sculpture-focus-2 – re:mancipation

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Lincoln

Lincoln grasps the Emancipation Proclamation scroll with his right hand and reaches his left hand out over the Freedman’s body as if blessing the man. The right hand is traditionally linked to power and authority, while the left hand is associated with supportive roles. In this statue, the legal document in Lincoln’s right hand symbolizes his authority to order freedom, while his left hand bestows it.

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SCULPTURE MATERIAL

Thomas Ball had this sculpture carved out of white, Italian marble, which was favored for Neoclassical compositions due to its association with classical Rome and Greece. People of European descent associated Greco-Roman sculpture and white marble with purity, truth, morality, and beauty. Such correlations contributed to racism, as Europeans idealized Greco-Roman features and whiteness beginning in the Renaissance. Artists also struggled with representing Blackness in white marble.

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Gesture

The Freedman’s right hand appears to be in a traditional Christian blessing. He is finger spelling IC XC, the Greek letters for “Jesus the Christ.” This gesture was used in images of saints and by Greek Orthodox priests. It suggests God’s blessing over emancipation, perhaps in reference to the quote that appears on the base of the statue.

Like the lack of expression in the face, the hands and fingers belie a true representation of the what the hands of a formerly enslaved person, or any laborer for that matter, might look like.