Life Cast of Left Forearm and Hand (fragment, study for "The Greek Slave")

This cast of a woman's forearm and hand eerily captures the unmistakable skin texture and muscle tone of a living model. Remarkably, it is the exact size and holds the same pose as the left arm and hand of The Greek Slave, inviting us to wonder who may have served as the artist's model for this famed sculpture and to what extent Powers relied on studies from life to create his idealized figures.

Sculptors have long made casts of limbs and torsos to serve as anatomical study models. Many were also hired to make death mask impressions of the faces of deceased loved ones and public luminaries. The boundary between modeling in clay and body casting was strictly observed, and sculptors risked their reputations and credibility if they were suspected of "cheating" by substituting a body cast instead of modeling the figure themselves.

From Smithsonian American Art Museum, released by the Smithsonian under CC0 through its Open Access programme. The Smithsonian does not endorse ModelsXi. Its own page has the object record and other copies, including full-resolution and print-ready files where they exist. The file is measured in inches, so engines that expect metres will show it about 39 times too large; the size above is the real one.