Saint Louis Art Museum | A Prayer Like Gravity

…studies in sculpture and abstraction, spirits and souls…

Studies of Chauncey Bradley Ives’s Undine Receiving Her Soul, 1861.

The description reads:

‘This sculpture appears remarkably different when viewed from opposing sides. The front presents Undine’s face and pose. From behind, the sculpture appears to be a stunning, nearly abstract study in rippling fabric, which streams down her back, gathers fluidly at the waist, and pools on the ground.’

‘Undine was a mythological water spirit who tricked a mortal into marrying her in order to gain a soul. Chauncey Bradley Ives, one of the American sculptors working in Rome, depicted Undine according to a passage in a popular literary account: “But an appearance, from the opening of the fountain…rose like a white column of water; at first they imagined it to be a spouting fountain…until they perceived the form to be a pale female, veiled in white.’

She does indeed catch the eye captivate the imagination as if arriving from a deep pool of the mind….

All images found at SLAM, the Saint Louis Art Museum.

A Prayer Like Gravity

Mundus vult decipi

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