The Statue of Liberty!!

The Statue of Liberty National Monument officially celebrated her 100th birthday on October 28, 1986. The people of France gave the Statue to the people of the United States over one hundred years ago in recognition of the friendship established during the American Revolution. Over the years, the Statue of Liberty has grown to include freedom and democracy as well as this international friendship.

The giant sculpture, designed by the French sculptor Frederick Auguste Bartholdi, was given by France to the United States to commemorate the centennial of US independence and Bartholdi`s intention was to honor the idea of liberty.

Many people believed Charlotte Bartholdi (1801-1891) was the model for the statue. Others thought it was based on her son's early drawings for a never-commissioned statue in Egypt. The sculptor's true inspiration for his masterpiece remains a mystery.

Bartholdi began his career as a painter, but it was as a sculptor that he was to express his true spirit and gain his greatest fame. His first commission for a public monument came to him at the young age of 18. It was for a statue of one of Colmar's native sons, General Jean Rapp, one of Napoleon Bonaparte's generals. Even at 18, Bartholdi loved bigness. The statue of the general was 12 feet tall and was removed from Bartholdi's studio with only one inch to spare. The statue established his reputation as a sculptor of note and led to commissions for similar oversized patriotic works.

A man of his time, Bartholdi wasn't alone in his passion for art on a grand scale. During the 19th century, large-scale public monuments were an especially popular art form. It was an age of ostentation, largely inspired by classical Greek and Roman civilizations. Most monuments reflected either the dress or architecture of these ancient times, so the artistic style of the 19th century came to be known as neoclassical.

However, it was a trip to Egypt that was to shift his artistic perspective from simply grand to colossal. The overwhelming size and mysterious majesty of the Pyramids and the Sphinx were awesome to the enthusiastic young Bartholdi. He wrote, "Their kindly and impassive glance seems to ignore the present and to be fixed upon an unlimited future."

While visiting Egypt, Bartholdi met a fellow Frenchman with ideas as big as his own who was to become his friend for life. Count Ferdinand-Marie de Lesseps dreamed of piercing the desert with a canal that would run from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. While others first laughed at de Lesseps, Bartholdi was inspired by the magnitude of the idea. As a sculptor, he envisioned a giant lighthouse standing at the entrance to de Lesseps's canal. It would be patterned after the Roman goddess Libertas, and twice the size of the Sphinx.

Facts About Miss Liberty!
* Actual Title of Statue: "Liberty Enlightening the World"
* Date Construction of the Statue began in France: 1875
* Date of Final Assembly of statue & pedestal: 1886
* The Statue of Liberty is a 225-ton, steel-reinforced copper female figure, 152 ft. in height, facing the ocean from Liberty Island in New York Harbor. The right hand holds aloft a torch, and the left hand carries a tablet upon, which is inscribed: "July IV MDCCLXXVI."