The Lady from the Peace Dollar

[Buffalo_Pete]

Teresa Maria De Francisci.

[RWB]

Liberty's portrait on the Peace dollar was modeled from a bust titled "Niki Erini" by Saint-Gaudens. The bust de Francisci used was a copy made by James Fraser and loaned to de Francisci. The sculptor's wife posed for him so he could improve some hair details, but she was not "the model for the Peace dollar" any more than Anna Williams was for Morgan's 1878 dollar.

You can discover what really happened in the book Renaissance of American Coinage 1916-1921.

[Buffalo_Pete]

Thanks for adding that info Roger.  She sure enough was proud to be a part of it, even at that.

[RWB]

Actually, Teresa did not want any publicity and was embarrassed by the "Sunday Supplement" attention. The family archive papers suggest she permitted photos like the one in the OP only to aid her husband's career. She and her husband had no control over the dramatic and largely false newspaper feature stories.

However, she modeled for her husband on multiple occasions for other works. One was an attractive bas relief of Teresa walking their small dog. This was part of a series de Francisci made of Teresa's family members and was not something to sell. He also made several nude 1/2-length portrait busts of his wife.

[TonerGuy]

Hey Roger did you happen to look to see what town she was from in Italy.. someone posted in the PCGS 1921 Peace $ thread some family historical records but again, they were silent as to the name of the town...

[RWB]

I'm sure the info is in the Archives of American Art, but I don't remember what the town was. My old paper notes are packed away in a storage unit. (I prepared part of the de Francisci papers including high resolution scans and photos.)

[Buffalo_Pete]

TonerGuy:  I did a little research on the Cafarelli Family at WWW.familysearch.org.

I used the parameter that the Cafarelli name should be from the Naples area in Italy, and got one decent, but not confirmed town.

Cicciano is a town near Naples that contains the Cafarelli name.  It is the best match I could find, but again, not a slam dunk.

 

Hope this helps............I did the best I could.

Pete

[TonerGuy]

15 minutes ago, Buffalo_Pete said:

TonerGuy:  I did a little research on the Cafarelli Family at WWW.familysearch.org.

I used the parameter that the Cafarelli name should be from the Naples area in Italy, and got one decent, but not confirmed town.

Cicciano is a town near Naples that contains the Cafarelli name.  It is the best match I could find, but again, not a slam dunk.

 

Hope this helps............I did the best I could.

Pete

That was very kind of you to do that research.

[numisport]

Having owned Roger's 3 volume set has allowed countless hours of reading pleasure. Interesting images in 1916-1921 volume on page 204 show differences between the original approved design and what de Francisci did to improve the portrait by making the mouth and chin less massive giving us the breath taking coin we know today. He didn't have much time but I think he did it right !

[RWB]

De Francisci also had a lot of technical help and encouragement from James Fraser, at the direction of the Commission of Fine Arts. De Francisci was the only numismatic designer of the "Renaissance" period who did not have close connections to Saint-Gaudens.

 

PS: Glad you are enjoying the books! Large parts of them were written during my daughters' evening gymnastics practices.