- Title
- Angel of Grief Weeping at the Dismantled Altar of Life
- Artist
- Carved by the Bernieri Brothers of Tuscany after an original design by William Wetmore Story (U.S.A., 1819-1895)
- Date
- Design, 1894; this replica, 1900-1901
- Media
- Carrara marble
- Credit Line
- Commissioned by Jane Stanford
Jane Lathrop Stanford commissioned the Angel of Grief in 1900 as a memorial for one of her brothers, Henry Clay Lathrop, after choosing the design from a photograph. A reproduction of an original design by William Wetmore Story, the statue was carved by the Bernieri Brothers of Tuscany from a single block of Carrara marble. The 7-ton, 6-foot-wide statue was packed in a special case built to support the figure and sustained only damage to the wing tip during the three-month overseas journey to Palo Alto. The canopy collapsed atop the statue in the 1906 earthquake, and Charles Lathrop (no relation), Stanford’s business manager, had the statue restored in 1908, but without the canopy. In 2001, the left arm, which had been missing, was replaced and the statue was cleaned and restored.
William Wetmore Story designed the statue in memory of his wife, Emelyn, who died in 1894. Story was the son of Joseph Story, a Harvard law professor and U.S. Supreme Court justice. William studied law, but later abandoned it for sculpture, and moved to Rome in 1850. William and Emelyn are interred beneath the Angel of Grief in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.
