How did Henry Moore want the figures in his Madonna and Child sculpture to appear?

For his 1943 commission of the Madonna and Child sculpture for St. Matthew’s Church, Henry Moore sought to move beyond the common, everyday depiction of the subject. He aimed to imbue his figures with a sense of austerity, nobility, and a touch of grandeur, which he described as a "hieratic aloofness" that he felt was missing from typical representations of the theme.1