Sentinel: The Unlikely Origins of the Statue of Liberty

by Francesca Lidia Viano

The story of the improbable campaign that created America’s most enduring monument.

The Statue of Liberty is an icon of freedom, a monument to America’s multiethnic democracy, and a memorial to Franco-American friendship. That much we know. But the lofty ideals we associate with the statue today can obscure its turbulent origins and layers of meaning. Francesca Lidia Viano reveals that history in the fullest account yet of the people and ideas that brought the lady of the harbor to life.

Our protagonists are the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and his collaborator, the politician and intellectual Édouard de Laboulaye. Viano draws on an unprecedented range of sources to follow the pair as they chase their artistic and political ambitions across a global stage dominated by imperial rivalry and ideological ferment. The tale stretches from the cobblestones of northeastern France, through the hallways of international exhibitions in London and Paris, to the copper mines of Norway and Chile, the battlegrounds of the Franco-Prussian War, the deserts of Egypt, and the streets of New York. It features profound technical challenges, hot air balloon rides, secret “magnetic” séances, and grand visions of a Franco-American partnership in the coming world order. The irrepressible collaborators bring to their project the high ideals of liberalism and republicanism, but also crude calculations of national advantage and eccentric notions adopted from orientalism, freemasonry, and Saint-Simonianism.

As entertaining as it is illuminating, Sentinel gives new flesh and spirit to a landmark we all recognize but only dimly understand.

592 pages, Hardcover

Published October 22, 2018

Reviews

[Benji · Rating 3 out of 5]

'When the Twin Towers were attacked on September 11, 2001, the Statue of Liberty bore witness to an authentic scene of apocalypse. Having seen the towers fall amid the flames from the window of his apartment, Jon Stewart, America's foremost political comedian at the time, told, his audience, with tears welling up: 'The view from my apartment was the World Trade Center ... the symbol of ingenuity, strength, work, and of imagination and of commerce, and now it's gone. And do you know what my view is now? The Statue of Liberty ... the view from South Manhattan is now the Statue of Libery ... You can't beat that.'

Stewart was right. Unlike the World Trade Center, which was foremost a symbol of the economic empire Americans had established in the world, the Statue of Liberty is a syncretistic symbol of death and rebirth, sacrifice and revelation, endurance and emancipation, imperialism and rebellion, that no single nation or government, not even America, has ever managed to entirely appropriate. In this sense, as Barhtoldi had hoped, it should forever be the last statue to be torn down.'

[Jake Losh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a tough book to read. I enjoyed it enough to finish, but it took me months to get there.

It is full of detail, at once an extremely close read of a work of art and an extremely detailed history of the economic, political social and artistic forces that shaped the Statue of Liberty. I found it too detailed for my tastes, but I think the author is going for an authoritative treatment, so I can't knock it: in this endeavor, I think the book succeeds.

The best parts of this book for me were those about art, the business of producing a work of art and the economic forces that interacted with artistic ones. The political and social histories of France and the US were also interesting because they shed new light on well-trodden ground.

The worst parts for me were the detailed histories of the Bartholdi clan and Colmar and those of the different Masonic lodges.

[Geoff Walling · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not so interesting.

[Paul Sand · Rating 2 out of 5]

[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]

I was persuaded to read this by a good review in the WSJ back in November. Somewhat surprisingly, the University Near Here actually bought a copy—no Interlibrary Loan required!

Unfortunately, it was both longer and less interesting than I thought it would be. I crawled through it, painfully, at about 20 pages/day, just sneaking it into my 2018 reading. The author, Francesca Lidia Viano, is from Italy, a young academic now working at Institute for New Economic Thinking.

The book explores the "origin story" of Lady Liberty; its opening metaphor invokes an extremely unexpected parallel: the Trojan Horse. No, the statue didn't make its appearance on Bedloe's Island with a covert cargo of French troops inside. Other than the statue being hollow, the physical metaphor doesn't apply. But Viano argues that the statue's ideological DNA contains a lot of unexpected strands. These are illuminated by the (extremely) detailed biography of the artist, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, and his associates. He was French, in the 19th century, a time of a lot of philosophical/artistic/political/international craziness. The folks who bankrolled much of the statue seemed to have messages to send: against British imperialism, for French colonialism, for free trade, against slavery, a healthy component of Saint-Simonism, Freemasonry, … (Ironically, today the main symbolism, thanks to that Emma Lazarus poem, seems to be immigration. That was a late addition.)

I could put up with a lot of that, but 500 pages? Eek!

I would have liked a little more detail on the statue's engineering. In fact, the description of the statue's construction and assembly is crowded into the book's final pages.