Focus on Statue of John Harvard and discuss the "Idealization" dispute.
The challenge of creating an idealized representation of John Harvard was discussed by Ellis at the October 1883 meeting of the Massachu­setts Historical Society:
A very exacting demand is to be made upon the genius and skill of the artist ... The work must be wholly ideal, guided by a few suggestive hints, all of which are in harmony with grace, delicacy, dignity, and reverential regard. There is necessarily much that is unsatisfactory in a wholly idealized represen­ta­tion by art of an historical person of whose form, features, and lineaments there are no certifications. But the few facts [known with certainty] concerning Harvard are certainly helpful to the artist.But Society president Robert Charles Winthrop harshly disapproved:It must be altogether a fancy sketch, a 'counterfeit presentment,'‍—‌to use Shake­speare's phrase,‍—‌and in more senses of the word than one ... [S]uch attempts to make portrait statues of those of whom there are not only no portraits, but no records or recollec­tions, are of very doubtful desirea­ble­ness ... Such a course tends to the confusing and confounding of historic truth and leaves posterity unable to decide what is authentic and what is mere inven­tion ... It seems to me of very questionable expediency to get up a fictitious likeness of him and make up a figure according to our ideas of the man.A year later, in his oration[M] before the unveiling of what he called "a simula­crum ... a conception of what Harvard might have been in body and lineament, from what we know that he was in mind and in soul", Ellis answered Winthrop's criticism:This exquisite moulding in bronze serves a purpose for the eye, the thought, and sentiment, through the ideal, in lack of the real ... It is by no means without allowed and approved precedent, that, in the lack of authentic portraitures of such as are to be commemorated, an ideal representa­tion supplies the vacancy of a reality. It is one of the fair issues between poetry and prose.
The wise, the honored, the fair, the noble, and the saintly, are never grudged some finer touches of the artist in tint or feature, which etherialize their beauty, or magnify their elevation, as expressed in the actual body,‍—‌the eye, the brow, the lip, the moulding of the mortal clay. To flatter is not always to falsify.Should there ever appear, however,some authentic portrai­ture of John Harvard, the pledge may here and now be ventured, that some generous friend, such as, to the end, shall never fail our Alma Mater, notwithstanding her chronic poverty, will provide that this bronze shall be liquified again, and made to tell the whole known truth so as by fire.
John Harvard Robert Charles Winthrop lineaments 'counterfeit presentment,'