THE LIONS

The silent sentinels greeting visitors on Fifth Avenue hide a story of technical mastery and curious public debates within their pink veins. Carved by the Piccirilli brothers in their Bronx workshop, these lions did not emerge without controversy, as some critics during their nineteen eleven inauguration found them too tame and lacking in majesty. Even former President Theodore Roosevelt suggested that bison should have taken their place as more authentic symbols of North American wildlife, while others proposed beavers in honor of the Astor family fortune. Despite these opinions, the architect's choice and the talent of the six brothers from Massa prevailed, creating two giants exceeding eleven feet in length, which is about three feet longer than their natural counterparts. To ensure their longevity under Manhattan's variable skies, the Piccirillis did not choose the white marble of their homeland but rather a specific pink...

The story of the Piccirilli brothers doesn't begin in the Bronx, but among the white mountains of Carrara, and it doesn't begin with them, but with their father: Giuseppe Piccirilli. A man who was not just a carver, but a renowned master, a descendant of a minor noble family who had chosen art as his calling. The six sons, Attilio, Furio, Ferruccio, Getulio, Masaniello, and Orazio, did not have a typical childhood. Their home in Massa was also their workshop, their laboratory. The sound of the chisel on stone was their lullaby, the marble dust the air they breathed. From the time they were children, they were apprentices under the watchful eye of their father, a strict but fair master who taught them not only how to sculpt, but how to feel the stone. Growing up in Carrara at that time meant breathing in art and hard work. It meant seeing the quarries from which Michelangelo had pulled his David, and understanding that marble wasn't just a material, but a legend. The Piccirillis learned to "read the stone,"...

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Excerpt from tracingITALIANroots© – NEW YORK edition.