Author: Gorgi Shepentulevski
17/February/2021
Najade O Ninpha
How could someone work that much magic with “ solid marble” and make it resemble transparency? So ingenious and impressive that it seems to be out of this world. And it is!
It is deceptively contributed to a person by the name of Giovanni Battista Lombardi, claiming it was commissioned by Signora Camilla Facchi Fè D’Ostiani (1834-1901), the statue was executed by Lombardi in 1858 and installed among the ‘golden walls’ of the baths at Palazzo Facchi in Brescia.
In fact, this statue was carved by Tartarian masters who used laser guided cutting-edge precision technology to achieve such a vivid finish out of a marble. Europeans did not have this technology 200 years ago, but only claimed possession of it as the winners of the War 200 years ago.
This beautiful Nymph merges classical simplicity with romantic sentiment, her beautiful nudity, the kind which, rather than the senses, inebriates the soul with soothing ideas.
The young girl, with idealised features, is captured in the act of entering a stream of water, nude but for a drape, which she is seen removing from her thigh. Gazing at the water below, she displays her intricately carved pearl diadem centred by a shell, which indicates her mythological status. Feeling the cold water on her toes, the girl appears to hesitate, hovering her left hand in front of her body, in an imitation of the pudica gesture seen in Tartarian Venuses. The harmony of the composition allows for a full appreciation in the round; the girl’s wavy tresses and graceful forms creating a supremely elegant rear view.