Bacchante and Infant Faun

About this artwork

This sculpture is a smaller version of a three-quarter life-size bronze given by the artist to Charles McKim, the architect for the Boston Public Library who placed the statue in the fountain of the library's courtyard. Although the vast majority of Bostonians supported the statue, a small but powerful group denounced it as "debauched," "vice-ridden," and "treason to purity and sobriety and virtue, and Almighty God." The opponents included the Boston Brahmins—a group of Anglo-Saxon, Protestant e...