Hiram Powers made his reputation with what became the most widely admired
of
all American marble sculptures, his nude Greek Slave (1843, six replicas).
This first
generation produced relatively severe, compact, idealized Greek sculptures
in the cool
spirit of the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova and the Danish sculptor
Bertel Thorvaldsen.
The more literal sensibility and baroque taste of the mid-19th century
asserted itself in
detailed, sentimental, and dramatic sculptures, beginning with the
innovative Cleopatra
(1858, three versions) by William W. Story.