Body and Soul

"The nude statue should be an unveiled soul." — Hiram Powers

In terms of fame and financial success, Hiram Powers was the central American sculptor of the nineteenth century. He achieved this through the development—one might even say the "invention"—of a style that blended classical idealism, physical immediacy, and appealing subject matter with moral overtones.…

By 1842, he had produced his first idealized female nude, Eve Tempted. The choice of subject permitted nudity without offending Victorian morality. In order to reconcile the conflict between pagan-inspired nudity and contemporary prudery, the artist explained to Elizabeth Barrett Browning that "the nude statue should be an unveiled soul." The purity of the marble, from Seravezza—a quarry about eighteen miles from Carrara, Italy—lent itself to spiritual idealism, while its quasi-flesh tone (as the sculptor saw it) together with Powers's careful simulation of skin texture conjured a physical reality.

Source: William Kloss. Treasures from the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).

Pictured: Hiram Powers, 1805 USA –1873 Italy, Eve Tempted, modeled 1839–42, carved 1873–77, marble, 68 7/8 x 29 7/8 x 20 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase in memory of Ralph Cross Johnson.