Adams, Adeline: The spirit of American sculpture (New York: Nat. Sculpture Soc., 1923)

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THE SPIRIT OF
tue. Well, if I rightly understand
this sculptor, I like his “faciebat.” It
seems more conscientious and less
cocksure than the “fecit” with which
our sculptors sometimes grace their
signatures, and it is certainly not so
gruff as the laconic “sc.” Between its
eight letters one reads the coming and
going of those seven diligent Italian
years; and we shall deceive ourselves
if we count those years wholly lost
for our American art. If only Green-
ough could have enjoyed some of the
surplusage of admiration given to his
contemporary Powers for his Greek
Slave with her well-smoothed body,
her manacled Medicean hand, and the
accurately fringed mantle at her feet!
Though expressly advertised as a nude
figure, she is dressed from top to toe
in a most unfleshly hard-soft technique
which our time calls incompetent, but
which 1847 styled “the spiritualization
of the marble.” The personality of
II
OUR BLITHE