The Greek Slave
The Greek Slave is a marble sculpture by the American sculptor Hiram Powers. It was one of the best-known and critically acclaimed American artworks of the nineteenth century, and is among the most popular American sculptures ever. It was the first publicly exhibited, life-size, American sculpture depicting a fully nude female figure. Powers originally modeled the work in clay, in Florence, Italy, completing it on March 12, 1843. The first marble version of the sculpture was completed by Powers' studio in 1844 and is now in Raby Castle, England.
Five more full-sized versions of the statue in marble were mechanically reproduced for private patrons, based on Powers' original model, along with numerous smaller-scale versions. Copies of the statue were displayed in a number of venues around Great Britain and the United States; it quickly became one of Powers' most famous works, and held symbolic meaning for some American abolitionists, inspiring an outpouring of prose and poetry. The position of the figure is said to have been inspired by the Venus de' Medici in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Subject
The statue depicts a young woman, nude, bound in chains; in one hand she holds a small cross on a chain. Powers himself described the subject of the work thus: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.
When the statue was taken on tour in 1847 and 1848, Miner Kellogg, a friend of the artist and manager of the tour put together a pamphlet to hand out to exhibition visitors. He provided his own description of the piece:
The ostensible subject is merely a Grecian maiden, made captive by the Turks and exposed at Istanbul, for sale. The cross and locket, visible amid the drapery, indicate that she is a Christian, and beloved. But this simple phase by no means completes the meaning of the statue. It represents a being superior to suffering, and raised above degradation, by inward purity and force of character. Thus the Greek Slave is an emblem of the trial to which all humanity is subject, and may be regarded as a type of resignation, uncompromising virtue, or sublime patience.
Exhibition Precedents
Before the exhibition of Hiram Power's The Greek Slave, many artists had unsuccessfully attempted to display artwork and sculpture in America that featured nude figures. For example, Horatio Greenough's Chanting Cherubs depicted two nude figures, which revealed the discomfort Americans felt towards nudity. In Boston, objections to the nudity in the work led to the temporary addition of tiny aprons on the cherubs. In 1829 Greenough disappointedly wrote, "I thought the country beyond that; there is a nudity which is not pure". This was a shocking revelation to the art community and revealed strict perceptions about nudity for American viewers. It is especially surprising because the two figures were putti or baby angels. Despite having religious overtones, the figures were still deemed unacceptable.Power's The Greek Slave was designed with the sensitive perceptions of the American public in mind. Powers intentionally designed the sculpture to be a visually acceptable and logistically sound work. The sculpture needed to be practical in shape and size so by making it with reasonable dimensions, it could be easily boxed up and shipped across the country. He designed the sculpture to fit upon and within the diameter of its pedestal. Powers also knew of Americans' distaste for nude figures after Greenough's failings. As a result, he chose to design a slender nude female figure, but with a unique and captivating narrative. The work featured a detailed iconography with chains, crucifixes, and a locket. These images solidified the woman's identity as a Christian and a slave that was being forcefully stripped of her clothes. These features helped set the stage for viewers to be at ease and appreciate the work’s beautiful aesthetic features.
Greek Slave Movement
The Greek Slave Movement in the United States began in Boston and was instigated by the Greek War of Independence following the influx of Greek refugees traveling to the United States during the period. Some of the refugees were freed or runaway slaves such as Christophorus Plato Castanis, Halet Logotheti, Garafilia Mohalbi, Joseph Stephanini, and George Colvocoresses. The horrors of Greek slavery were published in newspaper articles as early as 1828. The title of a popular article was Slave Market at Constantinople which discussed the enslavement of Greek women in great detail. That same year Joseph Stephanini wrote The Personal Narrative of the Sufferings of J. Stephanini. The book discussed Stephanini's experience as a Greek runaway slave. The next year, Greek American educator Petros Mengous completed his book Narrative of a Greek Soldier which discussed the horrors of Greek slavery in great detail and, a freed Greek slave girl died of Tuberculosis in Boston named Garafilia Mohalbi.File:Geromeslavemarket.jpg|thumb|250 px|right|The Slave Market by Jean-Léon Gérôme
The young girl became a media sensation. American painter and miniaturist Ann Hall painted a miniature portrait of the little girl and Edward Gallaudet popularized the portrait by creating an engraving and printing numerous copies of the portrait which circulated throughout the United States. Lydia Sigourney wrote an epic poem entitled Garafilia Mohalby as early as 1831 which received notoriety throughout the country and by the early 1840s Hannah Flagg Gould was inspired by Ann Hall's miniature portrait and wrote the poem Garafilia's Picture. Around the same period, American sculptor Hiram Powers completed his model of the Greek Slave Statue. U.S. Consul Gregory Anthony Perdicaris completed two volumes of books named The Greece of the Greeks in 1846 which discussed Greek slavery. Around this period the Greek Slave Statue
File:"Le Butin" de Théodore Rallis .jpg|thumb|300 px|left|The Booty by Theodoros Rallis c. 1890-1907
toured the United States. By the 1850s, the Greek slave girl inspired Carl Hause to commission close friend Carl Gartner to compose a song called Garafilia Mazurka for piano in honor of the Greek slave girl Garafilia. The Greek slave became popular among artists around the world. French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme created a painting known as The Slave Market. Other works include The Slave Market by Gustave Boulanger, and The Slave Market by Otto Pilny, completed in the latter part of the 19th century.
Greek American runaway slave Christophorus Plato Castanis published his book The Greek Exile; or, A Narrative of the Captivity and Escape of Christophorus Plato in 1851. The book features an account of his experience as a runaway slave. The slave movement was a tool used by Greek American abolitionists John Celivergos Zachos and Photius Fisk. Zachos and Castanis were classmates in the late 1820s, Zachos became an American abolitionist. Both were refugees brought to the United States as children by abolitionist Samuel Gridley Howe. Harriet Beecher Stowe was inspired by the Greek slave story. She alludes to using the Greek slave girl as motivation for Uncle Tom's Cabin in her next book A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin published in 1853. Stowe discusses a communication given to her by Captain Austin Bearse where he writes about his travels and witnesses slavery all over the world: I was in Smyrna when our American consul ransomed a beautiful Greek girl in the slave-market. I saw her come aboard the brig 'Suffolk,' when she came on board to be sent to America for her education. Smyrna was the same city Garafilia was purchased. Sadly, the Greek slave movement ended in the early 20th century because Ottoman slavery was not abolished until the 1920s.
Public reaction
Public reaction to the statue was mixed. When the work was first exhibited, many people were scandalized by the figure's nudity; Powers countered much of this criticism by suggesting that the young woman was a perfect example of Christian purity and chastity, because even in her unclothed state she was attempting to shield herself from the gaze of onlookers. Furthermore, he said, her nudity was no fault of her own, but rather was caused by her Turkish captors, who stripped her to display her for sale. So well did this reasoning work that many Christian pastors would exhort their congregations to go and see the statue when it was displayed.Some viewers also drew parallels between The Greek Slave and the slaves who were concurrently working on the plantations of the American South. Such parallels were initially lost upon much of the statue's American audience, but as the American Civil War neared, abolitionists began to take the piece as a symbol. It was not difficult to make the leap from a contemplation of the Greek slave's circumstances and contemporary American slavery. African American abolitionist, writer, and former slave, William Wells Brown emphasized the comparison by placing an engraving entitled "The Virginian Slave," a depiction of an enslaved black woman, at the feet of Powers's statue. The comparison was, as well, the subject of a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. Additionally, the statue inspired a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning called "Hiram Powers' Greek Slave". Abolitionist Maria White Lowell wrote that The Greek Slave "was a vision of beauty that one must always look back to the first time of seeing it as an era". In 1848, while walking through Boston Common, Lucy Stone stopped to admire the statue and broke into tears, seeing in its chains the symbol of man's oppression of the female sex. From that day forward, Stone included women's rights issues in her speeches.