Street Scene

use contact page to request from Nyilasi Fine Art in

Hamilton, Canada

Venetian Murano smalti glass on wood board

24 x 36 inches

signed

framed

Catalogue No: TNYIL-302

Description: People hurrying along a public street, streetlamps overhead… The title seems to indicate everyday events in any modern Western city. Two female figures are centrally placed. An older woman dressed in sensible black shoes, brown stockings and a dull-coloured dress, her hair in a kerchief like an Eastern European worker, catches the viewer’s attention. Her headscarf is an intense, cheerful blue, and she reaches out to congratulate a younger woman, who stands respectfully passive and attentive to receive the greeting. The young woman seems to be wearing German traditional folk dress. Her long brown hair is uncovered, which suggests unmarried status and youth. A closer look at the mosaic shows this is both an ordinary moment in time and place and also a representation of the personal emotional gravity of a moment from Biblical history, because both women are pregnant. Here is Elizabeth, pregnant with St. John the Baptist, greeting Mary, whom she knows is carrying the unborn Jesus. Everyday life swirls around them in this “street scene”, with the passersby unaware of this momentous historical meeting. Nyilasi’s mosaic reflects the traditional pictorial iconography of this New Testament event, used by medieval and Renaissance artists, in a subtle and modern restatement.