Episode 71: Sculptor Harriet Hosmer: Queen Zenobia in Chains

19th-century artist Harriet Hosmer in her sculpture “Queen Zenobia in Chains” captures the defeated Queen in the moments of her captivity, weighed down by chains as her tormenters paraded her in the streets of ancient Rome. Hosmer conveys through the austerity of marble and Neoclassical style, Zenobia’s strength, grace and fortitude of the humiliated captive.

In this episode, I discussed some examples of styles (distinctive manners of expressions) including (left to right): Rococo’s “The Swing,” by artist Jean-Honore Fragonard, Realism through the lens of Gustave Courbet’s “Stonebreakers,” and an example from the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole, “View of the White Mountains.” The Neoclassical style is emulated in the painting by Angelica Kauffman, “Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures.”