by Vasile Stefanoiu

Artwork Description

The shadow of Orpheus and Eurydice

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carved © 2021, Artwork dimensions : Height/Width/Depth : 80 x 46 x 16 cm, weight 46 kg, marble, © Protected by copyright. This is a unique work. The ancient Greeks understood that all human dramas revolve around the ubiquitous and inevitable experience of loss. Greek mythology revolves around this essential paradox of human life. Our time is limited, our control is limited and from this is born the great emotion of human existence. We love intensely, because we know that our mastery is weak. The love story of Orpheus and Eurydice exemplifies this principle in all its heartbreaking beauty. According to legend, Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, dies at their wedding being bitten by a snake. Orpheus prays to the gods to allow him to save her, descending into hell to bring Eurydice back to life. The gods allow him to try, but on one condition - he does not have to look back. Orpheus respected this condition until the threshold of hell; but when he was ready to cross the fatal frontier, driven by the fear and impatience of love, he looked back. At that moment, the gods are faithful to their cruel promise, and Eurydice is pulled back into darkness and thus loses his wife a second time. The despair caused by the final loss of Eurydice made Orpheus despise and insult the women of Thrace. Eventually, exasperated, they retaliated by tearing him to pieces, prey to the ecstasy specific to bahic orgies. After his death, the shadow of Orpheus descends underground, into hell, he finds Euridice, “he embraces her with longing. He walks along the same path / He comes after him, he goes forward and maybe / Without fear he looks back at Euridice. ” (Ovid, in "Metamorphoses", the eleventh book). This last passage is the theme of my sculpture: when the shadow of Orpheus turns his head and looks at Eurydice without fear because the gods could no longer punish him. I sculpted the two characters in unusual shapes because they are both in a dreamlike, unreal environment, in eternity, he is a shadow and she is an illusion. I sculpted the lower half of Orpheus in bas-relief, going through the strange place of hell and the upper part of the body in three dimensions. I sculpted Eurydice with her body shape in the negative

Artwork Details

Medium: Sculpture Various Materials

Genre: Figurative