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This is the marble group Wyon exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1920 (RA catalogue number 1464) titled The Sorrows of Mankind. The catalogue entry is accompanied by a quotation from Thomas De Quincey's 'Suspiria de Profundis, a collection of essays or prose poems: 'Mater Suspirorum...Mater Lachrymarum...Mater Tenebrarum...who plague man's heart, until they have unfolded the capacities of his spirit.' The three female nudes in the sculpture, hovering around a sphere of Mexican onyx, correspond to the three female figures in the quotation: Our Lady of Sighs, Our Lady of Tears, and Our Lady of Darkness, who appear in De Quincey's essay 'Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow' as companions to Levana, the ancient Roman goddess of childbirth (which explains the infants around the base).