The most famous sculpture in American art is currently on show at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. Hiram Powers’s The Greek Slave (1844), a lifesize female nude carved in pristine white marble, toured a dumbstruck continent for more than four years, from 1847 to 1851.
Nubile, depilated, daintily chained, this vision of nakedness came disguised in all kinds of propaganda. The pose was high art (based on the Venus de Milo). The Greek girl was a true Christian (a crucifix dangles below one wrist). She was obviously trying to shield her modesty with the other hand (perhaps). Powers described his creation as the embodiment of “high moral and intellectual beauty” and even swapped the chains for manacles in a later version, alluding to America’s anti-slavery movement. But his nude was as notorious as it was stupendously popular, repeated on every scale from museum to mantelpiece edition.
