Frivolous Friday: Smokin’ Hot Funeral Sculpture

Content note: marble nipple.

I’ve been going through various free stock photo sites, looking for pictures to illustrate my memes. (I’ve been making a series of memes to promote my book, The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life.) I was looking for images of cemetery sculptures to illustrate the quotes about death, and came across this:

cemetery sculpture half naked woman reclining

Damn. DAY-um.

I guess I don’t know for sure that this is a funeral sculpture: I have only the stock photographer’s word for it. But damn. This almost makes me want to be buried in a conventional cemetery, so I can have a sculpture like this on my grave. And I love that she’s reclining on a stack of books. Reading is sexy.

Alas, I never did find a good quote from the book to illustrate with this. But it was just too good not to share anyway.

(Image description: cemetery sculpture of a reclining half naked woman, her bottom half draped in fabric, her elbows resting on a stack of books.)

UPDATE: I’m informed by commenters (thanks, Dauphni and anon) that this is, in fact, a funerary sculpture. The figure is Urania, the muse of astronomy, sculpted by Giovanni Duprè, from the tomb of Italian-Argentine physicist Ottaviano-Fabrizio Mossotti. That makes it even more awesome. Sexy science funerary sculpture FTW!

Frivolous Fridays are the Orbit bloggers’ excuse to post about fun things we care about that may not have serious implications for atheism or social justice. Any day is a good day to write about whatever the heck we’re interested in (hey, we put “culture” in our tagline for a reason), but we sometimes have a hard time giving ourselves permission to do that. This is our way of encouraging each other to take a break from serious topics and have some fun. Check out what some of the other Orbiters are doing!

{advertisement}
Frivolous Friday: Smokin’ Hot Funeral Sculpture
{advertisement}

4 thoughts on “Frivolous Friday: Smokin’ Hot Funeral Sculpture

  1. 1

    Some google sleuthing tells me that this is from the tomb of Ottaviano Fabrizio Mossotti, an Italian physicist, and the sculpture was done by Giovanni Duprè.

  2. 2

    The figure is Urania, the muse of astronomy, sculpted by Giovanni Duprè, from the tomb of Italian-Argentine physicist Ottaviano-Fabrizio Mossotti in Pisa, Italy.

  3. 3

    “And I love that she’s reclining on a stack of books. Reading is sexy.”

    Would you say the same if it were a half naked man reclining on a stack of books???

  4. 4

    Would you say the same if it were a half naked man reclining on a stack of books???

    Chuck Brown @ #3: Sure, why not?

    And Dauphni @ #1 and anon @ #2: Thank you so much for the sleuthing! That makes it even better.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *