The Veiled Bust

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to visit the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and was totally ‘blown away’ by a sculpture I saw there. It was of a woman wearing a veil, but what really drew me in was that the detail away from the veil was sharp and rich, while the detail behind the veil was smoothed over and muted: exactly what someone wearing a veil would look like. But it wasn’t that a veil had been placed over the sculpture, the veil itself was sculpted in stone. This was art that I had to keep looking at in awe and wonderment. For anyone interested in the details, the piece is known both as ‘The Veiled Bust’ and ‘The Veiled Nun’ and it was sculpted in 1863 by Giuseppe Croff.

‘The Veiled Nun’

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