Eve+Tempted

Date: modeled 1839-1842, carved 1873-1877
 * [[image:http://americanart.si.edu/images/1968/1968.155.126_1c.jpg width="124" height="263" link="@http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=20041"]] || Title: **Eve Tempted**

Artist: **Hiram Powers** Born: Woodstock, Vermont 1805 Died: Florence, Italy 1873

Medium: marble Dimensions: 68 7/8 x 29 7/8 x 20 1/2 in. (174.9 x 75.8 x 52.0 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Museum purchase in memory of Ralph Cross Johnson

Accession: 1968.155.126 || //Eve Tempted// was Hiram Power's first full-length ideal statue. It shows Eve contemplating an apple in her hand while a serpent lingers at her side. American audiences in the nineteenth century felt that statues and paintings of nude figures were scandalous, but Powers maintained that "clothing would be preposterous, for [Eve] was [clothed] only after she had fallen." Her pensive expression anticipates the consequences of her actions, which the artist described in his later piece, //Eve Disconsolate//.
 * About the Artwork: **

"...as for her nudity -- she does not appear to know that she is so." The artist, quoted in April Kingsley, //Hiram Powers' Paradise Lost//, Exhibition Catalogue, 1985

Hiram Powers Biography
 * Resources: **

High Resolution Image <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">About the Artist <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">SAAM Collections Page
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Links: **