ROMANCE

Evening Post, Issue 51, 2 March 1931, Page 8

ROMANCE

SCULPTOR'S SEARCH FOR A MODEL

(From "The Post's" Representative.) ' SYDNEY, 19 th February. There is an interesting romance woven around the beautiful statue of St. Mary Magdalene which will be unveiled in tho Church of St. Mary Magdalene, at Eoso Bay, Sydney, /during the coming Easter. The statue is the work of Salvatore li Bosi, a young Sicilian sculptor who has been in Australia for a little more than four years, doing decorative art modellinc for new theatres in tho city. When he was commissioned by Mr. John Lane Mullins to do the statue for the Rose Bay Church, li Kosi could not find a model suitable for the work he had in mind, and at one stage it was feared that tho artist, lacking the required inspiration, would be unable to complete his commission. "For three weeks I search Sydney," he said the other day, in his broken English. "Nowhere do I find the right type, the woman in whose face I see the spirit I would portray as that of tho Magdalene." , Then came the fortunate day, for him, when he walked' through the great store of Farmer and Co., in. Sydney. All tho time ho searched the facesl of the passing women for the ideal model, and just when it seemed that ', his search would again end in failure,,1 he saw behind the counter a girl with the very face he had been' looking for. Forgetting everything, oven his Manners, he rushed up to the girl, and almost shouted to her: "Lady, will you pose for mo? You are tho. inspiration for my statue." The girl stared at him for a miuute, wondering whether the excited foreigner who accosted her was mad, and thou she said, "How dare you speak to me." Li Bosi then suddenly" recollected that he had approached the girl in rather an unusual way, and he began to explain as best he could. Finally the girl said: "You may ask my mother, and if she agrees I will pose for you." So the sculptor wrote .to the girl's mother, who is an Anglican, and obtained her permission to engage the girl as his model. "She had just the right expression in her face," the artist explained after he had finished his task. "It was the inspiration I had been looking for, and I could not begin work until I found it." Mr. Lane Mullins is delighted with the finished work. "I haye1 seen many religious statues by famous Italian artists," he said. "But this man" has a marvellous touch „ all his own that makes him stand out from the -others. His work is noble. He. has caught a spirit in this statue."