Life mask and hands of Lincoln, Leonard Wells Volk, 1886
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- Chicago History Museum, ICHi-52644
Lincoln in Bronze
This bronze grouping was made from original plaster molds taken of Lincoln’s face and hands by the Chicago sculptor Leonard Volk in 1860. Twenty-six years later, Volk’s friend, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, initiated a fund-raising campaign to purchase the casts for the National Museum, now the Smithsonian Institution. Plaster copies sold for fifty dollars, while bronze copies cost eighty-five dollars.