Humility

In the last years of the 17th century the Sicilian sculptor Giacomo Serpotta was commissioned to decorate the Oratory of San Lorenzo. He illustrated the lives of saints Francesco and Lorenzo in high-relief scenes, accompanying these with appropriate allegorical figures in the round. With the scenes of San Lorenzo is one of the artist’s most graceful works, the figure of Humility, represented as a young woman with fluttering draperies, surrounded by four groups of flying putti. Executed, as are the reliefs, entirely in stucco - a material that demands speed in working and allows no vacillation - the group shows the artist’s great virtuosity.