Diana of the Tower

Augustus Saint-Gaudens created his original Diana as an eighteen-foot-tall wind vane that was mounted atop the tower at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Installed in October 1891, Diana drew attention as the most conspicuous nude in late nineteenth-century American art. Given the figure’s notoriety, Saint-Gaudens saw financial advantage in issuing statuettes of the work. He did not simply replicate the figure mechanically but modeled his reductions by hand and had them cast by the leading French and American foundries. Elegant statuettes such as this one were marketed through Tiffany and other fine shops.