An enormous sculpture of Christ on the Cross, by Catherine Greene, is being transported from Kildare to Portugal today where it will be the centrepiece of a new 8,000-seat basilica at Fatima that will open in October.
The figure, made in bronze and measuring five metres tall, will be suspended in the air on a seven-metre cross, high behind the basilica's altar "on a very elegant indication of a cross with just two bars which you can see the light through," she said.
Ms Greene, who is from Ballinasloe, Co Galway, began work on the sculpture last December at her studio in Kilkea, Co Kildare. It was commissioned last October by the basilica's Greek architects, Alexander Tombazis and Associates of Athens.
"The Church asked them to trawl Europe for sculptors," where various features in the new basilica were concerned, Ms Greene said. Following a competition, 30 sculptors were shortlisted and she was asked for ideas on the figure of Christ.
"I happened to get the job," she commented, after submitting her idea of "a Christ no longer suffering". Images of a suffering Christ on the Cross had been done for centuries, she recalled.
She perused "a whole lot of images [of the crucified Christ] throughout the history of art and didn't like 90 per cent of them."
The idea for the sculpture came when she wasn't thinking too much about it and relatively quickly, she recalled. In realising it she wanted to capture that biblical moment when Christ uttered the words "'into Thy hands I commend My spirit'" - "that combination of human consciousness and spiritual nemesis", she said.
She also felt that when people go into a church "they need to feel a sense of redemption and sanctuary." The process of creating it had been, simultaneously, "humbling and awe-inspiring", she said.
The figure being transported to Portugal today is cast in clay and plaster of Paris. It will be taken to a foundry in Oporto,there to be cast in "a goldy/browny bronze", for installation in the basilica by the end of August.
Ms Greene's other work includes a memorial to comedian Dermot Morgan in Dublin's Merrion Square and a figure of Thomas Francis Meagher on horseback at Waterford's quays. She has exhibited at the Solomon and Cross galleries in Dublin, and the Kenny gallery in Galway.