Mourning Victory from the Melvin Memorial, 1906–8; this carving, 1912–15 Daniel Chester French (American, 1850–1931) Marble 120 1/2 x 57 1/4 x 28 3/4 in. (306.1 x 145.4 x 73 cm) Gift of James C. Melvin, 1915 (15.75) As early as 1897, Daniel Chester French was at work on a commission from James C. Melvin, a Boston businessman, to design a war monument honoring his three brothers who had died in the Civil War. In 1908, the Melvin Memorial was erected in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts, and is considered by many to be French's greatest war monument, if not his finest ideal work. Four years later, Melvin offered to fund a marble replica for the Metropolitan Museum, which was subsequently carved by the Piccirilli Brothers and installed in the Museum in 1915. French merged innovative technique and symbolic content in Mourning Victory, as he called the figure of the angel. She emerges from a cavity of a rectangular marble shaft, flesh from stone, darkness into li