America by Hiram Powers in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 2008

Title: America

Artist: Hiram Powers (American, Woodstock, Vermont 1805–1873 Florence)

Date: 1850–54; carved after 1854

Culture: American

Medium: Marble

Dimensions: 27 5/8 x 20 1/4 x 13 5/8 in. (70.2 x 51.4 x 34.6 cm)

Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. William A. M. Burden Jr., 1966

Accession Number: 66.243


Powers modeled his personification of "America" as a bust after completing a full-length version intended to "embody the political creed of our country." The youthful maiden wears a diadem with thirteen stars referring to the thirteen original colonies, which the sculptor saw as "giving majesty and dignity." America was among the most popular of Powers’s idealized busts, and he reaped a steady profit from it, replicating it at least twenty-eight times.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11788