1955.4.5
'Natura' (head)
Artist
Elihu Vedder
(New York City, New York, 1836 - 1923, Rome, Italy)
Title
'Natura' (head)
Creation Date
ca. 1893
Century
late 19th century
Dimensions
6 in. x 7 5/8 in. (15.24 cm x 19.37 cm)
Object Type
drawing
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
black and white crayon on brown wove paper
Credit Line
Gift of The American Academy of Arts and Letters
Copyright
Public Domain
Accession Number
1955.4.5
Elihu Vedder, an expatriate American artist working in Rome, subscribed to the belief that nature was the source of all art and that emulation of the great masters, such as Raphael and Michelangelo, would lead modern artists to a greater understanding of nature. This reverence for nature and its perceived expression in High Renaissance art was widely shared among academically trained artists of the time, including “American Renaissance” artists such as Vedder. In these drawings related to “The Art Idea,” Vedder’s mural commissioned for Bowdoin’s Walker Art Building (1894), the Tree of Life with its symbols of Alpha and Omega—the beginning and the end—flank a classically posed female allegory of “Natura.” Scholar Richard Murray concluded: “Of the hundreds of murals in public and private buildings, only one states the philosophical premise of the entire American Renaissance: Elihu Vedder’s Rome, or The Art Idea.”
