Birth of Venus

 by Sandro Botticelli, 1486

Uffizi Gallery

Florence, Italy

Liberty of Poetry

by Pio Fedi, 1870

Santa Croce

Florence, Italy

Atop playwright Giovanni Battista Niccolini’s tomb in the basilica of Santa Croce is a statue remarkably similar to New York’s Statue of Liberty.

Both depict a woman in neoclassical robes with a crown of rays, standing on a broken chain, her right arm uplifted.  Pio Fedi started to design the Florentine statue, known as Liberty of Poetry, in 1870.  It was the same year in which Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, designer of the New York Statue of Liberty, was in Italy, fighting alongside General Garibaldi during the Franco-Prussian War.

The Coronation Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I

by Unknown English artist

oil on panel, circa 1600

National Portrait Gallery

London, England

Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss

Front view

Marble

by Antonio Canova (1757-1822)

Musée du Louvre

Paris, France

Venus Bordeaux, 2001

Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte

by Jim Dine

(American, b. 1935)

Bordeaux, France

The Kiss

Bronze

by Auguste Rodin

Outside the Musée de l‘Orangerie

Paris, France