“I am Professor Brandt. Let us in.” One Sunday afternoon in 1996
in New York I was standing on the doorstep of the French Cultural Institute in
New York City with my friends Karin and Bill Agosta and Kathleen Weil-Garris
Brandt. Kathleen had wrapped on the door to summon the security guard, who quite
reasonably hesitated, telling us that the Institute was closed. Kathleen’s imperious
self-confidence was enough to gain us admittance. So, there we stood in the
lobby by a fountain topped by a marble Cupid. But this was no mere Cupid –
Kathleen had recently called the media to the Institute to announce that she
had decided that this Cupid was an unrecognized Michelangelo. If we had been a
group of art thieves, we could easily have overpowered the guard and made off
with a sculpture of untold cultural and monetary value. Fortunately, we were
just two art publishers, her chemist husband and an art historian from the
Institute of Fine Arts.
One evening a few weeks earlier, as she walked up
5th Avenue, Kathleen passed the French embassy’s cultural building, a New York
landmark designed by the noted architect Stanford White (1853-1906). A
reception was underway in the foyer of the building. As the light fell on the Cupid,
Kathleen, in a flash of inspiration, recognized it as an unknown Michelangelo. Her
announcement to the media unwittingly set off an unexpected chain of events.
Since the building was French territory the Cupid belonged to France. The
President of France despatched the Director of the Louvre to authenticate the
statue. The Director, Pierre Rosenberg, was himself an imperious figure. He was
inclined to agree with Kathleen, and was ordered to repatriate the statue to
the Louvre. However, the building was protected under New York state law as a landmark,
which forbade any modifications (such as removing the statue) without
permission. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (now a disreputable bag carrier for Donald
Trump’s dirty work) announced that, if the French tried to remove the statue,
New York’s finest would be waiting on 5th Avenue to impound it. A standoff
ensued.
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The Payne Whitney Mansion, now the French Cultural Institute
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Kathleen showed us round “her” statue, pointing
out the features that had convinced her that this was a Michelangelo. She had
recently shown it to somebody far more distinguished than me and he had concurred.
I imagined the imposing Kathleen showing Cupid to the even more imposing Valéry
Giscard d’Estaing, former President of France. She told me that, as he
contemplated a dimple on the statue’s buttock, Giscard declared “Madame, je
suis convaincu!”. Kathleen asked for my opinion. I explained that publishers
had opinions about many things, but not usually about dimpled young boys’
buttocks. The examination over, we repaired to the Carlyle hotel bar for an
afternoon bottle of champagne.
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Cupid, Michelangelo Buonarroti, c.1490,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on loan from Cultural Service of the
French Embassy
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The Cupid came to the USA in the early 1900s
as a decorative centrepiece for the marble rotunda entrance of a newly-designed
Italianate mansion, a wedding gift of financier Payne Whitney to his new bride
Helen. Kathleen’s attribution was met with much scepticism, in part because art
historians are egotistical types and professional jealousy of a big discovery
is a natural instinct for most. However, she was supported by the Metropolitan
Museum’s curator of European sculpture and by Rosenberg. The documentary
evidence was somewhat supportive of the attribution, but not conclusive, so
heavyweight opinions won the day for Kathleen and Cupid. Nevertheless, there
remained the question of what to do with a statue that was French property, but
which could not be removed to France without the agreement of the Mayor of New
York, a man not much given to doing favours for Frenchies. The matter was
finally resolved thirteen years later when the Metropolitan Museum and the
French government signed an agreement to loan the statue to the museum for ten
years, an agreement later extended to 2029.
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Note the dimple
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One of the benefits of my line of work was
that my employers paid for me to travel to meet art historians, museum
curators, art dealers, collectors, and even some artists. A regular fixture in
my year was the convention of the College Art Association of America (CAA). A
decade or so after my viewing of Cupid, the CAA met in Atlanta, GA. Over lunch
with an art historian from Oberlin College, Ohio, my guest told me that his
family came from Atlanta. He had a family heirloom, a gilt mirror that bore the marks of damage
inflicted as the family fled, with all that was precious, when the Confederates
abandoned the city after the Battle of Atlanta. I mentioned that I had a day
free after the convention ended. My guest recommended that I go to the Atlanta
Zoo to see the diorama of the Battle of Atlanta. He gave me instructions for
getting there by public transport (two bus rides). The second bus was quite
crowded. I noticed that there were only three white faces on the bus: mine and
two women. Atlanta is a complicated city, with some ugly episodes in its past,
and I was reminded that a friend had told me sotto voce that the
Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transport Authority, which managed the buses, is
known pejoratively as Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta. When we reached
the end of the line at the zoo, the three white faces were the only passengers
remaining. All three of us were British delegates to the CAA, so we set off together
to see the diorama.
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The Battle of Atlanta diorama
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In late 19th century America, an
early precursor to the moving picture show was the diorama, a seriously large
circular painting depicting an important historical event. One exponent of the
diorama was the American Panorama Company of Milwaukee, WI. This company employed
a group of German painters led by Friedrich Heine, of Leipzig. Now, those who
have seen Gone With the Wind will know that a Civil War battle took
place just outside Atlanta. In July 1864 the Confederate forces led by General
John Bell Hood attacked the Union Army commanded by General William Tecumseh
Sherman. The battle was fought on 22 July at the charmingly named Peachtree
Creek and on 24 July at Ezra Church. The fighting was fierce and bloody. Hopes
of victory swung back and forth, but eventually Hood was defeated and the
well-to-do of Atlanta packed in a hurry and fled.
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The German artists who created the diorama
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The Battle of Atlanta diorama, detail
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A sketch for part of the diorama
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The Battle of Atlanta diorama opened for
public viewing in 1886 in Milwaukee. The public entered via a staircase to a
viewing platform in the centre of the circle formed by the gigantic painting.
The floor was covered in soil (a distinctive red around Atlanta) and bushes.
Campsites, cannon and mannequins added extra touches of reality. In the
long-run this was not good for the conservation of the painting. When I saw the
diorama I was told that it was once much taller, but insects in the soil and
bushes had feasted on the lower portion. Heine and his colleagues had travelled
to Atlanta to interview veterans and sketch the locations of the battle. They
included recognizable portraits of the Confederate and Union commanders,
including General Sherman himself. Indeed, Sherman viewed the diorama and praised
its depiction of the battle. But pride of place was given to Union General John
A. (‘Black Jack’) Logan, who had broken the Confederate charge that nearly won
the battle for the Confederacy.
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The diorama from the viewing platform
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By 1890 dioramas were out of fashion,
replaced by magic lantern shows. The diorama was bought by small-time showman
from Georgia, Paul Atkinson, who intended to display it in Chattanooga in 1891.
This was the heyday of the romanticizing of the Confederacy as the Lost Cause (a
subject for another blog). Atkinson decided to capitalize on the Lost Cause
market by repainting figures in one of the Union army’s heroic moments as
Confederates. He also converted a group of wretched Confederate prisoners into
miserable Union cowards. The painting moved to Atlanta in 1892 but sales were
poor and Atkinson sold his diorama. Subsequent owners could not make a go of
the business and the giant painting ended up in unsatisfactory storage. It
seemed doom to death by decay.
However, the diorama was saved by Gone With
the Wind. One of the advisers to the film, Wilbur Kurtz saw an opportunity
to honour the Lost Cause by restoring the painting and displaying it at the zoo.
He too edited the picture to enhance the Confederate cause. When the movie was
premiered in Atlanta Clark Gable visited the diorama and complained that he was
not in it. Kurtz promptly added him as a mannequin. When I saw it both Rhett
Butler and Scarlett O’Hara had been painted into the history of the great
battle. But audiences dwindled and in the 1970s a number of (pro-Confederate)
Atlanta councilmen proposed to move it to nearby Stone Mountain to form part of
a display to honour the Confederacy. But the mayor of Atlanta was Maynard
Jackson, the first African American to hold that office. He prevented the move
and hired actor James Earl Jones to record a commentary in his resonant voice. By
the time I saw the painting, it was not at its best, but it was still an imposing
sight.
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Rhett Butler mannequin
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After the show I left the zoo with my two
new friends and searched for the bus stop to take us back downtown. But a
return stop was nowhere to be found. I had noticed a police station close by,
so suggested, in true British style, that we ask a policeman. As we approached
the station, two white police officers were escorting a black man in shackles out
of the back door. Inside, two portly white officers were relaxing, watching
something on their screens (probably not monitoring crime). With our strange
accents we were perhaps lucky not to be detained as suspect illegal immigrants.
In reply to our asking where the bus stop was, an officer replied “Gee, I’ve
seen buses round here but darned if I know where you get on”. These officers, I
assumed, were not the kind of people that MARTA was designed for. Luckily, at
that moment we spotted a bus stopping across the street, bolted out the door
and hopped on board. As we rode back downtown, one of my companions told us
that she had taken a break from CAA earlier in the week to sit in a downtown
park to take some air and get a little sun. As she relaxed on a park bench,
somebody handed her a paper cup and a piece of paper. The cup contained soup
and the paper was a Bible tract. The visiting art historian from London looked round
and noticed that she was the only white person sitting on the park’s benches.
Everybody else was a hungry homeless person. She had been mistaken by a kindly
charity worker for a hungry down and out. Atlanta, as I say is a complicated
place.
So ended our afternoon at the zoo. I am
pleased, however, to report that the diorama has since been restored and moved
to the Atlanta History Center in 2018. For those who like figures it measures
371.2 feet by 49 feet and weighs 9,400 pounds.
Finally, a footnote about Stanford White,
who designed the mansion that houses the French Cultural Institute. Aged 48, he
had an affair with a 16-year old girl, Evelyn Nesbit. Evelyn later claimed that
he had drugged and raped her. Four years after the affair had started, Evelyn
married a millionaire from Pittsburgh, Harry Kendall Thaw, a jealous man who
was emotionally unstable. One evening Evelyn and Harry dined at Martin’s
restaurant in New York City, where Stanford White was dining with a friend, and,
like Harry and Evelyn, was going to a show at Madison Square Garden afterwards.
During the finale number, I Could Love a Million Girls, Harry approached
White, told him “You’ve ruined my wife” and shot him three times. White died
instantly. Thaw was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a
state hospital. However, with his mother’s help, he walked out of the hospital
and fled to Canada. He was extradited, committed to another asylum, and
eventually released when he was judged no longer to be insane.
