The two sculptors are in Florence during the same years
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, creator of the Statue of Liberty in New York, lived in Florence in 1870. It was in that year that the artist Pio Fedi was creating the sample in plaster of the funerary monument of Niccolini. The statue done in marble was placed in the church of Santa Croce in the year 1883.
The statue created by Bartholdi was placed in the bay of New York in 1887.
It leads you to think that the idea inspired by Bartholdi came from the sample in plaster that he saw during his trip to Florence.
Interpretations of freedom in Florence and in America
In the right hand of the statue done by Pio Fedi one can see a piece of a chain, symbolizing the allegory of freedom, and a tiara with eight rays on its head. Note how these two particulars were reinterpreted by Bartholdi for the Statue of Liberty in America. The French artist put the torch in the same hand, another allegory of freedom, and on its head a tiara with one less ray to symbolize the seven continents and seas.
