The Statue of Liberty

Snowfall startend in the afternoon and it snower heavily all evening. I had my usual Tuesday routine, water excercise.

Viktor Jansson and Wäinö Palmqvist's  The Statue of Liberty sculpture was first called Victor, which means winner in Latin. It is a naked male figure resembling Greek athlete statues of the classical period, placed on a tall pedestal. 

The young man depicted in the sculpture holds a sword in his raised right hand, with his left hand pressed into a fist. The front direction of the statue is to the south, but the head of the figure has turned to look to the right to the west. After the Civil War, monuments erected in honor of white victory tended to favor strict and stripped-down classicism, and naked male figures were a typical subject. The contrasting position on the legs of the male figure was a popular way of depicting fearless male heroes in ancient and Renaissance art, while the sword-raising hand appeared in many 19th-century European hero statues. 

The model for the sculpture was Elias Simojoki, a student of theology who fought on the white side of the Civil War. Jansson saw a young man with a sporty and well-proportioned body training in the gymnasium at the University of Helsinki and asked him for his model.




-6,8°C, cloudy, snowfall