Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1239894
64 Dame Elisabeth Frink CH DBE RA (1930-1993) Elisabeth Frink was born in Suffolk and became one of the finest women sculptors and printmakers this country has known, in later life living in Blandford Forum, Dorset. She was educated at the Chelsea School of Art and thereafter her subject matter was almost always the male figure or animals. She is best known for her bronze outdoor sculpture which has a distinct cut and worked surface created by adding plaster to an armature which is then worked back with a chisel and a surface forming tool. Walking Madonna was the first sculpture of a woman that the artist had produced. We are accustomed to paintings and sculptures of the Madonna as a young woman cradling a baby. We forget the mother who stood and watched her son die unable to prevent it. We rarely think of Mary, the mother of Jesus as a member of the Christian community but here we see a deep inner serenity and hope, a strong sense of urgency. She walks forward purposefully away from the cathedral that bears her name heading to the wider world, into the city of noise and clamour. Her arms are thin with self denial, but they swing in rhythm with her striding legs. It is a rendering of a mother in grief but compelled to move forward and persevere. This is not the teenage virgin, pregnant with the new humanity, but an older Mary, stripped down, thin and ascetic, face haggard with suffering but still determined and walking with purposeful compassion as a member of the community of the Risen Christ to bring love where love is absent. Her hands are real, beautiful, sensitive female hands, the left one polished as hundreds of visitors hold it and touch it to feel that sense of purpose and love and sometimes adorning her with a garland of flowers, the wandering public finding a human shape with whom they can connect in the mass of medieval masonry and glass.* *from Salisbury Cathedral Archive Walking Madonna, 1981 Cast bronze Life size Acquired by the Cathedral in 1981 Mary is walking away from the Cathedral. What will you take with you from what you have seen during your visit to Salisbury Cathedral today?