José Villalta Saavedra was a Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

n sculptor. One of the first native Cuban sculptors, Villalta was a mulatto

Mulatto

Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...

 born in Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

. Thanks to private patrons, he was able to train in Europe, first in Canarias (Spain) and then in la Reale Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara. He worked in Italy and Cienfuegos

Cienfuegos

Cienfuegos is a city on the southern coast of Cuba, capital of Cienfuegos Province. It is located about from Havana, and has a population of 150,000. The city is dubbed La Perla del Sur...

. .

Works

Villalta created several important Cuban monuments and statues, including the statue of José Marti

José Martí

José Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. He was also a part of the Cuban...

 located in Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

's Parque Central (Central Park) (dedicated February 24th, 1905) and the monument to Cuban engineer Francisco de Albear

Francisco de Albear

Francisco de Albear y Fernández de Lara was a Cuban engineer.Son of colonel Francisco de Albear y Hernández, governor of the Morro Castle of Havana he was sent to study in Spain and graduated in 1839 from the Military Engineering School of Guadalajara, Spain, with the rank of lieutenant...

. Vilalta completed the Albear statue in Florence, Italy in 1893. The sculptor won a national competition to create a memorial to eight Cuban medical students executed in 1871 by Spanish colonial troops. It was completed in 1889, and it was the first monument made in Cuba by a Cuban artist.

In Havana's Necropolis Cristobal Colon

Colon Cemetery, Havana

The Colon Cemetery or more fully in the Spanish language Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón was founded in 1876 in the Vedado neighbourhood of Havana, Cuba on top of Espada Cemetery. Named for Christopher Columbus, the 140 acre cemetery is noted for its many elaborately sculpted memorials...

 (Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

 Cemetery), Villalta made the sculptures of the Virtues

Theological virtues

Theological virtues - in theology and Christian philosophy, are the character qualities associated with salvation, resulting from the grace of God, which enlightens human mind.- In the Bible :The three theological virtues are:...

(Faith, Hope and Charity) above the main cemetery entrance and the religious relief sculptures around the cemetery walls. Villalta also created the monument at the most visited place in Necropolis Colon, the grave of Amelia Goyri de la Hoz [de Adot], a woman known as "La Milagrosa" ("The Miraculous Woman" or "The Miraculous One"). An upper-class woman, she died in childbirth in 1901 at age 23, and her stillborn son was placed at her feet when she was buried. According to legend, when the grave was opened years later, her corpse was intact – a sign of holiness – and her son was nestled in her arms. Amelia is considered by many to be Cuba's unofficial saint. Cubans come to her grave every day to ask for children or love affairs. Villalta carved the sculpture out of one piece of Carrara marble

Marble

Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...

, and he finished the work in 1902.