
American Cincinnatus
Joseph Wright’s plaster medallion portrait bust of George Washington crowned with laurel, the American Cincinnatus, 1783–1785.
Artists, therefore, faced an unprecedented challenge: How to conceptualize and represent an entirely novel public figure—an ordinary citizen who embodied a fragile national identity, but was only temporarily invested with power by the will of the people?
See the full article in the Winter 2020 issue of the Mount Vernon Magazine, a benefit of being a Mount Vernon Member.