‘ARE YOU AMAZED?’
written by the Team Rector, Revd. Gary Cregeen
A few years ago, a scandal
erupted around the choosing of a
‘Millennium Statue’ for London’s
Trafalgar Square.
Back in 1843, when the square had
first been opened, four enormous
plinths were built around the
centrepiece of Nelson’s Column to
hold statues of George IV, William
IV and two heroes of the British Raj
- Sir Henry Havelock and General
Sir Charles James Napier.
William, however, had failed to
provide the funds for his own statue, so one of the plinths, in the
North-West corner, ended up
standing empty for the next 156
years.
In order to mark the Millennium,
the 2000th anniversary of Jesus’
birth, it was decided that an
appropriate statue should, at last,
be installed on the vacant plinth.
But the big question was, of whom
should it be?
Suggestions ranging from Queen
Victoria to Winston Churchill and
Florence Nightingale to William
Shakespeare were put forward for
consideration.
In the end, however, the statue of
Jesus was temporarily installed.
However, rather than calming the
debate, this solution simply
enraged it.
Cast in synthetic resin and white
marble dust, Ecce Homo was
installed in July 1999.
Mark Wallinger’s life size statue was
a mere fraction of the size of the
plinth itself - naked, except for a
loin cloth, with his hands tied
behind his back and a gold-plated
barbed wire ‘crown of thorns’ on
his head, Jesus looked tiny and
inconsequential by comparison
with the grand scale of the rest of
the square and the other statues.
Most passers-by were amazed by
the image - it was so totally
different to the usual, triumphalist
images of Christ that often adorn
buildings and famous work of art.
Where, people asked, were His
beard, His halo, His long hair and
His fine robes? And why was He so
tiny and vulnerable? Many objected
strongly.