The Greek Slave is a neoclassical 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 modelled the work in clay at his studio in Florence, Italy, completing it on March 12, 1843. The first marble version (prime version) of the sculpture was completed by Powers' studio in 1844 and is now in Raby Castle, England.
Five more full-sized marble versions of the statue were mechanically reproduced for private patrons, based on Powers' original model, along with numerous smaller-scale versions. Copies of the statue were displayed in many 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 Powers' 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 American public's sensitive perceptions in mind. Powers intentionally designed the sculpture to be both visually acceptable and logistically sound. 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 detailed iconography, including chains, crucifixes, and a locket. These images solidified the woman's identity as a Christian and an enslaved person who 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. It was instigated by the Greek War of Independence, following the influx of Greek refugees to the United States during that 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.
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 it by engraving and printing numerous copies, 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 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 where Garafilia was purchased. The Greek slave movement ended in the early 20th century with the abolition of Ottoman slavery in the 1920s.
Public reaction
Public reaction to the statue was initially mixed. When the work was first exhibited, many people were scandalized by the figure's nudity. In some venues, men and women were required to view the statue separately. 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. The New York Daily Tribune reported on an exhibition saying that viewers were “rapt and almost as silent as devotees at a religious ceremony.”
Some viewers also drew parallels between The Greek Slave and the enslaved people 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 leap to a contemplation of the enslaved Greek woman's circumstances and contemporary American slavery. African American abolitionist, writer, and formerly enslaved person, 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".Wagenknecht, Edward. James Russell Lowell: Portrait of a Many-Sided Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971: 138. 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.McMillen, Sally Gregory. Seneca Falls and the origins of the women's rights movement. Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 81.
Public display A great deal of organization and logistics went into ensuring that Powers' The Greek Slave was viewed by spectators from across the country. In Powers' mind, there was no other man more fit for this task than fellow artist, Miner Kellogg (1814–1889). Kellogg had traveled to Turkey and Greece to study the region's history and culture in preparation for the tour. Kellogg was a knowledgeable and trustworthy showman who managed everything from securing venues to purchasing fabrics and having a platform built to display the sculpture. He was a skilled businessman whose management skills and resourcefulness helped attract the masses. Powers, who remained in Italy while his sculpture toured the US, compensated Kellogg for the exhibition by giving him 20% of the work's net profits, with the understanding that if travel expenses exceeded $10,000, he would be responsible for the difference. Kellogg's early press material justified Powers' absence by describing him as a dedicated artist who was "toiling" in Italy.