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Sir Jacob Epstein  1880-1959

Sir Jacob Epstein The Visitation 1926
© The estate of Sir Jacob Epstein
The Visitation  1926

Bronze
object: 1651 x 470 x 457 mm
sculpture

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society 1927

N04238
This life-size figure was intended to be one of a pair, never completed, called 'The Visitation'. This was an event recorded in the Bible, where the Virgin Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth to share with her the news that she is to give birth to Jesus. Epstein described this figure as expressing ' a humility so profound as to shame the beholder who comes to my sculpture expecting rhetoric or splendour of gesture'. When he first exhibited it he called it 'A Study' so as to diguise its content.

 (From the display caption August 2004)