Snip from Astrodatabank's bio piece:
Italian-French sculptor who designed and built the Statue of Liberty that stands in New York harbor; he also helped to raise the funds to build the statue. Bartholdi studied architecture and painting before he went into sculpture, and was the creator of many monuments in France.
The descendant of an Italian family which had settled in France, he was raised by his mom after the death of his dad when he was two. As a young man, Bartholdi was on the streets of Paris on the December day when Louis Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'etat toppled the Second Republic. There, he witnessed a scene which marked him deeply. A group of republicans had erected a barricade. Night was falling when a young girl, bearing a torch, leaped over the barrier crying "Forward!" Bonaparte's soldiers opened fire and the girl fell dead. From then on, the unknown girl with the torch was, for him, the symbol of liberty.
Bartholdi's love of the colossal was born on a trip to Egypt, during which, fascinated, he sketched voluminously the massive statues of the ancient empire. The idea for his own masterpiece was conceived in 1865 when he met Edouard de Laboulaye, a prominent French liberal and ardent admirer of the U.S. and its model democracy. Knowing that in 1876 America would be celebrating the centenary of its independence, Laboulaye was urging that France offer a spectacular tribute to mark the occasion. Bartholdi proposed a monument to liberty, and his imagination afire, offered his talents......He met his model at a wedding, Jeanne-Emilie Baheux de Puysieux, a beautiful brunette with the figure of a goddess. He persuaded her to pose for "Liberty Lighting the World," and later, married her. The classic features of the statue, however, resemble more closely Bartholdi's mother.
I've mentioned the iconic statue in posts before:
Feronia & Lady Liberty
and
Emma Lazarus and her "Huddled Masses", but haven't yet taken a look at the natal chart of the sculpture's creator, nor investigated his other work.
Sun and Mercury in Leo - Leo loves to leave its mark on the world one way or another - and Bartholdi certainly succeeded in upholding his Sun sign's signature! I was tickled to find, upon searching Google image for other sculptures of his, to find a lovely lion - see below.
What I hoped to find in his natal chart was some indication of his pull towards the huge - the colossal as Astrodatabank put it. Huge and colossal in astrology = Jupiter. Here we see Jupiter at 6 degrees of Gemini conjunct Mars (dynamic energy) and in close harmonic trine to Saturn at 6 Libra. Saturn, among other things relates to structure(s), anything solid and lasting. There's another trine, this links Jupiter and Saturn to Neptune, planet of creativity and imagination - albeit Neptune was in the last degree of Capricorn, but still within trine (120 degree) aspect. I like that Grand Trine, it links exactly the right ingredients to create a colossal iconic statue!
A few of his other works:
The Lion of Belfort
From Wiki:finished in 1880 and is entirely made of red sandstone. The blocks it is made from were individually sculpted then moved under Belfort castle to be assembled. The colossal work is 22 meters long and 11 meters high and dominates the local landscape.
The lion symbolizes the heroic French resistance during the Siege of Belfort, a 103-day Prussian assault (from December 1870 to February 1871). The city was protected from 40,000 Prussians by merely 17,000 men (only 3,500 were from the military) led by Colonel Denfert-Rochereau.
Instead of facing Prussia to the east as was intended, it was turned the other way because of German protests.
Reduced size copies of the statue stand in the center of Place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris, and in Downtown Montreal — Lion of Belfort (Montreal).
The Bartholdi Fountain, sculpted by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, located at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington.
La Fontaine Bartholdi in Lyon, France, it depicts France as a female seated on a chariot controlling France's four great rivers.
Click for everything you've ever wanted to know about the Statue of Liberty-
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| AP Photo |
