Greek Statue of a Slave

Greek Slave became the most famous sculpture of the nineteenth century and propelled the artist, Hiram Powers (1805-73), to international stardom. The work was so provocatively lifelike that certain exhibition venues in the United States required that men and women view the sculpture separately. Powers justified the sculpture's full nudity by claiming his work depicted historic events: a Greek woman, captured by Ottoman forces during the War of Independence, had been stripped and chained for sale at a slave market in Constantinople. American viewers in the 1840s and '50s, many of whom had never before seen a sculpture of a nude woman, felt licensed to admire the Greek Slave because she was "clothed all over with sentiment."