Mother of Fair Love

Description of the work

I am the Mother of beautiful love, Saint Mary reminds us today. A lesson of beautiful love, of clean living, of a sensitive and passionate heart, so that we may learn to be faithful in the service of the Church. This is not just any love: it is Love. Here there is no betrayal, no calculation, no forgetting. A beautiful love, because it has as its beginning and its end the thrice Holy God, who is all Beauty and all Boddhiness and all Greatness.
Friends of God, 277.

The image of Saint Mary of Saladares, Mother of Fair Love represents the continuity in our work of a series of carvings with similar sculptural treatments, namely, images of the Virgin or saints in full size, stewed and polychrome.
It has been made for the oratory of the Saladares School in Almería, in cedar wood, carved, polychromed and stewed. The pedestal is also made of cedar wood, varnished, and the angels' heads are cast in bronze.
Our sculpture, 150 cm high, is seated on a wooden bench, represented in an offering attitude; with a moving composition, it advances its right arm, holding in its hand the rose of Rialp that Saint Joseph-Marie found when he crossed the Pyrenees through Andorra on 19 November 1937.
On her left leg rests the Divine Infant, who is also shown in an offering attitude, more turned than his mother, stretching out his left hand towards the viewer, in a lateral plane. The Virgin's formally correct face is framed by drapery and turns slightly to the right, seeking the viewer's complicity.
The meticulous work of the stew is particularly noteworthy in the mantle made up of "casetones" in which the Sun of Portocarrero, the symbol of Almería, is represented, interlaced with fleshy, incised and inked acanthus leaves. It falls from the shoulders and is resolved with large planes that favour the ornamental work. The lining and the tunic, made up of acanthus leaves from which bunches of flowers emerge on the Hyacinth-coloured fabric, are of great beauty.
The fleshing, which is somewhat more tanned than in previous works by the artist, is of great beauty and richness of nuances that complete an excellent work of modelling. It is painted in oil with a glossy polish.
The base combines the sobriety of the varnished wood with the elegance of the cast bronze on the angels' heads, which follow the author's childlike treatment and serve as a perfect support for the Marian image.
Overall, the work represents a new contribution to the representations of this devotion, so venerated in the Prelature of Opus Dei.