February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The estimated value is from $180,000 to $250,000.
“The document is one of approximately fifty extant copies of the founding charter of Irish nationhood, and has survived in an extraordinary state of preservation,” Sotheby’s said in a release announcing the sale.
“Of the utmost rarity, the Proclamation is undoubtedly the most important and iconic document in the history of the Irish Nation, containing the first aspirations of the Republic,” Sotheby’s added.
“With its emphasis on freedom of the individual, ‘religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens’ and a government in the form of a republic, this twentieth-century document finds its antecedent in none other than the American Declaration of Independence.
“Though the Rising failed, the principles of the Proclamation to varying degrees influenced the thinking of later generations of Irish politicians.”
The iconic document will be part of a fine art and manuscript sale at Sotheby’s in Manhattan on Thursday, Dec. 11.