MORRISON HECKSCHER: This charming portrait by Augustus Saint-Gaudens depicts the Schiff children. Their father was Jacob Schiff, a New York banker and philanthropist. Here, eight-year-old Frieda Fanny leads seven-year-old Mortimer Leo by the hand, beneath a floral garland. The marble relief was made specially for The Met. And its easy elegance belies Saint-Gaudens’s prolonged creative process. Curator Thayer Tolles.

THAYER TOLLES: Saint Gaudens went to great lengths to figure out what was the best way to portray the children. In a number of clay sketches that he did, we see the children are posed frontally; they're posed sitting; they're posed standing; they’re looking to their right or to their left . . . . until finally he hit upon an innovative solution.

MORRISON HECKSCHER: And that was to have them lead a lanky Scottish deerhound.

THAYER TOLLES: This dog was the Saint-Gaudens’s family pet.

MORRISON HECKSCHER: The cherished pet unites the entire relief, stretching the width of the composition. Saint-Gaudens was America’s undisputed innovator in relief sculpture that projects out from a two-dimensional background. Here, in a work that is only about three inches deep, his technique is virtuoso—from the dog’s wiry fur to the deep undercuts of Frieda’s pleated dress.