2024-10-07 09:54:26
In 1886 the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York Harbor. She was born 21 years earlier in a village near Versailles. And Lady Liberty looked completely different. A historic model now up for auction shows a crucial difference.
On April 21, 1865, a revolutionary dinner took place in the village of Glatigny near Versailles. The Parisian historian, lawyer and professor of comparative legislation at the Collège de France, Édouard René Lefèbvre de Laboulaye, had in fact invited us to celebrate a happy event. After four years of civil war in the United States of America, the Confederacy of the Southern States had surrendered.
The final abolition of slavery was sealed. Freedom had triumphed. But the assassination of American President Abraham Lincoln, which occurred a few days earlier, overshadowed the festive dinner.
The liberal Laboulaye had written books on relations between France and America. He fought against the French royalists and the hated Emperor Napoleon III. American democracy was his great model for the renewed French Republic.
He wanted to create a monument to her, a symbol of freedom and solidarity of both states. That is why Laboulaye invited influential politicians and citizens, as well as the young Alsatian sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, to his conspiratorial dinner.
The statue was originally intended for Egypt
Bartholdi had brought with him a sketch of an old-fashioned woman with one arm raised high, carrying a torch. Bartholdi actually wanted to realize his project as a colossal statue in Egypt honoring the Suez Canal, built by France.
But Laboulaye had convinced him that the heroic lady would be better off in New York – as “Lady Liberty”. Laboulaye’s plan was to build a monument to freedom in America and remind his home country of France of its own lack of freedom.
But the financing of the megalomaniacal project lasted a long time (the French donors were supposed to allow the construction of the 46-meter high sculpture, the Americans were supposed to pay for the construction of the base). But this gave Bartholdi the opportunity to refine his design and make some models.
His terracotta sculpture, created around 1870, shows the Statue of Liberty in the form of the Roman goddess Libertas with stole and halo. The torch moved from the left hand to the right. The broken chain fragment in his lowered fist was later replaced by a plaque engraved with the date of the American Declaration of Independence. In both versions he tramples the symbol of oppression with his foot.
On October 28, 1886, the statue was dedicated on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor. Even today it reminds us of the values of freedom, democracy and friendship between two nations. Laboulaye did not live to see his triumph; he died three years before the construction work was completed. The 49 centimeter high terracotta model, which Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi once gave him as a gift, has remained in his family ever since.
This clay model of Lady Liberty is now for sale: at the Parisian auction house Artcurial on November 26, 2024, the sculpture will be auctioned for the first time in the “Maîtres Anciens & du XIXe siècle” auction with an estimated price from 300,000 to 500,000 euros.
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