How does this artwork elucidate its Architects?
A New Jersey native, Magonigle was a successful architect of monuments, including the McKinley Memorial Mausoleum in Ohio and the Liberty Memorial in Missouri. Piccirilli studied marble carving at his father's studio in Italy, before moving to the United States in 1888. Magonigle and Piccirilli had collaborated previously on the USS Maine National Monument in Central Park, and Piccirilli used the same model (Audrey Munson) for the female figures of both. Piccirilli's independent fragment, Study of a Head, is derived from the Firemen's Memorial and is housed in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Dianne Durante compared Piccirilli's northern cluster of statues (a woman cradling the limp body of a firefighter) to Michelangelo's statue of a grieving Madonna. She also praised the southern cluster, the same woman holding a child (presumably the widow and child of the dead firefighter), a scene she describes as "wrenching." She attributes the power of the bas-relief to communicate the urgency and drama to the artist's decision to depict a horse-drawn engine, rather than an emotionless motorized engine, and she attributes the timelessness of the sculptures to the use of classical, simple drapery, rather than contemporary costume.
New Jersey Michelangelo Missouri firefighter Liberty Memorial Italy McKinley Memorial Mausoleum Ohio USS Maine National Monument Central Park bas-relief Audrey Munson Metropolitan Museum of Art