Work: Bust of a young woman

Description

“I saw that through sculpture, through the artistic situation, I could give shape to the images I had inside”, Felice Tagliaferri.

Bust of a Young Woman is a marble sculpture about 40cm high, which Felice Tagliaferri carved in 2006.
The work shows the head and bust of a young woman who seems to emerge from a block of rough marble.

The woman’s head and chest are tilted towards her right; her face is a rounded oval, and her full lips, pronounced chin and cheekbones are fleshy too. Her eyes are large and open; the sculptor has carved both the iris and the pupil and the girl appears to be looking up towards an unspecified point. Her expression does not betray any particular emotion; only the lips, which hint at a slight smile, convey a vague feeling of serenity. Her hair is suggested by a mass of unpolished marble engraved with wavy lines, most noticeably near her right cheek.
The work has almost no neck; the artist has only sculpted the upper part of the bust, to just above the breasts. The arms are completely absent and we can only see the left shoulder as the girl’s long hair hides the right.

Her skin is perfectly smooth, contrasting with the more unfinished state of the hair, the part below the bust and the back of the sculpture. The short horizontal lines left by the sculpting tools on surface of the stone are also perceptible to the touch.

Blind since the age of 14, Felice Tagliaferri found sculpture to be the medium through which he could give shape to his inner world. He summarizes his art in the slogan “Give form to dreams” and, being convinced that this form of art can bring the sighted and blind together, he founded “La Chiesa dell’Arte”, a school of plastic arts, where he teaches sculpture to everyone who wants to approach it.

The base of the statue has wheels, and a pull-out panel with the work’s caption in print and Braille. This is because the sculpture is part of the Museum’s Travelling Section and must therefore be easy to transport.