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  ...he should ever feel responsive to his own the tender clasp of the original. He dared not even kiss the image that he himself had made: it had assumed its share of Hilda's remote and shy divinity.
"And now," said Miriam, "show me the new statue which you asked me hither to see."

CHAPTER XIV
CLEOPATRA
"My new statue!" said Kenyon, who had positively forgotten it in the thought of Hilda; "here it is, under this veil." "Not a nude figure, I hope," observed Miriam. Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing.   I am weary, even more than I am ashamed, of seeing such things. Nowadays people are as good as born in their clothes, and there is practically not a nude human being in existence. An artist, therefore, as you must candidly confess, cannot sculpture nudity with a pure heart, if only because he is compelled to steal guilty glimpses at hired models. The marble inevitably loses its chastity under such circumstances. An old Greek sculptor, no doubt, found his models in the open sunshine, and...   Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Excerpt from The Marble Faun - Volume 1 The Romance of Monte Beni · This quote is tagged Sculptures · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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