In this French Victorian holy card, Mary is holding the Sacred Heart as well as the baby Jesus, so we get two powerful Catholic Icons in this rare image: The Sacred Heart and the Madonna and Child. The colors are rich and warm, but still have some of that vintage feel. We love this card and think it is beautiful!

The French inscription at the bottom reads, "Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Pray for Us." Underneath that it says, "100 days one day at a time for the Associates," which we think was prayer instructions for an indulgence at the time. There are also words in the gold mandorla (the full halo around their bodies). We're pretty sure the first word is JÉSUS in the lower left, and clockwise, EST L'ESPÉRANCE, and on the other side DES DÉSESPÉRÉS, which means "Jesus is the hope of the despairing." (It took us a long time to discern those words!)

There was a lot of discoloration and tarnish on this long out-of-copyright image. We spent hours restoring it to its original beauty. Overall, there are tens of thousands of good Catholic images out there, but we work to bring you just the few we love, and to make them as perfect as we can. We want to curate a collection that brings you joy.

We also sell postcards of this image here in our shop.

We had SO many people ask for a larger size on the 3 prints in the Sacred Heart series that we finally said Yes! They look good! These old lithos were really ink heavy, and they look nice large. (The reason we had said no before was we didn't want to create inventory chaos for us.)

For framing, a lot of frames would look good with this. Try a warm wood or a gold frame. You can matte it if you want, but you don't have to matte our prints. They look pretty good with the 1.35" (1.5" with the larger paper) white border around the print. All our prints are standard size, so you can easily get a frame you like at Hobby Lobby or online. Convo us if you'd like us to frame it, and we'll find something you'll like.

If you are ordering the larger size, please take a close look at the picture so you can understand how it will look blown up to 11x14". It is vintage litho and not photo-sharp.

** IMPORTANT ** THE IMAGE IS SMALLER THAN THE PAPER! There is a white border of about 0.5" inch for 5x7", 1.3" for 8.5x11", or 1.6" for 11x14" pictures. All Approx! Fine art printers do this because the images are almost never the same rectangular ratio of the standard paper sizes. It also gives the prints a finished look, and lets them look good in a frame without a matt.

- Acid-free paper
- Archival pigments, rated to last for generations.
- Cardboard backer
- Above story of the art
- Enclosed in a tight-fitting, crystal clear bag.

Thanks for your interest!

Thanks!
Sue & John

"In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art." ~ St. Pope John Paul II

Original image is out-of-copyright. Descriptive text and image alterations (hence the whole new image) © by Sue Kouma Johnson - CatholicArtAndJewelr