St. Maria Goretti Statue

Read more about St. Maria Goretti | Photos of statue blessing | Installing the statue

The bronze statue of our patron saint, Maria Goretti, which now stands in our Commemorative Garden, was made in Ortisei, Italy, located in the Bolzano province of northern Italy in the Dolomite Mountains. The area is one of the last places on earth that still teaches and produces sculpture and decorating for ecclesiastical art, according to Peter Stemper of T.H. Stemper Co., which facilitated the ordering and purchasing of the statue of St. Maria Goretti. Our statue was created using a process called lost wax casting technique, a multi-step, very detailed technique, involving a clay mold, rubber, plaster, wax, a ceramic “slurry” and molten bronze.The process has been used for thousands of years to create large bronze forms in 3-D that have a lot of detail. Our statue of Maria has patinas – which cause a chemical reaction that creates colors – added to darken her hair and to lighten her face. Her face was also smoothed more than usual, to show how young she was (11 years old at the time of her death).

Casting a bronze statue using the lost wax method is a complex technique involving six different copies of the original model that was sculpted in clay. These copies alternate between "positives," or duplicates of the model that look just like the model itself, and "negatives," or molds of the model. (Visit wildlifeart.org for a detailed description of the process.)

The term "lost wax" refers to a step where, after a wax form is created, molten bronze is poured in and melts the wax away, draining it out of the form as the bronze takes its place. The bronze is fired so it will accept what is called a patina, a chemical reaction on the surface to get color.

The statue of Maria stands as tall as she actually was - 4'7" - and it weighs more than 300 pounds.