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RICHMOND, Va. - We're ready for your closeup, Mr. Washington.
A 216-year-old sculpture - the most accurate and detailed rendering of George Washington in existence - will undergo a laser scan this year to produce a precise, three-dimensional depiction of the first president.
The caretakers at Washington's Mount Vernon estate plan to use the digital map to build lifelike models of Washington that will be part of a new $85-million museum and visitor center.
A legislative committee on Tuesday approved a plan to have experts from Arizona State University scan the statue in Virginia's Capitol rotunda.
Mount Vernon wants to build models of Washington at age 19, as a young surveyor and frontiersman; age 45, when he commanded the Continental Army; and age 57, when he became president.
The marble sculpture was done by French artist Jean-Antoine Houdon, who made a plaster cast of Washington's head and took exacting measurements of his body. It is the only full-length sculpture for which Washington ever posed.
Houdon was commissioned for the work by Thomas Jefferson, then a diplomat in Paris.
Visit George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens at www.mountvernon.org/