"Eve at the Feet of the Virgin Mary" Proposed Fountain

The project was not completed.

While working on the Divine Comedy stained glass window for the residence of Robert J. Collier in 1911, Violet Oakley came upon a subject that would fascinate her for decades: Eve at the feet of Mary. A vision described by Dante in the conclusion of Paradiso, it symbolized the ultimate reconciliation of sinful humanity with God. For Oakley, it represented the rehabilitation of woman’s moral nature. The artist incorporated the image in three of her works: the Divine Comedy window, the Great Women of the Bible series, and an unrealized design for a fountain.

The idea of a making her composition of Eve at the feet of Mary into a fountain crystalized in Rome in 1937. Oakley’s sketches show several variations, including the Trevi Fountain and a pedestaled fountain similar to the one outside Villa Medici on the Pincian Hill in Rome. She intended to explicate the symbolism of the fountain in a special edition of a book to be called The Canticle of the Fountain: “Design for a fountain of the Water of Life, inspired by certain passage of the Divine Comedy of Dante, Paradiso XXX & XXXII.”