Josefina Alys Hermes de Vasconcellos (26 October 1904 – 20 July 2005) was an English sculptor who worked in bronze, stone, wood, lead and perspex.

[1][2][3] After drawing lessons at Bournemouth Art School, de Vasconcellos studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London and, after the award of a Bronze Medal for Design in Sculpture during 1923, she studied in Florence under Guido Calore and Libero Andreotti before enrolling in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where she was taught by Antoine Bourdelle, one of Auguste Rodin's assistants.

A joint exhibition of their work was held in December 1946 at the Royal Watercolour Society Gallery off Bond Street with some larger sculptures, including The Last Chimera displayed on a Piccadilly bombsite.

[5][6][3] Subjects of her portrait busts and sculptures included Lord Denning, Edith Sitwell, Roger Bannister, Norman Nicholson, General Sir William Platt, James Cameron and, in perspex, Tenzing Norgay.

[5] In 1959, she was commissioned by the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square in London to construct a Nativity scene of life-sized figures, which became a regular fixture of the church's Christmas display.

[7] After its restoration in 1994 it was renamed Reconciliation and in 1995, to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, bronze casts of this sculpture were placed in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral and in the Hiroshima Peace Park in Japan.

The couple adopted two boys, and the family settled in a farmhouse at The Bield in Little Langdale in the Lake District, where she made a studio in an outhouse, as well as decorating the house with carvings and a mural.

[11] She continued her creative work well into her 90s, her final piece, Escape to Light, was created in 2001 to commemorate the men of the Independent Off-Shore Rescue Service; it is located at Haverigg on the Cumbrian coast.