IT is the largest single figure created by one of Scotland’s leading sculptors.

The towering, 14ft sculpture of Leon Battista Alberti, one of the giants of Italy’s Renaissance, is currently in the studios of Alexander Stoddart in Paisley, waiting to be cast in bronze and cross the Atlantic to its ultimate destination.

The sculpture of the Italian architect, writer, poet and author is to be part of one of the US’s leading universities, the Universityof Notre Dame in Indiana.

There, the towering figure will be part of a rebuilt architecture department.

The sculptor, whose studios are located within the Paisley campus of the University of the West of Scotland, has shared an image of the sculpture, being worked on by studio assistants Lindsay McQuarrie and Zoe Roy.

With dividers in one hand, and a scroll in the other, Alberti, Mr Stoddart said, is looking at the remains of classical Rome - deep in the past - as well as looking into the future.

In a detail which alludes to the Scottish site of its creation, Alberti’s left leg is beside a Roman altar, to Diana and Apollo, which is part of the Hunterian Museum’s collections at the University of Glasgow.

The plaster statue will shortly be move to Black Isle Bronze, where it will be cast in bronze, before it’s lengthy shipped journey across the Atlantic: it is due to be unveiled officially at the University of Notre Dame in the summer.

Mr Stoddart, known for his neo-classical sculptures - including David Hume and Adam Smith on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, said it is the result of around two years of work.

He said: “It is a large work in contemporary terms, by real standards, it is not not that large, although it is a big work for me, and the tallest single figure.

“He has dividers in his hand - he is measuring the world. He is staring at Rome, and that is what is there in that block by his leg - so he is looking 1400 years back, but also to the future, back and forward at the same time.”

Mr Stoddart said he is also currently working on a figure, also for the US, that will be taller.

The sculptor noted that the figure of Albert (who lived from 1404 to 1472), simply clothed, is distant from the current “imperium of modernism.”

He addded: “The pathos of this work is that it is most distant from the trends of now - it is the most temporally alienated sculpture I have made.”

The artist said that Notre Dame’s School of Architecture, established in 1898, perhaps aptly, emphasises traditional architectural ideals and theories.

The architect John Simpson has designed the university’s new School of Architecture building, and has worked with Mr Stoddart before, notably the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace.

Mr Stoddart, born in 1959, studied at Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow.