Sir Moses Jacob Ezekiel, (CSA)

http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/moses-ezekiel...

Although he would eventually become one of the most famous American sculptors of his era, Cadet Moses Ezekiel began making history the moment he set foot on the campus of the Virginia Military Institute in 1862. Ezekiel was the first Jewish cadet to attend the academy and as such faced some unusual situations, such as having to secure permission from the Board of Governors to visit his family for Passover.

During the Battle of New Market, Ezekiel fought as a member of Company C and was one of many cadets whose footwear vanished in the mud of the Field of Lost Shoes. Following the battle, he stayed by the bedside of his mortally wounded friend Cadet Thomas Garland Jefferson, reading to him from the bible, until he died.

Even as a cadet, Ezekiel’s artistic talent was apparent and during his final year, Robert E. Lee, serving as President of nearby Washington College (now Washington and Lee University), encouraged him to pursue this calling. After graduation he studied anatomy at the Medical College of Virginia, adding dramatic realism to his sculptures. In 1869, he moved to Europe — first Berlin and then Rome — where he studied further and completed some of his most famous sculptures.

During his career, Ezekiel completed more than 200 works and won awards and prizes including the Michel-Beer Prix de Rome, Crosses for Merit and Art bestowed by the Emperor of Germany and the Grand Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Palermo and the Raphael Medal from the Art Society of Urbino. The Italian King Victor Emmanuel gave him the titles of Chevalier and Officer of the Crown of Italy, as well as a knighthood.

But one of Ezekiel’s most personally significant works was dedicated on the campus of his alma mater in 1903. Cast in bronze and bearing the names of each cadet who fought in the engagement, Virginia Mourning Her Dead is commonly known the New Market Monument. Beneath the statue lie buried six of the ten cadets who died in the battle, including Ezekiel’s friend Jefferson.

Confederate Memorial at Arlington Cemetery. Perhaps Ezekiel's most famous sculpture. The monument was a gift to the Institute and Ezekiel made a rare trip to campus for its dedication. Seeing the young cadets on parade at the ceremony reminded him powerfully of his own classmates and he wrote that “something arose like a stone in my throat, and fell to my heart, slashing tears to my eyes.”

Ezekiel died in Rome in 1917, but the violence of World War I prevented the return of his body to the United States until 1921. He was interred at the foot of one of his other great works, the Confederate Memorial, in Section 16 of Arlington National Cemetery. Eight VMI cadets served as his honor guard and his headstone bore the simple inscription: “Moses J. Ezekiel, Sergeant of Company C, Battalion of Cadets of the Virginia Military Institute.”

(This biography appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of Hallowed Ground Magazine)

One of 14 children, Ezekiel was born on October 28, 1844 in Richmond, Virginia, in a now-demolished house on "Old Market Street," on the west side of 17th Street between Main and Franklin, in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. The family also lived in a house (demolished in the 1930's) on the southeast corner of Marshall and 12th. His grandparents, of Spanish-Jewish origin, had immigrated in 1808 to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from Holland—where the family had fled some 400 years earlier following the Spanish Inquisition.

source: http://www.jewish-history.com/civilwar/moses_ezekiel.html

erratum: Only the De Castro grandparents were Sephardic. The Ezekiel family was Ashkenazic. They are all buried in the Muiderberg Cemetery in Amsterdam, not the Sephardic cemetery. Also, his fifth great grandfather was the first cantor of the Great Synagogue of Amsterdam (Ashkenazic) which opened in 1671: Wolf Hijman / Chaim Schats-Segal‏‎. Moses never met his Ezekiel grandparents as they had died before he was born. Ezekiel says in his memoirs that his father told him that the Ezekiels were Sephardic. Either his father was mistaken because he was a young child when he left Amsterdam, or father or son wanted to be more "exotic". - Roberta Jaffer

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From the Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906:

American sculptor; born in Richmond, Va., Oct. 28, 1844; educated at the Virginia Military Institute, from which, after serving as a Confederate soldier in the Civil war, he was graduated. He then determined to devote himself to an artistic career. Among his early works is the painting entitled "The Prisoner's Wife."

Ezekiel soon turned from the study of painting to that of sculpture. One of his first successful efforts as a sculptor was his "Cain, or The Offering Rejected." In 1868 he removed to Cincinnati, and there modeled a statue of "Industry," which evoked favorable criticism. There being no art school in Cincinnati, he went to Germany, and in Berlin studied under the sculptor Rudolph Siemering. Some of his works produced at this time were the basreliefs of Schiller and Goethe, now in the Villa Collin, Berlin; "The Sailor Boy"; and the statue of "Virginia Mourning Her Dead."

On the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war Ezekiel became special correspondent of the "New York Herald." At Pillau he was suspected of being a French spy, and was confined for eight days in the Kronprinz-Caserne. After his release he worked in the studio of Prof. Albert Wolff of Berlin, where he executed the colossal bust of Washington now in the Cincinnati Art Museum. Upon the completion of this work he was elected a member of the Berlin Society of Artists. Establishing a studio for himself, he modeled, among other works, a bust of Mercury, a caryatid for Daniel Collin, and a bust of Grace Darling. His model in relief entitled "Israel," and a sketch-model for a group, "Adam and Eve Finding the Slain Abel," were awarded the Michael Beer Prize of Rome.

During a visit to America in 1874 he executed in marble a statue of "Religious Liberty" (see illustration on page 320)—the tribute of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith to the centennial celebration of American independence. The statue was unveiled in 1876 in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. Upon his return to Rome Ezekiel leased a portion of the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian, and transformed them into one of the most beautiful studios in Europe. Here he created for the niches of the Corcoran Art Gallery at Washington the heroic statues of Phidias, Raphael, Dürer, Michelangelo, Titian, Murillo, Da Vinci, Van Dyck, Canova, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Crawford. In 1896 a memorial to Jesse Seligman was executed by him for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, New York. He has been elected a member of various academies, and was knighted by the German emperor.

Of his works the following may also be mentioned: mural monument to Lord Sherbrook, St. Margaret's, Westminster, London; monument to Massarani, in the Jewish cemetery, Rome; fountain of Neptune, Nettuno, Italy; Jefferson monument, Lexington, Va.; recumbent statue of [Mrs. Andrew D. White, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.; Hausserek monument, Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, O.; "Christ in the Tomb," in the Chapel of La Charité, Rue Jean Goujon, Paris; David; Homer; Beethoven; Portia; Eve (now in the palace of Sans Souci, near Berlin); Queen Esther; portrait-busts of Cardinal Hohenlohe, Liszt, QueenMargarita of Italy, and the Grand Duke of Saxe-Meiningen.

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Ezekiel_Moses_Jacob_1844-1917