9781422287538

11 The Face of Liberty

common law. Printed across the law book would be the date July 4, 1776 (written in Roman numerals, July IV MDCCLXXVI), to commemorate the founding of the American republic. Still, Bartholdi’s design was not complete. All artists need models. For this job he turned to three women. The first woman to sit as a model for the statue was the artist’s fiancee, Jeanne-Émilie Baheux de Puysieux. Next, Bartholdi borrowed heavily from the features on the face of a woman in the painting “Liberty Leading the People,” an 1855 creation by the French artist Eugène Delacroix depicting the image of a woman leading citizens in an uprising against the French monarchy . Finally, Bartholdi asked one more woman to sit as a model for his statue. Years later, after the statue was finished, Bartholdi was joined at the Paris Opera by a member of the French Senate. Also attending the opera with Bartholdi was his mother, Charlotte Beysser Bartholdi. The senator later recalled, “I noticed an aged woman sitting in a corner. When the light fell on her face, I turned to Bartholdi and said to him, ‘Why, that’s your model for the Statue of Liberty!’ ‘Yes,’ he answered calmly. ‘It’s my mother.’”

Text-Dependent Question What painting did Bartholdi use as inspiration for the Statue of Liberty?

Research Project Explain how the American Revolution inspired subsequent movements for liberty in France and other European countries.