Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science is an allegorical sculpture

Allegorical sculpture

Allegorical sculpture refers to sculptures that symbolize and particularly personify abstract ideas as in allegory.Common in the western world, for example, are statues of 'Justice', a female figure traditionally holding scales in one hand, as a symbol of her weighing issues and arguments, and a...

 created in 1899 in the Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...

 style by Louis-Ernest Barrias

Louis-Ernest Barrias

Louis-Ernest Barrias was a French sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school.He was born in Paris into a family of artists. His father was a porcelain-painter, and his older brother Félix-Joseph Barrias a well-known painter...

. The sculpture depicts a woman—personifying Nature

Mother Nature

Mother Nature is a common personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it in the form of the mother. Images of women representing mother earth, and mother nature, are timeless...

—removing a veil to reveal her face and bare breasts. The sculpture, which is in the Musée d'Orsay

Musée d'Orsay

The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, an impressive Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture,...

, was commissioned for the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers

Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers

The Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers , or National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, is a doctoral degree-granting higher education establishment operated by the French government, dedicated to providing education and conducting research for the promotion of science and industry...

. Underneath the veil, Nature wears a gown held up by a scarab. The figure is made of marble, with the gown made of Algerian

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

 onyx

Onyx

Onyx is a banded variety of chalcedony. The colors of its bands range from white to almost every color . Commonly, specimens of onyx contain bands of black and/or white.-Etymology:...

, and the scarab of malachite

Malachite

Malachite is a copper carbonate mineral, with the formula Cu2CO32. This green-colored mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often forms botryoidal, fibrous, or stalagmitic masses. Individual crystals are rare but do occur as slender to acicular prisms...

. The sculpture has also been reproduced in other media.

According to historians of science Lorraine Daston

Lorraine Daston

Lorraine Daston is an American historian of science, presently the executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin...

 and Peter Galison

Peter Galison

Peter Louis Galison is the Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics at Harvard University.Galison received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in both Physics and the History of Science in 1983. His publications include Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics ...

, the sculpture "blends the ancient trope of the veil of Isis, interpreted as nature's desire to hide her secrets, with the modern fantasy of (female) nature willingly revealing herself to the (male) scientist, without violence or artifice." According to historian of science Carolyn Merchant

Carolyn Merchant

Carolyn Merchant is an American ecofeminist philosopher and historian of science most famous for her theory on 'The Death of Nature', whereby she identifies the Enlightenment as the period when science began to atomize, objectify and dissect nature, foretelling its eventual conception as inert...

, the sculpture is emblematic of transformation of conceptions of nature that came with the Scientific Revolution

Scientific revolution

The Scientific Revolution is an era associated primarily with the 16th and 17th centuries during which new ideas and knowledge in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and chemistry transformed medieval and ancient views of nature and laid the foundations for modern science...

: "From an active teacher and parent, she [Nature] has become a mindless, submissive body." In a similar vein, biologist and essayist Gerald Weissmann has noted the similarity between Nature's pose in Barrias' sculpture and that of the central figure in the 1876 painting Dr. Pinel Unchaining the Mad by Tony Robert-Fleury

Tony Robert-Fleury

Tony Robert-Fleury was a French painter.He was born just outside Paris, and studied under his father Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury and under Delaroche and Léon Cogniet....

, a released inmate from an insane asylum who has "the detached look of the very lost." Literary critic Elaine Showalter

Elaine Showalter

Elaine Showalter is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues. She is one of the founders of feminist literary criticism in United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocritics.She is well known and respected in both academic and popular...

imagines a companion piece depicting Science would consist of "a fully clothed man, whose gaze [is] bold, direct, and keen, the penetrating gaze of intellectual and sexual mastery".

External links

• Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston