Musidora

Thomas Sully

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Painted in Sully's most succulent, painterly manner, "Musidora" is his only known nude. Inspired by James Thomson's poem Summer (1727), it is at once chaste and erotic, a combination that had great appeal for contemporary Victorian audiences. Sully depicts the modest Musidora at the moment her suitor, Damon, discovers her bathing in the forest. His gentlemanly conduct so impresses her that she pledges her love for him at once. The subject was painted by many artists of the day, but Sully's interpretation, in which the unwitting viewer plays the role of Damon, is compellingly unique.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art