color. Minor edge toning and edge wear, minor wrinkling, remnants of mounting on verso, wide margins, deckle edge at right at bottom.
 
 
Unrecorded, separately issued etching—here in vibrant contemporary hand-color—depicting the Holy Shroud (“Le Saint Suaire”) in which the body of Christ was wrapped for burial and on which his image was preserved after the Resurrection. The size of the print suggests that it was intended for display.
 
Today the Shroud of Turin is the only surviving shroud relic, but formerly several shrouds competed for primacy. The most prominent of these was the Holy Shroud of Besançon (Saint-Suaire de Besançon). The Besançon winding cloth was first attested in 1523. No doubt related to the Shroud of Turin in origin and concept, it was destroyed in the Revolutionary fervor of 1794 and therefore never achieved the latter-day fame of the Turin relic. 
 
Curiously, the shroud depicted here seems to be independent of any particular relic: The Shroud of Turin preserves a double-image of the front and back of Christ’s body, while the Shroud of Besançon depicted Christ with arms folded across his chest. Here three angels on a cloud display the shroud, a sunburst in the background. 
 
The print carries the address of the Veuve Cherau, née Geneviève Basset, daughter of the Paris publisher Paul André Basset le jeune and widow of Jacques Simon Chéreau II. She is known to have operated at rue St. Jacques 10 from 1811 to 1820, a fact that dates this print to that period (see Préaud’s entries on the Cherau publishing dynasty; note that this Veuve Cherau is not to be confused with the two earlier veuves Chéreau, widows of François I and II).
 
 
This etching is not located by OCLC, KVK or Omnia.
 
* Maxime Préaud, et al., Dictionnaire des editeurs d’estampes a Paris sous l’Ancien Regime; Jules Gauthier, “Le Saint-Suaire de Besançon et ses pèlerins,” Mémoires de la Société d’Émulation du Doubs, ser. 7, vol. 7 (1903), pp. 164-84; Jules Gauthier, Notes iconographiques sur le Saint-Suaire de Besançon.