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The Portrait Monument
Irene Stuber in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington
D.C.
She is shown here with the newly placed statue
of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott.
In the close up of the statue, below,
you can see the detailed features of all three women.
Photos by Paula Levine
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The statue, officially named "The Portrait Monument,"
is of Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the
uncarved portion represents all past, present, and future women leaders.
It was presented to Congress by the National Woman's Party as a gift to
the nation on February, 15, 1921, and placed in the Rotunda Hall of the
Capitol. After one day the Italian Carerra marble statue, sculpted by Adelaide
Johnson, was moved to the basement. Finally, after 76 years the "Woman
Suffrage Statue" was moved from the basement to the Rotunda of the
United States Capitol over Mother's Day week-end, May 10-12, 1997.
The monument consists of three parts, the 14,000-pound
sculpture itself and two rectangular stone base slabs. The black Belgian
marble base and the white Carrara marble base were donated by Adelaide
Johnson in 1925. However, the black marble base arrived broken and was
not replaced by the artist until 1929. In 1930 both pieces were installed,
completing the artist's design. The total weight of the monument and its
two bases is estimated to be 26,000 pounds.
According to the Architect of the Capitol, Office of the
Curator, the inscription stenciled on the monument when it was first delivered
to the Capitol is as follows:
"The three great destiny characters of
the world whose spiritual import and historical significance transcend
that of all others of any country or age.
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in
the call of that first Woman's Rights Convention of 1848 initiated and
Susan B. Anthony marshalling the latent forces through three generations
down more than a half century of time guided the only fundamental universal
uprising on our planet.
The Woman's Revolution.
Principle not policy. Justice not favor. Men
their rights and nothing more, Women their rights and nothing less, was
the clarion call to the most astounding upheaval of all time. A call which
waked the world, signaled and inaugurated a revolution without tradition
or precedent, and proclaimed the first incontrovertible concept of human
freedom - that of individual liberty - personal responsibility, including
women.
Woman, first denied a soul, then called mindless,
now arisen declared herself an entity to be reckoned.
This mightiest of revolutions encircling the
globe accomplishing without bloodshed the overthrow of entrenched dogma
and hoary bigotries reached to the farthermost roots of being.
Here indeed was the first, the only impeachable
demand for right as might ever made.
Spiritually the Woman Movement is the all-enfolding
one.
It represents the Emancipation of Womanhood.
The release of the Feminine Principal in humanity.
The moral integration of human evolution come
to rescue torn and struggling humanity from its savage self.
Historically these three stand unique and peerless."
View of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda taken from above.
Photo from the Architect of the Capitol, Office of the Curator.
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