De Heilige Vrouwen

-- Three holy women    George Minne owes his reputation primarily to his early sculptures, which he produced before 1900. Medieval art was an important source of inspiration for Minne. This small group of Holy women in mourning dress seems to derive from a Gothic past. The figures recall the pleurants - small weeping figures - that decorate late-medieval mausolea.   -- Who is depicted?    We can see three women wearing a veil. We cannot see the face of each woman.   -- Technical/Specification about the statue     ... small sculptures, monumentally big, closed, overflowing with ripe emotion, from inner suffering, from calm consideration-fixed in their simplification of form and full of rich divisions of surface. The nature is simplified as it were and the human body appears protracted and erected in awkward gestures. Yet, what an exceptional rhythm of surfaces and lines-also in the contorted renderings of the body, how this carries out the expression to a high power. Because Minne in no way seeks the beautiful line, the balancing equilibrium, the classic beauty and the comfortable admiration. There lies a wonderful, difficult to explain power in the sculptures of Minne-in the kneeling, the left and right stiff bowing figures...   -- More about the artist    George (Georges) Minne (born Georgius Joannes Leonardus Minne; 30 August 1866 – 18 February 1941) was a Belgian artist and sculptor famous for his idealized depictions of man's inner spiritual conflicts. A contemporary of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, Minne's work shows many similarities in both form and subject matter to the Viennese Secessionists, the fathers of Art Nouveau.