Abstract
Hiram Powers (1805–1873), the American sculptor, lived in Florence from 1837 until his death. On 7 August 1853, he wrote to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, then a member of the Anglo-Florentine circle of artists, that “the legitimate aim of art should be spiritual and not animal,” and that “the nude statue should be an unveiled soul.”1 In this letter, Powers reflected a contemporary American view of man's animal nature as evil and added a moral refinement to the Platonic idea, articulated in the nineteenth century, that “philosophy demonstrates that rationality and intelligence, although connected with animal nature, rises above it, and properly exists in a more exalted state.”2
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