Design of the Statue

DESIGN OF THE STATUE

Trentanove’s design of the Marquette statue is consistent in all three versions, the Mackinac Island one being the largest.  No images of the seventeenth-century missionary were known to exist, so the features of the subject were speculative on the part of the artist.  He reportedly conferred with Father R. J. Meyer, of St. Louis, secretary of the Jesuit order, on the life of the missionary and with the head of the Jesuit order in Italy regarding the history and garb of Jesuit missionaries.  Trentanove’s design presented a heroic figure.  Standing and looking forward, “as if for some discovery,” with a map of the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi and compass in his right hand.  The original design had him holding an open book, possibly a Bible.   Some found this  objectionable and it was changed, possibly because it over-emphasized missionary work instead of exploration.  The left hand is shown holding the edge of his cloak and tucked at his waist is a crucifix and a rosary.  Trentanove’s  Marquette is bearded and appears older than the missionary, who was only 38 when he died.  Such a figure contained an air of nobility that undoubtedly appealed to the Victorian sensibility.

Wisconsin Senator William Vilas later commented: “Go view the artist’s work, gaze upon the noble figure…then you shall find the ideal we would commemorate, a noble man with a soul lifted up to God, a mind inflexibly bent to duty, a heart swelling with tenderness to his fellow creatures….The man to dare without flinching, to do without boasting, ‘the deeds that heroes do when heaven calls.’”   The style of the statue followed neo-classical tradition that held prominence in sculpture since the late 1700s.  This was true of most public statues and monuments erected in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. 

The Marquette version of statue contained two additional Thenanove-designed works on its pedestal, not found on the Statuary Hall or the Mackinac Island versions.  Made from local Lake Superior sandstone, the pedestal carries two bronze bas-reliefs on either side.  In one, Trentanove shows Marquette in a canoe landing at Presque Isle near Marquette; in the other the missionary is depicted with a raised crucifix in his hand, preaching to a group of Indians.  While in Marquette, Trentanove sketched members of the local Ojibwa tribe and used these in the creation of the latter relief.