After Hiram Powers, Grand Tour Marble Sculpture of "The Greek Slave"

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After Hiram Powers (American, 1805-1873), “The Greek Slave”. A finely carved white marble sculpture after the antiquity which is currently … Read more After Hiram Powers (American, 1805-1873), “The Greek Slave”. A finely carved white marble sculpture after the antiquity which is currently held in the collection of Yale University. This model is unsigned but displays excellent quality likely dating to the late 19th or early 20th century.


Source Yale University Art Gallery

“There should be a moral in every work of art,” proclaimed the expatriate sculptor Hiram Powers from his studio in Florence, Italy. Taking as his subject the atrocities committed during the Greek War of Independence, Powers portrays a young Greek woman for sale by her Turkish captors. The sculpture, whose pose was based in part on the Florentine Venus de’ Medici, immediately made the artist one of the most acclaimed sculptors of his day. Powers defended the figure’s nudity, a controversial topic at the time in puritanical America, by “clothing” her in the garb of moral and religious strength. “It is not her person but her spirit that stands exposed,” he wrote. The Greek Slave became a symbol for abolitionists and the most celebrated sculpture in nineteenth-century America, inspiring an outpouring of prose and poetry. See less