The immediate impulse her small grandchildren showed at the new statue of Jesus Christ on Temple Square surprised Young Women General President Emily Belle Freeman.
“I watched them walk up to this statue, and I watched them walk all around and look at it, and then I watched all three of them come and stand just here,” she said, pointing to a spot in front of the statue.
“I bent down to see what they were looking at,” she said, from their point of view. What she found filled her heart.
“He was looking right at them once they got here to this level,” she said.
The Swiss sculptor, Christian Bolt, was there when President Freeman described the experience.
“I cannot explain it probably adequately,” he said, “but that touches me. That’s great. It’s all about helping people coming closer to the Savior. It’s all about this.”
Bolt spoke with the Deseret News and shared his journey finding the God inside the marble block he selected from the same famed Carrara mines of Italy that produced the marble for Michelangelo’s David and for Thorvaldsen’s Christus, a Temple Square landmark for six decades.
He explained why this Christ is seated, how the statue was commissioned, and some of the symbolism embedded in the sculpture.
Visit the Deseret News to read the interview with the sculptor.
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