SAINT-GAUDENS, Augustus
(b. 1848, Dublin, d. 1907, Cornish)

Diana

c. 1894
Gilded bronze, height 72 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The only female nude that Saint-Gaudens created, Diana was initially designed as a weathervane for the tower of Stanford White's Madison Square Garden, which was completed in 1891. This statuette, a reduction of the over-lifesize original, lacks the flying drapery of the weathervane and is mounted atop a full orb on a two-tiered base.