Among the earliest of Power’s major public commissions, the Figure of Science was carved for the College of Science on Merrion Street — the building that would later become Government Buildings, seat of the Irish government. Made in 1911, before the Rising, before the War of Independence, before the Civil War that would define so much of Power’s subsequent work, it represents his emergence as a sculptor capable of monumental public commissions.
The allegorical figure stands in the classical tradition of personification — Science rendered as a female figure, composed and authoritative. Power’s handling of the stone shows the technical grounding he had received from John Hughes and Edouard Lantéri: the anatomy is rigorous, the drapery handled with confidence, the overall effect one of restrained gravity rather than Victorian bombast.
The building that houses it became, after independence, the seat of the Taoiseach and Cabinet. Power’s figure of Science thus presides, with some irony, over the political machinery of the state rather than its scientific institutions.
Significance: One of Power’s earliest major public commissions, now part of the Irish Government Buildings complex on Merrion Street.