This set of canivets (little devotional pictures), with prayers in French printed on the back, represents The Stations of the Cross, a sequence of fourteen scenes from the Passion and Death of Christ traditionally venerated during Lent. The prints have been pasted into embossed decorative borders of gothic architectural ornament and bound together, either to be used as a devotional booklet or displayed like a miniature altarpiece for contemplation.

The finely-embossed architectural detail is typical of late nineteenth-century French manufacture and relates this object to a cameo-embossed souvenir of Notre-Dame de Paris also in the collection (see E.453-1998) as well as to the embossed lace paper valentines published by the French-born perfumier Eugène Rimmel (1820-1887). The sentimental religious imagery, often based on famous paintings, was a speciality of printers and publishers concentrated in the neighbourhood of the basilica of Saint Sulpice in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, giving its name to the style Saint Sulpice.