Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science

Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science (La Nature se dévoilant à la Science) is an allegorical sculpture created in 1899 in the Art Nouveau style by Louis-Ernest Barrias.

The sculpture, which is in the Musée d'Orsay, was commissioned for the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers.

According to historians of science Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, the sculpture "blends the ancient trope of the veil of Isis, interpreted as nature's desire to hide her secrets, with the modern fantasy of (female) nature willingly revealing herself to the (male) scientist, without violence or artifice.

"[2] In a similar vein, biologist and essayist Gerald Weissmann has noted the similarity between Nature's pose in Barrias' sculpture and that of the central figure in the 1876 painting Dr. Pinel Unchaining the Mad by Tony Robert-Fleury, a released inmate from an insane asylum who has "the detached look of the very lost.

"[3] Literary critic Elaine Showalter imagines a companion piece depicting Science would consist of "a fully clothed man, whose gaze [is] bold, direct, and keen, the penetrating gaze of intellectual and sexual mastery".