Christ

Thomas Gould began his professional life in his native Boston as a dry-goods merchant, but when the Civil War brought a downturn in business, he turned an already developed avocation into a vocation and became a sculptor. He was immediately proficient as a portraitist but made his reputation with allegorical and literary figures and busts, such this bust and its mate, Satan, also in the Athenæum’s collection.

Gould exhibited plaster versions of his Satan and Christ at the Boston Athenæum in 1864. Having seen them there, a group of Bostonians then commissioned Gould to translate his plasters into marble in his studio in Florence, where he had moved permanently in 1868. It took Gould a full decade to complete the works, and they finally arrived at the Athenæum in 1878.

Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson for the Boston Athenæum.