During the 1850s, American artists and writers formed a community in Rome. Among them were Salem-born William Wetmore Story, Louisa Lander, and Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Story had abandoned his distinguished career as a Boston attorney to become a prolific sculptor. In his Cleopatra and Libyan Sybil, he sculpted strong, sensuous, controversial women and earned international acclaim. Louisa Lander had just begun her career as a sculptor when she met the Hawthornes in Rome. Her provocative marble bust of Nathaniel became a source of scandal and gossip abroad and at home in Salem.

 

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About the Presenter

 

Patricia Dunlavy Valenti is Professor Emerita in the Department of English and Foreign Languages at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. She specializes in women’s studies, biography, and 19th-century literature and is author of five books including biographies of Rose Hawthorne Lathrop and Sophia Peabody Hawthorne. Her current project centers on American expatriates in Rome during the 1850s.