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(MICHAELANGELO
from page 1) wealthy enough to pay the $3 million price. Its owners, the citizens of Clermont-Ferrand, France, hoped to raise money to rebuild the town, left devastated and destitute by World War II.
In its brief sojourn in America, the sculpture, which depicts the fallen Christ in his Mother's arms, accompanied by Mary Magdalen and Nicodemus (whose face, as in many of Michaelange-lo's works, is a self-portrait), arrived in Florida and traveled through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to its destination in Texas where it was presented to a number of wealthy art patrons and museums. No buyer was found, and the statute went east again where it was lodged in a bank vault in Alabama until the French Embassy fetched it and returned it to France. The good news had come that the town was receiving Marshall Plan funds to aid the restoration and did not need to sell its greatest treasure.
Entrusted with the task of transporting the statue and finding a buyer were Wendell and Bianca Howard, friends of Katherine "Kitty" Keamy Hacker, whose sister, Mrs. James M. Robert, owned a summer home on the beach in Waveland.
The Howards stopped in Waveland en route to Texas. Keamy Robert, now 81, who lives on Farrar Lane next to the site of his parents' summer home (destroyed in Hurricane Camille), remembers that visit well.
"I went to dinner with my parents and my Aunt Kitty, who died in 1994 at age 100, was there
with the Howards, her old friends," he said. "Aunt Kitty mentioned that the Howards brought with them a statue by Michaelangelo that they were commissioned to sell." It was brought out from the guest room where it had spent the night in its crate under a bed. Weeks later, on its return from Texas, the statue spent another night under the same bed in the Robert home.
The story of the pieta', restored to the cathedral at St. Alons, France, is one of mystery and intrigue.
About 30 inches high, the sculpture, of Carrara marble, was a studio model for a much larger work intended for the sepulchre of Lorenzo di Medici, patron of Michaelangelo Buonarroti of Florence. The full-sized statue is in the Cathedral St. Maria del Tiore in Florence, but all experts agree that it is cruder because it is unfinished. One theory is that Michaelangelo, dissatisfied with the work, destroyed it, only to have his students restore it. A number of experts have stated their belief that the model is superior to the larger statue.
Catherine di Medici, Lorenzo's granddaughter, watched Michaelangelo work in the artists' studio of her grandfather. When she left for France to wed the Duke d'Orleans, later Henry II of France, Michaelangelo presented her with the statue, which she installed in the private chapel of her Summer Palace at Clermont-Ferrand. Since the Medicis forbade the export of any work of Michaelangelo, the pieta' was smuggled out to Catherine under the robe of a Benedictine monk.
For some 200 years, the pieta' remained in Catherine's chapel. During the French Revolution, it was hidden deep in the recesses of St. Alyre Abbey at Clermont-Ferrand. It remained there until World War II. Once Hitler's army occupied France, the statue left Clermont-Ferrand and was hidden by priests in the small village of St. Alons in northern France. Hitler's minions searched in vain for the pieta' throughout the war.
The citizens of Clermont-Ferrand, owners of the statue, knew and trusted the Polish-born wife of the interned American, Wendell Howard. She had spent most of her childhood in St. Alons. During the war she was a Resistance Fighter with the French Underground. When Wendell was freed after the war, the pair settled in Pensacola, Florida. In 1947, they were commissioned by the citizens of Clermont-Ferrand to bring the statue to the States and find a buyer. There was no trouble importing the Michaelangelo since objects older than 100 years enter duty free, and Wendell Howard traveled under diplomatic immunity granted for the occasion.
From Florida, the Howards, together with Mrs. Hacker and Mrs. Robert, headed for Texas to show the statue, with a $3 million price tag, to wealthy art patrons and museums. The sculpture was also seen by a pair of sophisticated thieves working for a dealer in stolen art works. They followed the statue from Texas back to the east, where the Michaelangelo was left in the vault of a Mobile bank.
(Continued on page 3)