Janet DeCoux, American, 1904–2000, St. Benedict with a Raven, 1948, Stone, 72 x 19 1/2 x 16 3/4 in., Saint Vincent Archabbey Collection. Photo: Richard Stoner.
The daughter of an Episcopal minister, Janet DeCoux’s childhood propensity for making was complemented by an early exposure to religious sculpture. Encouraged to pursue a career in art, she apprenticed with several leading sculptors of the day and studied at Carnegie Institute of Technology (Carnegie Mellon University), New York School of Industrial Design, Rhode Island School of Design, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago before serving as a resident instructor of sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1942–1945. DeCoux returned to her childhood home in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, converting a former barn into her studio. There she completed dozens of commissions for private, civic, and ecclesiastical patrons both regionally and nationally, including an 18-foot-tall bronze statue of William Penn for The State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.
In 1948, The Liturgical Arts Society commissioned fifteen contemporary artists to sculpt interpretations of religious figures in a concerted effort to encourage clergy to acquire modern work for their congregations. Among those selected, DeCoux chose Saint Benedict, submitting a thirty-inch plaster maquette for exhibition. Upon learning of the discrepancies between her initial sculpture and the habit worn by many Benedictines, DeCoux wrote to Fr. Quentin Schaut, OSB, asking if she might visit Saint Vincent to make notes of the habit worn by the monks for her work to better resemble their attire. As a result of their meeting, Saint Vincent commissioned a full-scale version of the statue in limestone. In consultation with Emil Frei, Jr., the statue was designed to be located atop a base of slate positioned beneath the Basilica Crypt’s center archway.
DeCoux’s stylized Benedict is portrayed as a young man with the monastic tonsure, or shaved scalp and elongated, highly structured hands, connoting a life marked by labor. Standing erect, Benedict gestures upwards at a raven clutching bread in its beak. According to the Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great, a priest named Florentius jealous of Benedict’s popularity among the faithful sent him a gift of secretly poisoned bread. While Benedict was blessing the bread before attempting to eat it, a raven is said to have taken the loaf, thus miraculously thwarting the priest’s sinister plan. Through its size and solidity, the statue embodies the Benedictine vow of stability–reflective of a monk’s commitment to be grounded in a designated locale, time honored precepts of the past, and informed by the particular needs of the present.
In 1948, The Liturgical Arts Society commissioned fifteen contemporary artists to sculpt interpretations of religious figures in a concerted effort to encourage clergy to acquire modern work for their congregations. Among those selected, DeCoux chose Saint Benedict, submitting a thirty-inch plaster maquette for exhibition. Upon learning of the discrepancies between her initial sculpture and the habit worn by many Benedictines, DeCoux wrote to Fr. Quentin Schaut, OSB, asking if she might visit Saint Vincent to make notes of the habit worn by the monks for her work to better resemble their attire. As a result of their meeting, Saint Vincent commissioned a full-scale version of the statue in limestone. In consultation with Emil Frei, Jr., the statue was designed to be located atop a base of slate positioned beneath the Basilica Crypt’s center archway.
DeCoux’s stylized Benedict is portrayed as a young man with the monastic tonsure, or shaved scalp and elongated, highly structured hands, connoting a life marked by labor. Standing erect, Benedict gestures upwards at a raven clutching bread in its beak. According to the Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great, a priest named Florentius jealous of Benedict’s popularity among the faithful sent him a gift of secretly poisoned bread. While Benedict was blessing the bread before attempting to eat it, a raven is said to have taken the loaf, thus miraculously thwarting the priest’s sinister plan. Through its size and solidity, the statue embodies the Benedictine vow of stability–reflective of a monk’s commitment to be grounded in a designated locale, time honored precepts of the past, and informed by the particular needs of the present.
