More of the lovely Helen Diaz, from a few weeks ago, looking almost entirely to the right, but not in the following image, where she is looking at you. Also, for no reason whatsoever than because I liked it, a statue from the Victoria & Albert Museum that lots of people have photographed, including me (scroll down).
Eve, by Sir Thomas Brock (1899)Brock made several different copies of the same basic sculpture, perhaps because there was a market for life-sized naked women in the late Victorian era. History does not record the name of the model, no doubt a poor urchin girl who was used and tossed aside; that is the fate of models. History does however record Thomas Brock's name. He spent his professional life sucking up to the British Establishment, and he was knighted for it, and showered with government commissions.
He also sculpted the lady in the middle here, at Admiralty Arch, shown next to a statue of Yuri Gagarin that was put up recently just next door:
On the left, Gagarin is catching a helicopter. Brock's sculpture represents the spirit of navigation. A second sculpture on the other prong of the arch embodies the spirit of gunnery; she carries a flintlock and wears a suit of armour. Ultimately that's what the British Empire was built on. Navigating around the world and blowing it up, or threatening to blow it up.I've always assumed that Eve would be a sturdier lady, 'cause although everything was laid on in the Garden of Eden, they still had to at least forage, and that means nettles equals pain. Brock's Eve would have moped around being self-absorbed, and if there's one thing men don't like it's mopey self-absorbed women. So perhaps Adam was glad to be cast out of Eden. I don't know.
