Description
The Colonne de Juillet is composed of twenty-one cast bronze drums, weighing over 163,000 pounds (74,000 kg); it is 154 feet (47 m) high, containing an interior spiral staircase, and rests on a base of white marble ornamented with bronze bas-reliefs, of which the lion by Antoine-Louis Barye is the most noted. The French cockerels at the corners are also by Barye. The column is engraved in gold with the names of Parisians who died during the revolution. Over the Corinthian capital is a gallery 16 feet (4.9 m) wide, surmounted with a gilded globe, on which stands a colossal gilded figure, Auguste Dumont's Génie de la Liberté (the "Spirit of Freedom"). Perched on one foot in the manner of Giambologna's Mercury, the star-crowned nude brandishes the torch of civilisation and the remains of his broken chains. Formerly the figure also appeared on French ten-franc coins.
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Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
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—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)