Statues - Hither & Thither |
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Dinant
(Dinant) Namur (province) Square Pierre-Joseph Lion |
Le Triomphe de la LumièreThe Triumph of LightLe génie de la civilisation triomphant de l'erreur |
Antoine Wiertz
1862 (1865) |
The allegorical sculpture shows the genius of civilisation, depicted as a woman with a torch high in the air. At her feet crouched a male figure, the error.
The sculpture is a study for a gigantic statue of 45 m hight to dominate the rock of Dinant, which was never realized (See postcard below). The copy in Dinant is made in 1865 by Victor de Haen. An other copy was presented to the city of San Francisco by Adolph Sutro in 1887, and was once prominently located high on San Francisco's Mount Olympus. Over the years due to lack of care and maintenance the statue fell into disrepair. By the late 1930s, even the history and origins of the statue were no longer common knowledge in San Francisco, and by the mid-1950s, the statue disappeared. All that remains today is the pedestal and base of the monument.
The statue resembles so much to the statue of Liberty of Frederick-Auguste Bartholdi, executed later (New York, 1886), that some speak of "plagiarism" by Bartholdi, although no study has been done to prove it.|
TRIOMPHE de la LUMIERE A. WIERTZ 1806-1865 |
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