| This dissertation examines American sculpture executed between 1825 and 1865 within an historical and cultural context. Using published and unpublished correspondence to identify artists' intentions, and nineteenth century journals, newspapers, and books for interpretations of mid-century sculpture, three themes emerge consistently: liberty, unity, and Manifest Destiny. These themes prevailed at a time in American history when secession and the abolitionist controversy threatened the nation's fabric, and when westward expansion became a focus of national indentity. Because mid-century sculpture embodied moral and patriotic themes of civic virtue, it assisted in creating and sustaining a national iconography for a country in search of a usable past, a present identity, and a promising future, and the sculpture aspired to the level of academic History Painting, especially in its component of exemplum virtutis.;This dissertation is comprised of four sections. The first examines the sculpture on the United States Capitol's east facade which is studied for the first time as an iconographic program, outlining the course of empire and military extension as America's destiny and mission. Next, Hiram Powers' Greek Slave is viewed in context of the Greek War of Independence and the abolitionist controversy, demonstrating that many Americans understood this female figure as a covert condemnation of Southern slavery, and a moral lesson on the universal wickedness of tyranny and oppression. Powers' America forms the third section of this dissertation. A chameleon-like allegory that underwent a series of iconograpic transformations in response to events both in the United States and Europe, this Ideal work is examined in relation to the 1848 Italian Revolution, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and finally the Civil War, events that shaped the artist's intentions for and meanings in his grand allegory. Finally, images of American leaders in mid-century public portrait monuments, the divine ruler, the statesman as civic hero, and the military equestrian, are studied in relation to patronage and pageantry, especially focusing on speeches delivered at the inaugural ceremonies for the works' unveilings and then published in pamphlet form. |
