The Great Stone Paradox

Abstract

THE Capitoline George Washington of Horatio Greenough was among most famous statues of mid-nineteenth century. It was largely through effort of Washington Allston that Greenough received this government commission in 18392; its price was be $5000 and its destination Capitol rotunda. The sculptor was twenty-seven and had several years in Italy behind him. Behind that were his Boston and Cambridge days sketches in Athenaeum when he was twelve, lessons in clay modeling from Solomon Willard, Doctor Parkman's help with human anatomy, and steeping in New England gentility at Cambridge, where Greenough succumbed Allston's charm, so adapted, as he later said, to kindle and enlighten me, making me no longer myself, but as it were, an emanation of his own soul. Before joining expatriates, Horatio was asked by Robert Gilmor model a portrait bust. He agreed and worked in Gothic library at Glenellen with its stained glass and its Flemish and Italian paintings, in his ears frolic fingering of young ladies' waltzes. Greenough in Italy was thoroughly content with what he called dear, compact, bird's-eye, cheap, quiet, mind-your-own-business, beautiful Florence. Out of his shop came Cooper's Chanting Cherub8 and other shapes etherial. On a delicious evening in 1835 Henry Tuckerman found Greenough in his studio; it had once been a chapel, and the softened effulgence of an Italian twilight glimmered through high windows. Tuckerman thought of long and soothing days which his companion would devote his statue