I’ll arbitrarily name these sculptures “Snowmom and Child.” They got me thinking about the popularity of art that shows a mother and child, a subject that I looked into for an article a while back.
History is replete with masterpiece sculptures depicting a mother and her child. One realistic ancient example is Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Virgin and Laughing Child” (1472). It depicts his idea of a Virgin Mary looking down with a warm smile at a playfully laughing baby Jesus – an unusually human moment that can make a sacred subject lovable.
On the other, more obtuse and modern end of the spectrum, there’s Henry Moore’s “Mother and Child: Hood” (1983). It’s an abstraction of a woman conceiving, gestating, and tenderly holding her child – all in one marble piece without realistic anatomical details. You have to let your imagination loosen its grip a little before you realize the work’s ambitious magnificence.
But, back to our less ambitious snow art, “Snowmom and Child”: We have a fairly abstract mom beside a somewhat realistic (albeit not laughing) child. I like to think that mom is taking her child out to the road to put her on the Brooklin School bus, after which mom will finally relax with a cup of coffee. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 15, 2025.) Click on the image to enlarge it.