A new statue of Dervorguilla of Galloway was installed in the Master’s Court of the University of Oxford’s Balliol College in September. She was the 13th-century cofounder of Balliol and its first benefactor.
Carved from a single block of limestone by artist Alex Wenham, it was described by the college as “a valuable contribution to Oxford’s public art, where statues of women – particularly those outside royal or religious contexts – remain sadly rare”.
Wenham’s Dervorguilla has the feeling of a time traveller, at once both medieval and modern. The smooth contours of her recognisably 13th-century form emerge, polished, crisp and authoritative, from the unworked stone around her.
