
Diana, the Huntress - Pueblo, Colorado, USA
Posted by:
Outspoken1
N 38° 15.788 W 104° 37.015
13S E 533512 N 4235079
This is an exact replica of the statue of Diana the Huntress found in Mexico City. The replica is a Sister City gift from Chihuahua, Mexico.
Waymark Code: WMMADA
Location: Colorado, United States
Date Posted: 08/21/2014
Views: 6
The plaque reads:
"Diana the huntress replica by Ricardo Ponzanelli the original is the work of Juan Olaguibel and is displayed in Mexico City. Other replicas are located in the cities of Chihuahua, Guadalajara and Acapulco. This piece of art, admired by the people of Mexico and its visitors, is presented as a gift to the sister city of Pueblo, Colorado by Patricio Martinez Garcia, Bonifacio Martinez Del Val; Ricardo Ponzanelli; Enrique Cano Garcia. Pueblo, Colorado. May 4th 2003"
The nude statue, entitle 'Archer of the North Star,' was quite controversial in Mexico City, as the article relays (
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"M.P. Prabhakaran wrote about the statue in Mexico City:
Pointing to the statue of a naked woman posing as an archer, in the middle of a floral-shaped fountain at the intersection of the two roads, she said, “This is the Fountain of Diana the Huntress, another important landmark in the city. Though it is now called la Diana Cazadora or Diana the Huntress, the original name given to it by its sculptor was la Flechadora del Norte or the Northern Arrow Thrower." [an other source says: Flechadora de la Estrella del Norte or Archer of the North Star, PvdK]
The sculptor, Juan Olaguibel, had meant his work to be a monument not merely to Diana, the Roman Goddess of Hunting, but to the beauty of female body as well. So he presented Diana in the nude. His model, it is said, was a 16-year-old part-time secretary who worked for Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company. The story goes that she posed naked for the sculptor every day of the April-September 1942 period that took him to complete the statue. The young lady's only compensation was the joy “of seeing her body immortalized on one of the most beautiful avenues in the city.”
But soon after the statue’s inauguration, on October 10, 1942, Diana’s nudity drew protests from Mexico’s prudes. The forms of protest included covering the nudity with underwear made of cotton. Cotton underwear on a bronze statue? Sculptor Olaguibel had a better idea. He replaced it with one made of bronze. But hoping to take it off sometime in the future, when the Mexican society was expected to become less prudish, he welded the underwear at three corners only tentatively. " (from (
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Sister City website (
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