A partnership is being planned to celebrate the sculptural and symbolic connections between Manhattan's Statue of Liberty and Santa Croce's The Liberty of Poetry funerary monument. The striking similarity has long been noted between New York's iconic Statue of Liberty and Pio Fedi's lesser-known The Liberty of Poetry, designed at the same time for the Basilica of Santa Croce. Both depict proud women in flowing robes and spiked headdresses, thrusting their right arm into the air.

Indeed, it has been suggested that the French sculptor who designed the Statue of Liberty, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, was inspired by maquettes and drawings of Fedi's as-yet-unfinished monument when he visited Florence in the 1860s during the Franco-Prussian war. The connections between the two statues are more than visual, however, and now it is hoped that a new partnership will honour their symbolic similarities as well.

Read more

Source: http://www.theflorentine.net/