Here instead is a strikingly simple, and arrestingly intense, portrait of a beautiful young woman.
- Tim Knox
Mesmerisingly beautiful and just under life size at 33.6cm tall, the Virgin of Sorrows’ gently furrowed brows, natural flesh tones, glass eyes and teardrops and eyelashes made from human hair, still elicit a powerful response from the viewer 350 years after it was made. It was most likely created for the private chapel, study or bedchamber of a devout patron, and would almost certainly have been protected under a glass dome and originally paired with a similarly-sized bust of the Ecce Homo (Christ as the Man of Sorrows).
The Virgin of Sorrows is on show in the Museum’s Spanish & Flemish Gallery, alongside other masterpieces by contemporary Baroque sculptors and painters. The Fitzwilliam Museum has already raised a substantial amount towards the work (including £30,000 from the Art Fund and £10,000 from The Henry Moore Foundation) but needs to secure a further £85,000 by the end of September 2014 in order to acquire the remarkable bust.
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Image: Mater Dolorosa (Virgin of Sorrows) by Pedro de Mena (1628-1688)
Credit: Fitzwilliam Museum
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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