Risen Christ

This statuette is a copy of Albert Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Christus or Christus Consolator which was completed in 1838 for a church in Denmark. During Mary Ann Evans’s (George Eliot) time at Bird Grove in Foleshill, Coventry this statuette sat on her desk. While translating Strauss’s The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined between 1844 and 1846 this statue watched over her. Nearing the end of the project Evans’s friend Cara Bray reported to her sister “Marian [Mary Ann Evans] says she is Strauss-sick - it makes her ill dissecting the story of the Crucifixion, and only the sight of the Christ image and picture makes her endure it'.