Christ and the Samaritan Woman (Meštrović)

Christ and the Samaritan Woman is an outdoor sculpture by Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović. Created in 1957, the sculpture resides in front of O’Shaughnessy Hall on the campus of the University of Notre Dame as part of the Shaheen-Mestrovic Memorial, which was completed in 1985 by the Department of Landscape Architecture and Planning in the South Bend office of Cole Associates. The marble and bronze sculpture depicts the events in John 4, in which Jesus converses and evangelizes to a woman from Samaria, with whom the Jews would not normally associate. Eli J. Shaheen, a Notre Dame alum, was the donor for the project, which is owned by the university. The “Woman at the Well,” as it is often referred, is flanked by sculptures of the gospel writers Luke the Evangelist and John the Evangelist. It has been regarded as the most notable and celebrated of Meštrović's works from his period at Notre Dame.