Emma and the Angel of Central Park

"Emma and the Angel of Central Park" is the first biography ever of Emma Stebbins, the artist who created the Angel of the Waters, on top of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. The book was presented at the Italian Cultural Institute of New York on October 12, 2022. This is the author Maria Teresa Cometto explaining why she wrote the book, why Emma Stebbins is such an important artist: she the first woman to receive a public art commission from New York City. She was a New Yorker, but she lived in Rome from 1856 to 1870. It is in the Eternal City where she got the inspiration for the Angel of the Waters, and she created it. Her life was special: she was “married” to the actress Charlotte Cushman, and belonged to “that strange sisterhood of American ‘lady sculptors’ who at one time settled upon the seven hills in a white marmorean flock,” as Henry James described it. Emma was very reserved and left few traces of herself. To reconstruct her life, Maria Teresa Cometto engaged in depth research between New York and Rome, managing to speak with two of Emma’s descendants. The result is also a portrait of the two cities and sheds light on the thread that linked progressive Americans and Italians of those years: the movement against slavery in the US and the Risorgimento in Italy.

Видео Emma and the Angel of Central Park канала MariaTeresaCometto