BENEDICTINE SAINT IN WOOD – 18th CENTURY, SILENCE, WISDOM AND DIVINE PRESENCE 🙏📖✨

This sculpture touched me deeply. A 18th-century Benedictine saint, with a serene expression and gentle gaze, carved in wood with simplicity, faith, and devotion. Dressed in the traditional Benedictine habit, with long vertical folds, he holds a book in his left hand — a symbol of monastic knowledge, prayer, and the contemplative life.

The other hand, once raised in a gesture of blessing, has lost its fingers over time… and yet it still blesses. His slightly tilted face radiates a quiet, compassionate spirituality, as if he’s listening to us in silent prayer. The flowing lines of the robe lead the eye upward, evoking the verticality of faith and the inner discipline so central to the Rule of Saint Benedict.

This is a piece that needs no ostentation. It has soul. It has time. And it carries the imperfect beauty of things that have survived the noise of the world — and that continue, century after century, to speak to our hearts. 🕊️🪵