The Greek Slave
Artist
Unknown
ArtistAfter
Hiram Powers
(American, 1805-1873)
CultureAmerican
Date19th century
MediumMarble
DimensionsOverall: 44 3/4 x 15 5/8 x 13 7/8 in. (113.7 x 39.7 x 35.2 cm)
Credit LineGift of James H. Ricau and Museum purchase
Object number86.510
Not on view
Label TextUnknown sculptor After Hiram Powers American (1805-1873) The Greek Slave Marble Gift of James H. Ricau and Museum purchase 86.510 This sculpture by an unknown Italian caver faithfully copies the most famous American sculpture of the nineteenth century, Hiram Powers' The Greek Slave (1843). Powers derived his work from contmeporary accounts of the war of independence Greece had waged against the Turks in the 1820s. In the sculpture, a virtuous Greek Christian woman--stripped of her clothes by her Turkish captors and manacled at the wrists--turns her head away in shame as she is sold into slavery in a Constantinople market. Among her discarded clothes is a cross, symbolic of her faith, and a locket, symbolic of the family she has been forced to leave behind. Victorian audiences traditionally frowned upon nudity in sculpture, but most viewers of The Greek Slave accepted and even applauded its nudity. They felt it was justified by the sculpture's lofty moral tone and by the fact that the figure was helpless in her nakedness. American clergymen noted that the woman, though naked, was nonetheless "clothed in Christian virtue," while Abolitionists saw in it a veiled indictment of America's own slavery problem. Exhibition History"The Ricau Collection," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., February 26 - April 23, 1989.
