Josefina Alys Hermes de Vasconcellos (26 October 1904 – 20 July 2005) was an English sculptor who worked in bronze, stone, wood, lead and perspex. She was at one time the world's oldest living sculptor. She lived in Cumbria much of her working life. Her most famous work includes Reconciliation (Coventry Cathedral, University of Bradford); Holy Family (Liverpool Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral); Mary and Child (St. Paul's Cathedral); and Nativity (at Christmas) at St. Martin-in-the-Fields (Trafalgar Square). Biography de Vasconcellos was born in Molesey in Surrey; she was the only child of Hippolyto de Vasconcellos, a Brazilian diplomat and Freda Coleman, an English Quaker. After drawing lessons at Bournemouth Art School, de Vasconcellos studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London and, after the award of a Bronze Medal for Design in Sculpture during 1923, she studied in Florence under Guido Calore and Libero Andreotti before enrolling in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where she was taught by Antoine Bourdelle, one of Auguste Rodin's assistants. She first exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Show in 1926, with The Repentance of St Hubert and completed her first major commission in 1929 for the Church of Saint Valéry in Varengeville-sur-Mer, Normandy, which included a life-sized reclining figure of Saint Valéry under a stone altar. After she returned to England, de Vasconcellos enrolled in the Royal Academy Schools and was placed second in the 1930 Prix de Rome contest. During the Second World War de Vasconcellos began working on a number of large sculptures including The Last Chimera, which is now in the grounds of the Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh and The Hand, a memorial in green slate to a friend killed in the war which now serves as a war memorial for St Bees School in Cumbria. After the war de Vasconcellos and her husband Delmar Banner established a studio in London, while maintaining their home in the Lake District. A joint exhibition of their work was held in December 1946 at the Royal Watercolour Society Gallery off Bond Street with some larger sculptures, including The Last Chimera displayed on a Piccadilly bombsite. This exhibition helped establish de Vasconcellos in the British art world. She became a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy and at the Paris Salon. In 1948 she became the first female fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, serving on its council and organising committee,