Trust in God

Among the most famous sculptures by Lorenzo Bartolini is undoubtedly the Trust in God. This is the plaster model preliminary to the marble work which is preserved at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan. Marquise Rosa Trivulzio, widow of Giuseppe Poldi Pezzoli, commissioned the Prato artist in 1833 to create an image of consolation following her husband's passing, which was not a lament but rather an expression of abandonment in faith.
This 93-centimetre sculpture shows a teenager sitting on her heels looking at God and opening her soul in a gesture of pious devotion, while her hands, resting on her legs, cling together in a quiet and silent prayer. The body revealed in the whiteness of the nudity, is defined by a soft and flowing line, satisfying a need for abandonment in the face of the presence radiating from the sky. 
It was a beauty dictated by the “true” and observation of a “natural” attitude, as the scholar Pietro Giordani says, in which Bartolini was inspired by the pose of a model who rested whilst he was creating another sculpture. Harmony, simplicity and a particular intensity coexist in Trust in God. It is a manifesto of beauty understood not only as a physical attribute, but also as a moral and spiritual virtue. 
A great admirer of Renaissance art and a firm believer that nature is an inexhaustible source to imitate and not idealise, Bartolini also recalls the 15th-century sculptures of Florentine Andrea del Verrocchio and Desiderio da Settignano.