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The start of the nineteenth century coincided with the development of a new aesthetics of death. Funerary rites became more elaborate; cemeteries and tombstones were increasingly adorned, and corpses were embellished before their burial. At the centre of this beautification of death movement was a new individualised and "sentimentalised" relationship with the dead. 1 Paying respect and tribute to the personhood of the deceased became an important aspect of mourning and funeral culture. At the same time, a more romanticised view of the afterlife was portrayed with an emphasis on the promise of reunion in life after death. 2 In European funerary culture, the "death as sleep" metaphor became a popular representation of death as it allowed mourners to separate the idea of death from a final state of being and corresponded with the Christian narrative of resurrection. In this narrative, the transition from life to

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