Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi 1871, not finishing the massive sandstone statue until 1880. In 1871, he made his first trip to the United States, where he pitched the idea of a massive statue gifted from the French to the Americans in honor of the centennial of American independence. The idea, which had first been broached to him in 1865 by his friend Édouard René de Laboulaye, resulted in the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. After years of work and fundraising, the statue was inaugurated in 1886. During this period, Bartholdi also sculpted a number of monuments for American cities, such as a
Statue of John of Nepomuk, Charles Bridge Statue of John of Nepomuk, Charles Bridge The statue of John of Nepomuk is an outdoor sculpture, installed in 1683 on the north side of the Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic. It was the first of the many Baroque images of saints to be installed on the bridge. The bronze statue is based on a clay model made in 1681 by Matthias Rauchmiller. The sculptor Jan Brokoff created a large wooden sculpture based on Rauchmiller's model, which was then cast in bronze in Nuremberg. Rauchmiller's clay model is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Prague. Brokoff's