At a time when law libraries are redefining themselves as a set
of services rather than a place, there still may be a bit of time to value the
place or the object within the place. Justice has long been personified, and
artists have created representations that have graced our Courthouses and
Libraries. Examples are still around to be appreciated.
In 1910, the American Antiquarian Society donated an
8-foot-4-inch-tall plaster cast of Michelangelo’s statue of Moses to the
Worcester County Law Library Association. Moses assumed a place of honor in the
Worcester Courthouse in Lincoln Square. For 97 years thereafter, Moses became
the meeting place within the Courthouse for lawyers and their clients. When the
Courthouse moved down Main Street to its new location, Moses came along. Ten inch tall replicas of the statue are now for sale by the Worcester County Law
Library Trust, initially offered to recoup the cost of repairs to the statue; but the smaller cousins have become coveted artifacts. The replicas are on view
at the Worcester Law Library.
Any visitor to the John Adams Courthouse in Boston will be
impressed by Domingo Mora’s figural representations of sixteen ideas related to
Law and Justice in the Great Hall. In the same location, there is a bronze
statue of the nineteenth century attorney, Rufus Choate, by Daniel Chester French. A recent cleaning of the work has obscured the fact that practicing
attorneys had a habit of rubbing Rufus Choate’s left foot for good luck before
going into the Courtroom, giving it a particular shine.
Prominent among Daniel Chester French’s teachers was a sculptor
named Thomas Ball. One of Ball’s favorite subjects was orator and attorney
Daniel Webster. In 1853, a series of bronze casts were made of Ball’s clay
statuette of Webster. Examples of these statuettes are currently in the
collections of the U.S. Senate and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and on view
at the Berkshire Law Library. In 1876, Ball went on to sculpt a much larger
(14’) version of the statute that stands today in New York’s Central Park. At
the Law Library, Daniel Webster has a series of festive hats (several top hats,
a straw hat, a sombrero) that he can be seen to sport.
Art appreciation, in the case of the statues of Moses, Rufus
Choate, and Daniel Webster, is about looking and recognizing the story that is
there waiting to be told.
