Hygeia by Edmonia Lewis, 1872. Monument for the grave of Harriot Kezia Hunt (November 9, 1805 – Janu

Hygeia by Edmonia Lewis, 1872. Monument for the grave of Harriot Kezia Hunt (November 9, 1805 – January 2, 1875), the first female physician to practice medicine in Boston. Statue located at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photograph by Christopher Busta-Peck, 2007, via Wikimedia Commons, This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.This 4 foot 4 inch/132 cm marble sculpture is badly weathered, though conservation steps have been recently implemented . The figure’s right hand may originally have held a serpent, the goddess’ signature companion, or a staff.Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907) was born in New York state, the daughter of an Ojibwa mother and an free Afro-Haitian father. She studied art at Oberlin College in Ohio, and afterward was accepted as a student by the sculptor Edward A. Brackett in Boston. Lewis created a bust of Colonel Col. Robert Gould Shaw, the commanding officer of the all-black Civil War unit known as the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and sold 100 copies of the bust during a Soldier’s Relief Fair held in Boston. The income, along that from with sales of sculpted medallions of abolitionists John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison, enabled her to relocate to Rome.“I was practically driven to Rome,” she told the New York Times in 1878, “in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color.“ She copied classical and neoclassical statues in the studio of HIram Powers, and learned to carve marble herself, for economy and control over her work, instead of hiring stone carvers to translate works from wax or clay models as did most sculptors. Lewis settled in her own studio and made a steady living from sculptures of Biblical and classical subjects. Her depictions of Native Americans and emancipated African-Americans received wide acclaim. She participated in major exhibitions, including Chicago in 1870, Rome in 1871, and the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, where she displayed The Death of Cleopatra, perhaps her most famous work. She also presented sculptures at the 1893 and 1895 World’s Fairs, both held in Chicago.Hygeia is the Greek goddess of health, cleanliness, and health regimens. She is the daughter of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing, and the granddaughter of Apollo. The Romans honored her as Salus, the goddess of well-being and safety of the individual and of the state.   -- source link

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