Contemporary Postman

Attilio Piccirilli was a well-known stone carver when he was commissioned to make Contemporary Postman for the U.S. Post Office Department Headquarters. At sixty-seven years old, he was also the oldest artist to complete a commission. He chose to depict a 1930s urban postal carrier as an idealized “postman of today,” complete with a neatly pressed uniform, hat, and a satchel full of letters. The carrier appears focused and thoughtful as he sorts the day’s post. Across the room from Contemporary Postman is his agrarian counterpart, Rural Free Mail Carrier, which was sculpted by Piccirilli’s student, Gaetano Cecere.

Trained at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, Piccirilli immigrated with his father and five brothers in 1888 to New York City, where they founded one of the city’s first and most successful stone carving businesses. Piccirilli enlarged and carved works for architects and artists, including Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French, for whom his family carved the figure of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Piccirilli also completed original designs, including two notable memorials in Manhattan: the Firemen's Monument in Riverside Park and the Maine Memorial at the southwest entrance to Central Park. One of his most acclaimed sculptures, a small nude titled Fragilina, now stands in the atrium of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.