Agriculture

The architects of the Federal Trade Commission headquarters turned to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Section of Painting and Sculpture to provide exterior sculpture to enliven the building’s austere façade, the design for which had been stripped of architectural ornamentation due to financial constraints. Four artists were selected to create overdoor reliefs to adorn the principal entrances on Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues. The sculptors collaborated with each other to devise complementary subject matter related to different aspects of trade. The only woman artist selected, Concetta Scaravaglione was the first to win approval for her proposed design, titled Agriculture. Her bas relief depicts a woman and man binding wheat, an image the artist selected because she said it was “the most universal symbol and most appropriate for the whole country.”

Concetta Scaravaglione enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York City when she was sixteen years old, while working at a perfume factory during the day to support herself.  She became the first woman to win the prestigious Prix de Rome scholarship to study at the American Academy in Rome. She was a versatile sculptor, working with a wide variety of materials, including wood, metal, terracotta, and bronze. Her work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.