Frank Vittor

Frank Vittor
Christopher Columbus state at Schenley Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Born	Frank Vittor (1888-01-06)6 January 1888 Mozzate, Como, Italy
Died	24 January 1968(1968-01-24) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Nationality	Italian
Education	Academy of Beres Auguste Rodin
Known for	Sculpture, Drawing
Notable work	Christopher Columbus Charles Lindberg 1936 Gettysburg Half-Dollar Honus Wagner

Frank Vittor (January 6, 1888 – January 24, 1968) was an American sculptor, known for his "preference for the heroic and colossal".

Vittor was born in Mozzato, Como, a suburb of Milan, Italy. He studied art in Milan at the Academy of Beres and then traveled to Paris, France to study under Auguste Rodin. When Vittor was 18, in 1906, U.S. architect Stanford White brought Vittor to New York City to work on his staff. White, who had designed Madison Square Garden II, was murdered at a performance at The Garden two weeks after Vittor arrived. The youth, having little money and knowing very limited English, decided to stay in America and soon opened an art studio. He met his future wife, Ade Mae Humphreys, a resident of Pittsburgh, and made the move to her home town.

Aviator Charles Lindbergh’s first solo trans-Atlantic 3,600-mile (5,800 km) flight between Long Island, New York and Paris, France was immortalized in bronze by Vittor with a 50-foot-tall (15 m) sculpture showing a winged youth spanning the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower. Congress approved the expenditure in 1928, and the work was completed in 1929.

Perhaps no work by Vittor created as much controversy and media coverage as did his nude statue of Henrietta Leaver, Miss America 1935. Though Leaver posed for Vittor, she did so in a bathing suit, accompanied by her grandmother. Upon first viewing the lifesize 5-foot 5-inch plaster statue Leaver was shocked that it was a nude and demanded her representation be draped or veiled. Vittor did not agree and called in art experts to judge the work and all agreed it should stay as it had been created. Leaver did not back down and demanded people her own age review "The American Venus," as it had originally been called. Unfortunately for Leaver her 60 peers, many of whom were art students, agreed it should remain unveiled. Though the strong disagreement between the two eventually did subside, Leaver, Vittor and the statue resurfaced five decades later in recaps of controversial Miss America mishaps.