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Arts|Simon Verity, World-Renowned Stone Carver, Is Dead at 79
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/01/arts/simon-verity-dies.html
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He headed the team that created the statues of biblical figures at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan.
Sept. 1, 2024Updated 11:29 p.m. ET
Simon Verity, a British stone carver whose bevy of works included the statues that adorn the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Upper Manhattan as well as grottoes, tombstones, fountains and floor inscriptions, like the brass lettering that marks the shrine to Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral in England, died on Aug. 11 at his home in Llandeilo, Wales. He was 79.
His wife, Martha Finney, said the cause was Lewy body dementia.
Mr. Verity was chosen to direct the St. John the Divine project in 1988. That venture placed him on a scaffold on Amsterdam Avenue for parts of nine years, leading a team that, using hammers, mallets and chisels, carved 31 biblical figures, including Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, Abraham and Sarah, from limestone blocks in the niches that frame the great brass doors at the Portal of Paradise.
One carving — a reimagining of the burning of Jerusalem — depicts the destruction of the World Trade Center and other city landmarks under a nuclear mushroom. (It was created more than a decade before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.) The carving illustrates signs of a rebirth, building on the city’s ashes.
The Very Rev. Patrick Malloy, dean of the cathedral, said in a statement that many tourists visited the cathedral just to see the portal.
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“Mr. Verity took the long-dead worthies of the Hebrew and Christian traditions and made them things of wonder for people in our own day,” he added. “Beyond this present age, his work will endure into a future beyond us.”
