3-008-550 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: marble statue - "Purity" by Matthew Noble, 1862. '...we may say that there is a sort of double conventionalism in the abstract representations of the virtues and vices. They are the result of an advanced stage of civilisation in a nation...In the whole range of these abstractions there is not one perhaps so peculiarly eligible for sculpturesque treatment as the subject of the statue we have engraved. The spotless colour of marble and the delicacy of its crystalline texture are directly suggestive of purity, and a favourite figure with the poets, as Shakspeare has it, "pure as monumental alabaster." The age and sex our artist has chosen is the sweetest embodiment of his theme. The purity of infancy is mere vacuity, that of maidenhood is a vestal garb worn "unspotted from the world." Mr. Noble has dealt with his subject very artistically. The attitude is graceful without affectation. The expression is as simple and chaste as it is beautiful. Though very appropriate, it hardly needed for its explanatory value the action of placing the symbolical lily on the equally spotless virginal bosom. There is nothing in the treatment of the hair and drapery which does not harmonise with the conception'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.