Best Harriet Goodhue Hosmer: Poets’ Hands Sculpture Sculpture

This elegant sculpture reproduces an original bronze cast in The Met collection. In 1852, the sculptor Harriet Goodhue Hosmer (American, 1830–1908) relocated from Watertown, Massachusetts, to Rome, Italy, where she became a prominent member of the Anglo-American expatriate community. In 1853, during her second winter in Rome, Hosmer developed a friendship with British poets Robert (1812–1889) and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861). Hosmer suggested making a cast of the poets’ interlocked right hands and Mrs. Browning agreed, provided the artist do it herself, rather than delegate the project to her studio assistants. Mrs. Browning’s delicate hand with a scalloped cuff is entwined in the slightly larger, firmer hand of her husband. Hosmer later noted that the hands appear just as they did when removed from the mold and, as a result, textural details are faithfully reproduced. This intimate piece is eloquent testimony to the profound love between the Brownings, who had eloped in Italy seven years earlier, as well as to the affection between the Brownings and Hosmer.