In the Kardtects card building system, there are various cards that are purely for decoration, many of them depict statues. A statue is sculpture that represents one or more animal or person. Technically the design should be full-length, as if it is just a head it is simply called a ‘Bust’.
Scale is also important, if a sculpture of a figure is small enough to be picked up, then it is really called a figurine or statuette; but if one is over twice the size of the true nature of the subject, then it is called a colossal statue.
Ironically, although statues can be attributed to many excellent and remembered works of art such as the ‘Venus de Milo’, the monolithic Heads on Easter Island, Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ or Nelson on his Column in England, when you ‘Google’ statues, one in particular just dominates the first page, as much as she dominates the skyline where she solitarily stands – the Statue of Liberty in New York City.
So is this correct? Shouldn’t she be recorded as the ‘Colossal Statue of Liberty’, as she would appear to be well over twice the size of the normal lady? Well, possibly not, as technically she is actually a representation of a Roman Goddess, ‘Libertas’, so as Roman gods and goddesses have undefined scale, we can’t really say to what scale she really represents this divinity.
Most people have a basic appreciation of the statue and its history. It is a copper statue, that was offered as a gift from the ‘people’ of France to the ‘people’ of the United States, as a symbolic gift of recognition of surviving and prospering from their respective revolutions. It was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and built by Gustave Eiffel, of the Eiffel Tower fame.
Here is a list of 10 Fun Facts about this very special lady!
1) Her real name is actually ‘Liberty Enlightening the World’, or in the French ‘La Liberté éclairant le monde’
2) For a fine figure of a lady she weighs 204 metric tonnes, with a height of 93 metres from foot to the tip of the torch, while her height is just a mere 111ft and 6 inches and a waistline of 35 foot.
3) Before she was brought to America in 1886, her head was on display in Paris for the ‘World’s Fair’ in 1878.
4) Although offered as a gift from France to America, it was actual full construction was a joint effort, with France providing the statue and America proving the location and covering the cost of the solid pedestal on which it now rests. The American financed were raised by donations. This proved to be a slow process, which encouraged American parties in Philadelphia and Boston offering to pay for the entire cost of its construction if the proposed location would be moved closer to them.
5) It was Edouard de Laboulaye provided the idea for the statue, while a Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi actually designed it.
6) In 1982, it was discovered that the head had been installed two feet off center.
7) The face, although very reminiscent of the artistic style of the period, is said to be modeled on the sculptor’s mother, Charlotte.
8) At the foot of Lady Liberty’s, obscured mostly by her robes, she is actually standing amongst a broken shackle and chains, emulating the symbolic break from oppression and slavery.
9) She was originally erected on Bedloe Island, but now stands on Liberty Island. She didn’t move, they just changed the name in 1956.
And my favorite…
10) If Lady Liberty walked into a shoe shop she would have to ask for a size 879 shoe.
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Watch the following video which shows statue cards of the Lost Desert set being used