An Eye for Art by National Gallery of Art

Author:National Gallery of Art
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2013-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

3 In Relief

A relief is a type of sculpture that is raised from a flat surface rather than being sculpted “in the round.” Coins and medals are examples of low relief, with images on them raised slightly from the surface. The Shaw Memorial was done in high relief, with the images projecting far from the surface. You can almost see all the way around Colonel Shaw and his horse.

The sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848 – 1907) used a photograph of Colonel Shaw to show his facial features and uniform accurately. He wanted the monument to be as realistic as possible, and he even brought a horse into his studio to work from a live model.

Each soldier is unique. Some of the soldiers in the 54th Regiment were as young as sixteen years old. Others were fathers enlisting with their sons. To give each man a sense of individuality, Saint-Gaudens hired several African Americans to pose for him.

How might these men have felt about fighting in the Civil War?

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