This sculpture is located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Museum's website (
visit link) us:
"Saint Tarcisius
Artist: Alexandre Falguière (French, 1831–1900)
Date: ca. 1868
Culture: French, Paris
Medium: Marble
Dimensions: Overall (confirmed): H. 23 1/2 x W. 52 x D. 20 in. (59.7 x 132.1 x 50.8 cm)
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Fund, 2007
Accession Number: 2007.407
On view in Gallery 556
Investigations into early Christianity constantly renourished Roman Catholicism in the nineteenth century. A bestselling novel by the Irish-born cardinal Nicholas Patrick Wiseman, "Fabiola, or the Church of the Catacombs" (1854), widely translated, was Alexander Falguière's immediate source. In the novel, the teenage acolyte Tarcisius is conveying the Host along the Appian Way when he is confronted by pagan playmates who order him to reveal it. He refuses and they stone him. Here the fallen martyr exhibits a bloodied forehead as well as an expression of beatific rapture as he clutches the holy wafer in his arms, faithful to the end. The fatal paving stones lie at his elbow. A photograph in the Musée Rodin, Paris, shows how Falguière blocked out the pose using a live model, aged about fifteen, covered by massive drapery instead of a tunic and soft boots. The first marble, in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, is dated 1868. In this second marble Falguière seems to have defied the marble's hardness to create instead a semblance almost of immateriality."
and Wikipediah ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarcisius adds:
"Tarsicius or Tarcisius was a martyr of the early Christian church who lived in the 3rd century. The little that is known about him comes from a metrical inscription by Pope Damasus I, who was pope in the second half of the 4th century.
History
The only positive information concerning this Roman martyr is found in a poem composed in his honour by Pope Damasus (366–384), who compares him to the deacon Saint Stephen and says that, as Stephen was stoned by a crowd, so Tarsicius, carrying the Blessed Sacrament, was attacked by a group and beaten to death.
Nothing else definite is known concerning Tarsicius. Since Damasus compares him to Stephen, he may have been a deacon; however, a 6th-century account makes him an acolyte.[3] According to one version of the detailed legend that developed later, Tarsicius was a young boy during one of the fierce 3rd-century Roman persecutions, probably during the reign of Emperor Valerian (253–259). One day, he was entrusted with the task of bringing the Eucharist to condemned Christians in prison. He preferred death at the hands of a mob rather than deliver to them the Blessed Sacrament which he was carrying."