An allegory of the printing of the Declaration of Independence, depicting Benjamin Franklin proffering the newly-printed broadside, surrounded by all 56 Signers, Founding Fathers, and other important Enlightenment figures of the Americas.



This preliminary maquette is a new discovery, and is almost certainly the first state of this iconic bas-relief. Having been packed away in a long- forgotten wooden crate by the family of Victor Pavie, lawyer, printer, publisher, and close friend of David d’Angers, it has not previously been exhibited.



David d’Angers’s finished frieze, ‘Les Bienfaits de l’imprimerie en Amerique’, was cast in bronze, and created to commemorate the 400-year anniversary of Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type. It was also a bald political statement, demanding freedom from the tyranny of Empire, which history has shown can be achieved by the enlightenment that printing brings. David d’Angers’s sculpture can be seen as a “quest to redefine the notion of a monument in a period marked by both intense historicism and the ever-accelerating rhythms of modernity... His theoretical and aesthetic innovations greatly contributed to our modern obsessions with memory and celebrity, and provide a timely reminder of the possibilities for politically-engaged artistic practice in the twenty-first century” (Bowyer).



This maquette, and one of the statue of Gutenberg, was given by David d’Angers to his dear friend, lawyer, and printer, Victor Pavie. In an emotional letter that he wrote to Pavie, David d’Angers reveals quite how important this particular commission was to him: “I have worked hard to finish the models of the bas-reliefs of the Gutenberg monument. Finally, here is another completed work, and I am happy about it, because I very ardently wanted to be able to pay this homage. Thorvaldsen made the man who prints, I sought to depict the consequences of the discovery of printing. I assure you that, in my last illness, one of my bitterest sorrows, was the fear of not finishing this monument” (May 31st, 1840).



David d’Angers became the pre-eminent monument-maker of the 1830s and 1840s, lauded by Victor Hugo as the “Michelangelo of Paris”, “Pierre-Jean David d’Angers was one of the most important sculptors of the nineteenth century. An ardent Republican, experimental writer, respected teacher, and confidant to innumerable artists and intellectuals (from Balzac and Paganini to Goethe and Delacroix), he was both celebrated and controversial during his lifetime” (Bowyer).



In this light, David d’Angers’s friezes for the pedestal of the statue of Johannes Gutenberg in Strasbourg show how the printing press has emancipated the peoples of the four continents. In common with his previous public monuments, David d’Angers has forsworn conventional neo-classicism, of nude heroes of old, and replaced them with recognizable portraits of eminent figures from a more tangible history: Europe portrays great thinkers, writers, and artists: René Descartes holds the press, supported by Luther, Erasmus, Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, Molière, Rousseau, Voltaire, Kant, and many others; Asia shows William Jones and Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron offering books to Brahmins, who give them manuscripts in return; Africa has William Wilberforce embracing an African holding a book; while European figures distribute books to the tribes-people and read to children, Thomas Clarkson breaks the shackles of a slave, and broken whips and irons lie beneath.



America commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July 1776. It shows Benjamin Franklin offering the printed Declaration to all 56 of his fellow Signers, all of whom are named, but also present are Lafayette, and Bolivar, who is seen freeing Latin American nations from Empire, as well as George Clinton, Thomas Paine (as “Thomas K.ran”), John Dickinson, John Jay, Charles Thompson, John Laurens, Patrick Henry, George Washington, and George Whyte.



Above them all towers Johannes Gutenberg, presenting a sheet from his printing press incised: “et la lumiere fut” – “and there was light”.