American Art Collaborative

The Irish American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens dazzled his contemporaries with his images of goddesses and angels, which appeared on tombs and decorative furniture as well as alongside realistic male portraits in his powerful monuments to Civil War heroes. Articulating an artistic and cultural ideology of the period, Saint-Gaudens wrote that “besides being more superior in artistic beauty,” allegorical figures provided a “greater scope to the imagination.” The ethereal, winged figure of Amor Caritas (“love, charity”) walks toward the viewer as if from a pageant. Her tender, solemn classicism is enlivened by the deep folds and furrows that define her robes, sensuous caresses made by the artist’s hand as he shaped and formed the figure.