The Veiled Lady by Giovanni Strazza

 Hello to all the lovely creatures out there!

In today's post we are going to travel back a time! Up until now, you might have noticed that the sculptures I've been discussing with you about are moslty contemporary art sculptures. Today we will be going a little bit further in time in the early 1850s. The sculpture is titled the Veiled Virgin and was created by Giovanni Strazza around the 1850s. 

The Veiled Virgin - Giovanni Strazza

The Veiled Virgin is a Carrara marble sculpture carved in Rome by the Italian sculptor Giovanni Strazza who lived around 1818 to 1875 and depicts the bust of a veiled Virgin Mary. Around that time, depictions of Virgin Mary and especially the veiled lady as a concept were quite popular as in the context of Risorgimento (the unification of Italy), the intention was to symbolise Italy, and many were commisioned to decorate churches, and houses or villas of wealthy people of Italy and especially Rome.

Althought the material is marble, a hard and solid material, one of its quirks is its plasticity, that once you have master the technique to use it, can create exceptional artworks as is the case with the Veiled Virgin. The veil gives the appearance of being transculent, falling delicately on the face of the Virgin Mary as though it would be a real veil covering her face althought it is simply curved in marble. 

The sculpture was transported to Newfoundland in 1856 and was kept at the Bishop's Palace next to the Catholic Cathedral in St. John's until 1862, when Bishop Mullock presented it to Mother Mary Magdalene O'Shaughnessy, the Superior of the Presentation Convent. The bust has since remained under the care of Presentation Sisters, in Cathedral Square, St. John's.

I hope you found it as interesting and as impressive as I did, as I still think that curving hard materials like marble it's something quite difficult to achieve to create such an effortless looking result. For one thing I find it quite impressive and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't even be able to cut a clean piece to create something myself! XD

As always thank you for reading and I will see you in a future post!

xoxoxo