Gloria and I meet again
By Joe Galeota · April 16, 2026

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Gloria. But I happened to be at the Museum of Fine Arts recently and there she was, after all these years, standing some 13 feet tall, towering over other sculptured pieces in a large hall.
She’s quite old, and her claim to fame is that she is the oldest, solid marble statue in the world. The affluent Brandegee family purchased her from England; she was carted over to America in the hold of some ship in 1904 and then pulled by numerous oxen to her Jamaica Plain residence.
The MFA does feature her prominently in the statuary collection. Its one mistake is to claim her previous residence was Brookline rather than in 02130, a sensitive issue to those of us who pride ourselves with JP connections.


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