Editor, The News:

A few months ago, I was with family in Washington, D.C.

I accompanied them on a guided trip to see all the historical monuments. Our guide stopped at the Lincoln Memorial, where Daniel Chester French is credited as sculptor of the Lincoln statue.

I told the guide that French conceived and created the statue, but he did not do its actual carving.

The Piccirilli family did that work almost exclusively. It was the largest marble statue in America at its time.

French’s model was only five feet high and he later replaced it with a seven-foot-high model, made out of clay.

The statue was to be 28 feet high with a base diameter of 20 feet. The Piccirilli brothers, with older brother Getulia in charge, would carve the marble chosen from Georgia. They started carving by hand with chisels and hammers, first the hands and then the head, etc., and they placed them together in pieces and locked them.

They did 100 percent of the carving of this statue. It stays together today through the force of gravity by continually pulling in the pieces so that the statue remains unmovable.

It’s a masterpiece in both art and science.

And to think it was carved by an obscure Italian American family, the Piccirilli brothers of the Bronx.

What galls me is the bronze marker that does not include any of their names. Some say they wanted it that way.

Peter P. Panella

New Castle