Michelangelo’s buttocks on Fifth Avenue and Rhett Butler at Atlanta Zoo

 

“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.

 

The Payne Whitney Mansion, now the French Cultural Institute

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.

 

Cupid, Michelangelo Buonarroti, c.1490, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on loan from Cultural Service of the French Embassy

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.

 

Note the dimple

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.

 

The Battle of Atlanta diorama

In late 19^th 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.

 

The German artists who created the diorama

The Battle of Atlanta diorama, detail

A sketch for part of the diorama

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.

 

The diorama from the viewing platform

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.

 

Rhett Butler mannequin

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.