Undine Yale University Art Gallery

1880

On view, 2nd floor, American Art before 1900

According to medieval lore, undines were Mediterranean sea spirits who lived as soulless mortals. In the nineteenth century, this story gained prominence through Baron Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouqué’s popular novel Undine, in which a water spirit gains a human form and soul by marrying the mortal knight she loves. When her husband proves unfaithful, the laws of the water spirits force her to kill him. Chauncey Bradley Ives depicts the moment when the mournful Undine, cloaked in a white veil, rises like a fountain to claim her husband’s life. Exquisitely rendered, the diaphanous wet drapery is a masterful example of illusionistic carving.

Medium: Marble
Dimensions: 60 1/2 × 19 × 15 1/2 in. (153.7 × 48.3 × 39.4 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Alice A. Allen, in memory of her father, Simon Sterne
Accession Number: 1926.116
Geography: Made in Rome, Italy
Culture: American
Period: 19th century
Classification: Sculpture
Disclaimer: Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Bibliography

Joy S. Kasson, Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), 169–171, fig. 67

William H. Gerdts, American Neo-Classic Sculpture; The Marble Resurrection (New York: Viking Press, 1973), 89, fig. 73

William H. Gerdts, "Chauncey Bradley Ives, American Sculptor," The Magazine Antiques 94, no. 5 (November 1968), 716–717, fig. 5

Wayne Craven, Sculpture in America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968), 286–288, fig. 8.13

Object copyright

No Copyright - United States

Additional information

Object/Work type

human figures (visual works), mythology

Subject

spirits (beings) water

Signed

Signed, and inscribed proper left side of base: C.B. IVES. FECIT. / ROME.

Technical metadata and APIs

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