From his northern Virginia studio, Irish sculptor Dony Mac Manus recounts the story of how one of his works — a sculpture depicting the Crucified Jesus — became stained with the blood of firefighters who, months after rescuing it from a fire at the New York Academy of Art, were among the first responders at the scene of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The work in question, which Mac Manus sculpted while studying at the academy — in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood, less than 10 blocks from what would become Ground Zero — is all white and depicts a bald and nude Jesus hanging on a cross, his muscles defined as though he were skinless. The stain is visible under the figure’s left shoulder.
“It’s an anatomical study of the Crucifixion,” he explained to the Register in a video conference call, showing on his phone the sculpture lying on the ground in his yet-unfinished art studio. Mac Manus referenced the statue as part of a broader conversation about the theology of the body, specifically in the context of healing through the artistic study of the human form. “It’s not a devotional work so much as me kind of
