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Cast of an Unidentified Baby's Left Hand Pressing Down
Hiram Powers (born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873)
n.d.
- Medium
- plaster and string
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- 2 1/4 x 4 1/2 x 3 1/4 in. (5.8 x 11.5 x 8.3 cm.)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase in memory of Ralph Cross Johnson
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
There are many plaster fragments of anatomical details in the Hiram Powers collection that cannot be identified. These may have been models for the hands and feet of full-size sculptures, such as Left Hand Clutching Scroll, which was a study for the Thomas Jefferson statue that stands in the U.S. Capitol, and Left Hand Pressing Down, which was for the statue Greek Slave. Many pieces were also likely commissioned as individual works. The popularity of Loulie’s Hand, a sculpture based on Powers’s daughter’s hand, may have influenced visitors to request casts of their own children’s and loved one’s hands.
