The Victorians were anxious about their swiftly changing world. Social and scientific advances threatened to alter life as they knew it. This sense of threat influenced the way male sculptors depicted the female body—images of chaste maidens gave way to increasingly eroticized depictions of women, and Black women’s sexuality emerged as a theme in art. Simultaneously, British sculptors began to move away from pale Neoclassical marble and toward darker colored stone. Bronze, silver, gold, enamels, and paints transformed sculpture. “The Colour of Anxiety” opens with Antonio Canova’s demure Venus (The Hope Venus), dating 1817–20, which provides a standard for Neoclassical depictions of female purity. Naked bodies in bondage, dark skin, and bared breasts quickly follow. —Clara Molot