Desolation is a sculpture made by Josep Llimona 1907 which is part of the collection of the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona. Background Llimona, of the Catalan Modernism school of sculpture, joined the Symbolism movement during the first few years of the 20th century after adopting an idealism deeply rooted in his religious convictions. Llimona contributed to the founding of the Artistic Circle of Sant Lluc, which intended to preserve art from the perceived excesses of contemporary artists. Female nudes were prohibited by the Circle's initial statutes, and Llimona created Desolation after the prohibition was lifted. The work was exhibited for the first time in 1907 and aims to communicate feelings that reflect a deep humanity through a naked female figure. Desolation, an example of Modernisme sculpture, represents the formal traits of Symbolism as adopted by prominent Catalan sculptors of the day. These traits include undulating lines and softened contours, features that derive from The Danaide by Auguste Rodin. Critics have said that a notable difference exists between the resigned, melancholic and chaste attitude of Desolation and the vitality, strength and sensuality of Rodin's work. With Desolation, Llimona utilised his process of sculptural renewal, while also aiming to exemplify the Symbolist aesthetic of Catalan Modernism. Description Desolation is a nude version of a figure produced for a burial vault in the Montjuic Cemetery. The sculpture´s measurements are 67 cm x 76 cm x 67 cm (26.4 in x 29.9 in x 31.5 in). The sculpture belongs to a group of works created specifically for new pantheons built during the early 1900s. Artists created sculptures of angels, or Virtues, that included women overcome by the weight of their grief and allegorical figures reflecting feelings such as despair, grief, or resignation. The artists aimed to capture feeling, rather than beauty. Typical characteristics of these works are languid, bowed female figures with long hair dressed in flowing tunics. Although this style wasn't adopted in all the works, female figures predominate, and their formal characteristics passed into the artistic language used by modernist sculptors in the works they produced for collectors, which discarded the funerary elements of the originals. The most notable characteristic of Desolation is the ease with which it transmits inner emotions. The hermetic and mysterious nature the sculpture evokes has to do with its posture. The hidden gaze, the closed composition of the body, and its curved contours seem