Child Bride

Child Bride is a portrait bust modeled in earthenware clay by the sculptor Philippe Faraut in 2014. It shows a young girl whose head and shoulders are covered by a thin bridal veil. The work measures about 19 by 13 by 11 inches (48 by 33 by 28 centimeters). Faraut made it to draw attention to child marriage, which campaigners at the time estimated affected some 15 million girls each year who were married before the age of eighteen.

What you are looking at

The girl faces us almost head-on, her chin level, her gaze steady and slightly downcast. Her face is that of a child: rounded cheeks, a small mouth, a short nose. Over her head falls a veil that reaches down past her shoulders, finished at the edge with a band of lace.

The veil is the tour de force. Faraut models it as though it were wet, clinging fabric, so that every feature beneath shows through: the eyebrows, the bridge of the nose, the lips, strands of hair pressed against the forehead. Folds gather and fall in long vertical pleats around the face and spread outward over the shoulders. The effect is of a face both hidden and fully exposed. The veil, a symbol of a bride's modesty, here conceals nothing.

That contrast carries the meaning. The girl is dressed for a ritual meant for adults, but the veil reveals how young she is.

The veiled-figure tradition

Faraut is working in a tradition best known from Italian marble sculpture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Antonio Corradini's Statue of Chastity and Giuseppe Sanmartino's Veiled Christ, in which a solid material is carved to look like transparent cloth. In those works the veil usually stands for modesty, virtue or mystery. Faraut borrows the technique but turns it to a social subject, so that the veil becomes a sign of something imposed on the child.

The artist

Philippe Faraut trained in France in woodcarving and the construction of fine furniture before settling in the United States, first in the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia and later in upstate New York. He works mainly in water-based clay and has taught portrait and figure sculpture widely through workshops, books and videos since the 1990s. His work, which includes portrait busts, figures and veiled heads, has been shown in the international salons of the Art Renewal Center.

Meaning

The bust works as a single, quiet image rather than a narrative. There is no groom and no setting, only the child. By holding her expression in a neutral, inward state, Faraut leaves the viewer to supply the emotion.

Where to see it

The current owner and display location of Child Bride are not publicly documented. For other veiled sculptures, see La Pudicizia and our selection of famous sculptures.