nature unveiling herself

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On this date—April 13, 1841—French sculptor Louis-Ernest Barrias was born.

One of his most famous works that is so apropos to this blog, La Nature se dévoilant à la Science or "Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science" is an allegorical work created in 1899 (the same year my grandfather Homer was born and a time when science was just beginning to go boldly where it had never gone before). 

The sculpture depicts nature personified as a woman removing a veil to reveal her face and bare breasts. Underneath the veil, Nature wears a gown held up by a scarab beetle made of malachite. Nature herself is made of marble, while her gown is made of Algerian onyx!

Science author and Chattanooga native Chet Raymo writes, "There she stands, on her pedestal in the Musee d'Orsay, taunting our curiosity—bare breasts, a glimpse of toes—still, after millennia of scientific discovery, wrapped in mystery. She does indeed love to hide, this enigmatic goddess who provoked Heraclitus, and I suspect that another two-and-a-half millennia from now we'll still be wondering what she has to reveal.

Indeed.

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