CC0 · no rights reserved
Eve Tempted
From the collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Eve Tempted was Hiram Powers’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 naked only after she had fallen.” Her pensive expression anticipates the consequences of her actions, which the artist described in his later piece, Eve Disconsolate.
Smithsonian American Art Museum’s own descriptionSubjects
Credit lineEve Tempted. modeled 1842. Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase in memory of Ralph Cross Johnson. CC0.
