Arty Farty Friday ~ Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi & His Colossal Works

Today, 2 August, is the anniversary of the birth of the sculptor who created the Statue of Liberty, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. He was born on 2 August 1834. Some sources online give his birth date as 2 April (possibly a mis-tranlation from the French at some point?) Astrodatabank gives 2 August an AA rating: BC/BR (birth certificate/record in hand), I'll trust that.

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-

 AP Photo

FERONIA & LADY LIBERTY

In Roman times a feast day in honour of the goddess Feronia was held around now. Some sources say 15th of the month, some 13th, confusion probably arising from the date of the Ides of November. The Ides are thought to have originally marked the day of the full moon: 13th day of the months with 29 days, but 15th day of months with 31 days, according to Roman calendars.

Feronia actually pre-dates Rome. Worship of this goddess is thought to have Sabine or Etruscan roots. A number of godly "oversights" have been attributed to Feronia, she seems to have picked 'em up like moss over the centuries. Freedom from bondage (slaves regarded Feronia as a goddess of freedom, and believed that sitting on a holy stone in one of her sanctuaries would set them free); protector of freedmen and freedwomen; fertility and abundance; springs and groves; harvest goddess; agriculture and fire; magic; a witch goddess with the power to walk over red hot materials all came within her purview. There's also a myth connecting Feronia to Rome's legendary founders, the twins Romulus and Remus. The story goes that a wolf suckled the twin babies. Wolves are the sacred animals of Mars, the twins’ divine father. Wolves were associated with Italian deities: Faunus, Sylvanus, Diana, and.... Feronia.

Here's a thought: was the Statue of Liberty in reality a representation of, or an image inspired by, the myth of Feronia? Some say it's quite possible that sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi had an ancient goddess in mind when designing his now iconic sculpture.

Emma Lazarus and her "Huddled Masses"

Yesterday's theme of immigration led me to
Emma Lazarus, the poet who didn't live to see one of her poems become a legend, gracing what is arguably the most recognised statue and symbol in the world: the Statue of Liberty.


The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" (by Emma Lazarus,1883.)

Emma Lazarus was born in New York City on 22 July 1849, into a wealthy Jewish family.

From NPR
"Lazarus was a Sephardic Jew, a descendant of people expelled from Spain centuries before. She often wrote about the "Jewish plight" in her poetry. She was an early Jewish nationalist -- advocating for a Jewish state in Palestine as early as the 1880s.
Near the end of her life she became an advocate for disenfranchised immigrants, who were arriving by the thousands in the late 1800s. She wrote The New Colossus at age 34. Less than five years later she was dead of cancer, never knowing the impact her poem had on the nation."

Emma Lazarus started writing poetry at an early age and by her teens had a volume of poems published. She caught the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson who became her lifelong mentor. Other than the famous poem above, most of her work has now sunk into obscurity.



Her natal chart (12 noon version shown) indicates that Mercury (communication, writing) was in trine with Neptune (imagination), a most helpful aspect for a poet. There's also a square aspect between Saturn(history, tradition) and Mercury, which may be representative of her early poetic themes from classical antiquity, which appeared to fascinate her.

In common with the rest of her generation, Miss Lazarus had Pluto and Uranus close together natally, in Aries. In Emma's case these planets lay in square aspect to her natal Cancer Sun, which may connect to the challenge of her activism on behalf of the many Russian and European Jewish immigrants who arived in New York after the pogroms of the 1880s. Her natal Jupiter trines Uranus (the humanitarian and rebel planet) so, as well as challenge she had some astrological support in her efforts as an activist. Emma never married and little is known of her private life.

In today's political climate the words of Emma's poem seem somewhat hollow, but the principle expressed has to be seen a noble aspiration.