The Greek Slave
marble, 1846
Hiram Powers
American, 1805-1873

The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

This sculpture by Hiram Powers was perhaps the most popular American work of art in the mid-1800s. Over one hundred thousand people paid to see it during its 1847-1848 tour around the country. Hiram Powers's sculpture of a completely nude and very shapely woman was the subject of great controversy when it was created in 1846. He attempted to circumvent criticism of her nudity by casting her as a Christian martyr captured by heathen Turks and sold as a slave.

Powers himself supplied this language on the statue's sensational subject--a woman on sale as a sexual object: "The Slave has been taken from one of the Greek Islands by the Turks, in the time of the Greek Revolution; the history of which is familiar to all. Her father and mother, and perhaps all her kindred, have been destroyed by her foes, and she alone preserved as a treasure too valuable to be thrown away. She is now among barbarian strangers, under the pressure of a full recollection of the calamitous events which have brought her to her present state; and she stands exposed to the gaze of the people she abhors, and awaits her fate with intense anxiety, tempered indeed by the support of her reliance upon the goodness of God. Gather all these afflictions together, and add to them the fortitude and resignation of a Christian, and no room will be left for shame."