The Little Mermaid (statue) cities; others include: "Manneken Pis" in Brussels, the Statue of Liberty in New York and "Christ the Redeemer" in Rio de Janeiro. In several cases, cities have commissioned statues for such a purpose, such as with Singapore's "Merlion". The statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of Carlsberg, who had been fascinated by a ballet about the fairytale in Copenhagen's Royal Theatre and asked the ballerina, Ellen Price, to model for the statue. The sculptor Edvard Eriksen created the bronze statue, which was unveiled on August 23, 1913. The statue's head was modelled after Price,
Pacifica (statue) 50 renditions before settling upon the final model which was tall. The model was then divided into cross sections. Each cross section was enlarged eight-fold though a process using a pantograph. Scaffolding was set up and prepared for the precise assembly of the enlarged sections. Iron was used for supports, bent and shaped around the proper contours of the statue. Next, mesh wire was layered over the entire iron frame, and then covered in a final blanket of plaster. Such a construction was always meant for temporary placement. By November 1938, when "Life" photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was capturing images to