Cardinal

myminifactory

On a visit to St Peter's in Rome in 1934, Manzù was deeply moved by the sight of the Pope seated between two cardinals, an image that instantly brought back many cherished memories from his youth. Two years later, he created his first sculpture of a cardinal but it proved unsuccessful and ultimately met its demise; it wasn't until summer 1938 that he crafted the first enduring version, a towering figure standing at 65cm high. From then until 1959, Manzù went on to produce more than fifty sculptures of cardinals, some seated, others standing tall, ranging from small-scale to larger-than-life in size. With the exception of a commissioned statue of Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro completed in 1953 at the request of another, every single piece was created without reference to a model and Manzù's skillful hands brought forth the faces from scratch. As art historian John Rewald recounts, Manzù always maintained that the subject held no spiritual significance for him; he treated these figures with the same creative freedom as if they were still life compositions. Like all of his works, this particular piece is a one-of-a-kind cast, its plaster mold now destroyed forever.