Revealed: Statue of Liberty may be a man
A controversial new theory suggests the sculptor who created the Statue of Liberty may have used his brother as the template rather than his mother, as commonly believed.
The idea is set out in a new series of Secrets of America’s Favourite Places to be broadcast on the Discovery Channel on Sunday…
Most controversially, however, Elizabeth Mitchell, an author and journalist, questions the idea that Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the French creator of a statue properly known as Liberty Enlightening the World, used his mother as inspiration.
“As I was looking at it more carefully, the structure of the face isn’t really the same. [His mother] has a more arched eyebrow, has a thinner nose, has thinner lips, even in her youth. And he was a bust-maker … and was known for his accuracy,” she told The New York Post.
“Going through photos he had in his files of his brother, I started to look at the face more carefully, and it really did look to be like Liberty. His brother in his adult years had actually gone mad, and it was Bartholdi’s task to go once a week to visit, sometimes [spending] hours just staring at his brother, who was not speaking.”
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8 responses to Revealed: Statue of Liberty may be a man
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mea_mark July 2nd, 2016 at 15:00
Does that mean the Statue of Liberty is Transgender?
Gina Bousquet July 2nd, 2016 at 16:06
It would appear so… :)
whatthe46 July 3rd, 2016 at 00:08
i knew someone would say it before i got the chance. nice mark.
granpa.usthai July 3rd, 2016 at 00:09
first thing that came to mind.
bloggo July 2nd, 2016 at 23:58
It was my understanding, from some old documentary I saw eons ago, that the goddess Hera was the inspiration for the statue.
mistlesuede July 3rd, 2016 at 00:10
Interesting. There does seem to be a lot of conflicting opinions and information on who was actually the model for the SOL and what it was to represent.
granpa.usthai July 3rd, 2016 at 00:23
does it really matter?
I mean, the whole objective of the statute is to be a light of hope for the tired poor huddled masses yearning to be free – like the war torn weary exiles of the Syrian civil war – or the Italians of years gone by, or the Irish in their day, the Swedes, Russians, Japanese, Ugandans, Thais, Vietnamese, Chinese, Australians, Canadians, Mexicans, just about every peoples of every country in the world has come and still are coming to LL’s America.
It’s why WE are the best with the best quality – not like the cheap trump imports that litter OUR land.
burqa July 4th, 2016 at 19:48
Har.
I always thought the face resembled Michealangelo’s “David.”
As an artist, I am always amused when people who don’t even know mre try to “interpret” my work according to their notions which they attempt to project onto me. First it’s amusing, then it gets annoying if they persist.
As far as I remeber, the classical figures for Liberty and Justice were always female.
In the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris is a copy of Bartholdi’s statue, and there is another on the tip of an island in the Seine. I believe he did the statue in France, where the figure for Liberty has always typically been a woman.
The statuer of Liberty is not a portrait, as far as I know. There is such a thing as “artists’s license” where we combine a number of different things and may depart from a realistic depiction of things in order to present the image in a different way we think looks better.
Hmmmm, wonder what it would have looked like if Picasso had done it in a cubist style….