The Statue of Liberty is a historical sculpture that is situated on the Liberty Island, Upper New York Bay in the New York City, United States of America. The statue is 93 meters tall, and it was designed between 1834 and 1904 by a French sculptor known as Auguste Bartholdi (Rhoades 2013). The main aim of designing this statue was to present it as a gift to the United States of America as a gift from the people of France. The statue is designed to resemble Libertas, who was the Roman goddess of freedom with rob on her head to reveal her female figure (Figure 1). According to the statue, the goddess of freedom holds a torch and a legal tablet that is written the date which America was declared an independent state, July 4, 1776.
Figure 1: Statute of Liberty
The designer of the Statue of Liberty in New York, Auguste Bartholdi, developed the passion for designing public monuments, and he began designing large-scale public statues. In 1869, he designed the colossal statues of a robed female for the Egyptian government, which expressed a lot of interest for a lighthouse for the Suez Canal. The iconic statue was named the “progress brings light to Asia”. He was talented in building historical monuments that had numerous characteristics of classical sculptures (Rhoades, 2013). His expertise in designing statues for historical remembrance granted him the chance to design the statue of liberty that attracts more than 3.2 million visitors every year.
Classical sculptures are characterized with the Ancient Rome or Ancient Greece under Romanized civilizations. The statue of liberty in the United States is a classical sculpture because it was designed to resemble the Roman goddess of freedom. It shows that it has some background of the Ancient Rome civilization characteristics; hence, it qualifies to be a classical sculpture (Nichols, 2015). Another characteristic of classical sculptures is that they portray heroes viewed as religious icons worshiped by the Greeks or the Romans. Therefore, the fact that the statue of liberty depicted Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, shows that it is a perfect classical sculpture.
It presents significant moral lessons not only to the people of United States of America but also the rest of the world. The statue is used as an icon for the freedom of all the immigrants entering the United States from other parts of the world. It shows that immigrants should not be discriminated based on their races or social status but rather should be accepted and be treated with dignity and humanity. Therefore, this statue serves as enlightenment to the world about the need to allow other people freedom they deserve and respect their dignity through observing their human rights (Berenson, 2012). The fact that it was designed to commemorate the independence of America shows that independence of a country from its colonies is a significant achievement and should be the beginning of liberty.
Apart from the statue of liberty being a classical sculpture in the mimetic sense, it also has a sense of balance and symmetry that gives it more characteristics of classical sculptures. The sense of symmetry is portrayed from the design of the statue, which centrally stands on a stone pedestal that was designed by an American architect, Richard Morris Hunt between 1827 and 1895. However, the statue has no perfect symmetry because the Libertas's left-hand holds a tablet shaped stone that symbolizes the law while the left-hand holds a torch but in a raised position (Berenson, 2012). Despite all these differences, it has significant characteristics to qualify to be called a classical sculpture.
References
Berenson, E. (2012). The Statue of Liberty: A transatlantic story. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Nichols, K. (2015). Greece and Rome at the Crystal Palace: Classical sculpture and modern Britain, 1854-1936. Oxford: Oxford University Press, USA.
Rhoades, R. N. (2013). Lady Liberty: The ancient Goddess of America. New York: iUniverse.
