Maria 14 cm | 5.5 in

This is the first copy out of the original wax shape. It has been, and still is, cast in white resin with marble powder. Dressed in white, the color expressing spirituality, candor and purity. White is perceived as the image of the force capable of activating matter. Therefore, life is not represented by white but the vital energy that is the basis of all creation. These white copies have and are always at reach of the hands of the visitors at the exhibitions, thus, inviting to hold them. Once again reminding us that the hands see and the eyes touch.

In February 1995, in Puebla, Mexico, Guido Dettoni purchased some wax at the early morning local market. He had in spirit and mind to shape the Icon of Mary, thus, upon his return to Barcelona, without seeing he shaped the first handheld Icon.

Why did Guido shape it? The only answer we received from him is that this creation was a response to a call in the awareness that he had to do it strictly following his creative process: without sight, shaping a handheld amount of malleable matter in a quantity to be chosen intuitively.  Emptying his mind to let memories arise by keeping the awareness of his intention, he discovered within hands the Icon representing the Mother, the Feminine, the Spiritual.

In spite of its public presentation in June 1995, he felt that this image was not what it could be, so he interrupted its reproductions. Guido started a period of three years of meditation and to visit again the points of view of the image which had emerged from the memories of his stays in Nazareth and Palestine. This made possible almost imperceptible changes completed by, both hands and eyes.
January 8, 1998 at his studio in Palma de Maiorca he finally discovered the definitive handheld Icon.

By the end of the same year the first MARIA exhibition took place at the Diocesan Museum of Barcelona, Pia Almoina. Since then, the exhibitions and presences of this Icon have been twentynine times in churches, cathedrals, art centres and public places.

For 20 years, MARIA permanent exhibitions have been installed in the church of Santa Maria delle Rose in Assisi,  5 years in Prague at Saint Mary of the Snow and in Singapore at the Church of Saint Ignatius.