Biography
The Piccirilli (pronounced pea-chee-really) brothers were an Italian family of renowned marble carvers and sculptors who carved many of the most significant marble sculptures in the United States, including Daniel Chester French’s colossal Abraham Lincoln (1920) in the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.
In 1888, Giuseppe Piccirilli (1844–1910), a stone carver in Massa, Italy and a veteran of Garibaldi’s Unification war, brought his family to New York City. Giuseppe, who was born in Rome and received his early training in the atelier of Roman sculptor Stefano Galletti, came from a long line of stone carvers, unbroken since the days of the early Renaissance. All six of Giuseppe’s sons—Ferruccio (1864–1945), Attilio (1866–1945), Furio (1868–1949), Masaniello (aka Thomas) (1870–1951), Orazio (aka Horatio, Horace) (1872–1954) and Getulio (1874–1945)—were trained as marble cutters and carvers.
Although the Piccirilli Brothers were known primarily as architectural modelers and the carvers of other sculptors’ works, Attilio and Furio further distinguished themselves as sculptors in their own right.
The family lived in a brownstone on 142nd Street in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx and set up a workshop next to their home that eventually occupied an entire city block.
At that time most prominent sculptors created their original work in clay. From that clay model a caster generated a plaster model. The model was then sent to the Piccirilli Brothers who carved it from stone, typically marble, although limestone and granite were also used. The brothers became the carvers of choice for many American sculptors of the time including Daniel Chester French and Paul Wayland Bartlett.
Besides their work as carvers the Piccirilli Brothers also created architectural detailing and embellishments for many public and private buildings.
One of the great losses in American art history occurred when the Piccirilli Brothers studio quietly closed its doors in 1945 and their records were lost. However, as of 2024, documentary filmmaker Eduardo Montes-Bradley is in production on a film that uses records recovered from their client firms to reconstruct the history of the Piccirilli studio.
Nationality:
Italian, American
Dates:
Closed in 1945
Occupation:
Sculptors, Stonecarvers
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