Print Size: 8 1/2" x 11" (Frame Size: 16" x 20") Artist: Frederic Auguste Bartholdi
When 20-year-old Frederic Auguste Bartholdi visited Egypt in 1854 he was profoundly moved by the ancient “granite beings in their imperturbable majesty…whose kindly and impassable glance seems to disregard the present and to be fixed upon the unlimited future.” Years later, the French sculptor applied the same timeless gaze to the Statue of Liberty. Bertholdi’s model has been variously identified as Isabella Boyer, the recently widowed French wife of American sewing machine industrialist Isaac Singer, or alternately Bartholdi’s beloved mother Charlotte. Either way, he bypassed the specificity of life size portraiture for a more generalized image of womanly virtue, drawing inspiration also from the Libertas, the Roman goddess of Freedom. Lady Liberty’s determined 17-feet-long face was shaped by ramming and hammering copper sheets into a wooden mold and then riveting the shaped pieces together. Her chiseled 4.5-feet-long nose, 3-feet-wide mouth, and unblinking eyes, each 2.5 feet across, won widespread recognition as the Statue of Liberty came to symbolize the United States, effectively the female counterpart to Uncle Sam. She is seen here surrounded by scaffolding while undergoing a 100th anniversary facelift to counteract the pitting and other corrosive effects of 100 years’ exposure to salty winds and pollution in New York Harbor.
