Hiram Powers's Studio

Comprising a section of the former Annalena convent, this studio doubled as a dwelling for Hiram Powers, a well-known 19th-century American photographer and sculptor, from 1839 until 1852. During this period, Powers created some of his most famous works, including the Greek Slave, Fisher Boy, and Eve Tempted. The building consisted of four floors: the studio was on the ground floor while the family occupied the third and fourth floors (the building's owner lived in the second floor). Powers was frequently visited here by well-known artists, writers, and politicians, including the American writer Margaret Fuller, British poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband Robert Browning, who lived just around the corner at Casa Guidi, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and Nicholas I, the Czar of Russia. Powers relocated elsewhere in the Via de Fornaci in 1852 and then again in 1868, about five years before his death in 1873, when he moved his home and his studio outside the city walls of Florence.

One section of Powers's former residence and studio.
The Casa di Annalena and Pensione Annalena that existed while Powers lived there now serves as a hotel.

Parent Map

Key Locations: EBB and the Landmarks of Slavery
First Exhibitions of Hiram Powers's "Greek Slave"

Coordinates

Latitude: 43.763858624101
Longitude: 11.245559814463

Timeline of Events Associated with Hiram Powers's Studio

Date Event Manage
1841 to 1843

Hiram Powers Sculpts "The Greek Slave"

Though American sculptor and artist Hiram Powers created the Greek Slave as a representation of Turkish atrocities committed during the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) from the Ottoman Empire, it quickly came to represent commentary on slavery in the United States. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, the statue was shown in London (including the Great Exhibition of 1851) and various U.S. cities to mixed reactions, largely resulting from his depiction of the woman's nude form.

 The Greek Slave. The Greek Slave.
26 Oct 1850

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Publishes "Hiram Powers' Greek Slave"

Elizabeth Barrett Browning originally published "Hiram Powers' Greek Slave" in the second volume of Charles Dickens's Household Words. The poem considers The Greek Slave, a statue sculpted by American artist Hiram Powers, with whom she and Robert Browning were acquainted and near-neighbors in Florence. Because the statue was, at the time of the poem's inception, being displayed across the U.S. and Britain, it is likely that EBB saw a model cast of the statue for herself at Powers's studio in early 1847. "Hiram Powers' Greek Slave" is the fourth of the five poems EBB wrote about slavery and is primarily responsible for shifting the statue's popular context away from that of the Greek War of Independence that had initially inspired Powers' work and towards broader questions of morality surrounding slavery abroad in the United States.

 Title page of the first volume of Household Words.