This woman with a melancholic look on her face and her hair coveredh, gives the impression of being deeply immersed in her thoughts, which may reflect the passing and loss of a loved one. The manner of presenting the sitting, freely-posed figure derives from the works of Michelangelo, as well as later Roman sepulchral sculpture of the Baroque period, with which the author of the work – an artist educated in Kraków, Vienna and Rome – was very familiar. An uneasy arrangement of a heavy, exquisitely carved fabric breaks the static character of the composition. Henryk Struve, a philosopher and a leading representative of 19th–century Polish art criticism, noted that the statue “combines simplicity and naturalness with calmness and seriousness”.
The National Museum in Kraków
Inventory number: MNK II-rz-246
Creator: Antoni Pleszowski (1859–1889)
Time of creation: 1887 (model), 1896 (cast)
https://muzea.malopolska.pl/en/objects-list/3
Digitalisation: RDW MIC
CC AttributionCreative Commons Attribution
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