In the year following his admission into the Royal College of Art in London, Moore was tasked by the Head of Sculpture, Derwent Wood, to create a copy of a work from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Moore copied Domenico Rosselli’s marble relief of the Virgin and Child (c. 1476-98) but much to the defiance of his professor, Moore chose to carve directly into the marble instead of the suggested plaster copy followed by a pointing machine for translation into marble. Going a step further, Moore carved small holes similar to those left by the pointing machine in an attempt to deceive Wood.

Being only one of a few early surviving works by Moore, it is remarkable that he showed signs of strong authority in the way his work should be conceived at such an early stage of his career. Head of the Virgin (LH 6) mimics modernist qualities rather than academic sculpture, evidenced by the greater three-dimensionality in comparison to Rosselli’s original and the unpolished edges. Perhaps Moore’s drawing teacher who he described as being ‘the only teacher I learned anything from in a useful way’ was partially responsible for his acute awareness of light and the relationship between two-and-three dimensionality.