Coin for the Compulsive Buyer

The Eye of the Illuminati

Bas-relief is a sculpture executed upon & attached to a flat surface.  The usual impression produced by an artistic relief is that about one-half of the actual proportions of the object are being seen in their third dimension of depth.

Victor David Brenner is probably best-known for his enduring Lincoln coin design, the obverse of which is the longest-running design in United States Mint history.  Brenner's design had been picked by 26th US President, Theodore Roosevelt who had earlier posed for him in New York.  Since arriving nineteen years earlier in the United States Brenner had become one of the nation’s premier medalists.  Roosevelt had learned of Brenner's talents in a settlement house on New York City's Lower East Side & was immediately impressed with a bas-relief that Brenner had made of Lincoln, based on the early American Civil War era photographer, Matthew Brady's photograph.

Roosevelt, who considered Lincoln the savior of the Union & the greatest Republican President & who also considered himself Lincoln’s political heir, ordered the new Lincoln penny to be based on Brenner's work & that it go just in time to commemorate Lincoln’s 100th birthday in 1909.  The likeness of President Lincoln on the obverse of the coin is an adaptation of a plaque Brenner executed several years earlier & which had come to the attention of President Roosevelt in New York.

Picture of the 26th President of the United States of America, (President) Theodore Roosevelt. 

Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard, whom Brenner counted among his friends, gave the sculptor an unpublished portrait of Lincoln which served Brenner as a basis for the study of Lincoln's features.  However, he examined every portrait to which he was able to obtain access, in order to draw those conclusions that, together with conversations with those who had known Lincoln himself, enabled him to evolve the portrait that appears on the penny.

When Brenner forwarded the model of the Lincoln cent to the Director of the Mint, the design bore his whole name, after the fashion of the signatures on the coinage of other countries, notably on the gold coins which Oscar Roty designed for France.  The Director, however, decided to have the initials substituted for the name, & in so doing he was thoroughly aware that in retaining either name or initials he exercised the prerogative of his office, as the law definitely gives him decision in such matters.

So, following the precedent of James B. Longacre, whose initials "JBL" (or simply "L") graced a number of U.S. coin designs for much of the latter half of the 19th century, Brenner placed his initials "VDB" at the bottom of the reverse between the wheat ear stalks.  Brenner at first refused to sign either his name or his initials, & his subsequent decision to permit the latter to appear was due entirely to his sense of responsibility for his work.

Widespread criticism of the initials' prominence resulted in their removal midway through 1909, the design's first year of issue.  In 1918, V.D. Brenner's initials returned as small letters below Lincoln's shoulder, where they remain today.  (The incorporation of the designer's initials into a coin design is now commonplace in the U.S.)

Victor David Brenner, beside (President) Abraham Lincoln 

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