Peace dollar question - St Gaudens design??

tradedollarnut

Anybody get the ANS magazine? On page 35, there's a new acquisition pictured - a Peace medal designed by St Gaudens circa 1905. I was struck by the similarity to the face on the Peace Dollar. The resemblance is amazing.

Did St Gaudens actually do the portrait for the coin?

DHeath

Did she look like this......

DHeath

That's Anthony DeFrancisci's wife Teresa Cafarelli DeFrancicsi, and the supposed model for the Peace dollar.

Here's a picture I like better....

tradedollarnut

Let's just say that St Gaudens medal looks more like the design than she does.

Longacre

You should send a PM to RWB. I am sure he knows.

RWB

If you'll check a copy of "Renaissance of American Coinage 1916-1921" you'll find the complete story.

But, in short, when deFrancisci was awarded the design competition in early Dec 1921, he was put under the "guidance" of James Fraser and also loaned a bust of Nike Erini copied from Saint-Gaudens' original. DeFrancisci was instructed to use the Saint-Gaudens bust as a guide in making his final Liberty portrait. The Peace dollar obverse is closer to the sample than to any portrait of his wife. In the deFrancisci archive there is a portrait model of Teresa with her hair up much as on the coin - there is little resemblance - but the whole thing made a good newspaper story.

The Saint-Gaudens medal portrait dates from at least 1896 and was the original head for "Victory" on the Sherman Memorial in NYC. The original model was probably Alice Butler, but later S-G used Hettie Anderson and she was again in S-Gs studio in 1906 as he worked on the $20 and cent designs.

See the article in last September's Coins Magazine for lots of illustrations, etc. and also "Saint-Gaudens, Zorn, and the Goddesslike Miss Anderson" in Smithsonian "American Art" magazine (2002) and a version in Coins Magazine in (2003).

ricko

Cool... great information.. thanks, Cheers, RickO

Cladiator

Dheath, I got that image from one of your threads, hope ya don't mind...