The New Criterion

A curiously recurring event in publishing is the simultaneous appearance of two books by different authors, long in preparation, on virtually identical subjects. It occurs often enough with biographies but occasionally with other topics as well. One such recent coincidence is on a subject that surely merits this double dose of attention: of World War II and how that catastrophic conflict effected the artistic patrimony of Europe.

Although The Venus Fixers is not a particularly promising title, the book is a fast-paced and well-written account of events prior and subsequent to the liberation of Italy by the Allies in the period 1943–45. The author, Ilaria Dagnini Brey, briefly recounts the genesis of the specialized units that were created by both the American and British commands to identify and, if possible, safeguard significant artistic sites. At the political level, it seems that the importance of this task was only recognized in the nick of time. A scant fortnight prior to the landings in Sicily in July 1943, President Roosevelt established a special commission, naming Owen J. Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, as chairman. The ungainly title, the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Historic Monuments in War Areas, accurately describes its intended functions. The new entity soon gathered a varied group of art-world professionals as operatives and advisers. Some of them had conferred privately on the subject of art conservation in wartime even before Pearl Harbor.

The British were considerably slower bureaucratically; the Committee on the Preservation and Restitution of Works of Art was created by Churchill only in May of 1944. Sir Leonard Woolley, the noted archaeologist, served as chairman. With great foresight in 1942, as the fighting approached the great Roman ruins of Leptis Magna in North Africa, he had gathered a handful of dedicated junior officers to improvise a number of precautions. The Blitz, of course, had already done its share in England to raise awareness of wartime perils to artistic monuments.

Dagnini Brey describes in telling detail the inevitable friction and even hostility between the “Venus Fixers” and the officers in charge of military operations. Commanders such as Montgomery and Patton were hardly influenced by art-historical concerns in making their tactical decisions: military considerations almost always trumped artistic ones. Despite the lack of support, materials, and organization, the stalwart Venus Fixers persevered in their task. Unfortunately, we are left wondering when and how the nickname for these uniformed arts custodians originated. Presumably, it became current by the time the Allies reached Naples and the enormity of the mission and the scarcity of resources to accomplish it had become clear. A telling example is the leveling of the ancient abbey of Monte Cassino, on the march from Naples to Rome. It was an epochal disaster, compounded by a lack of proper intelligence and planning. Things were to improve, but only slightly, as the grinding, brutal campaign progressed up the peninsula. The Eternal City’s intact survival was certainly a triumph of foresight and diplomacy, but nothing was to save the bridges and other parts of medieval Florence.

Not surprisingly, the city assumes a central role in The Venus Fixers. Florence is described as if it were in a nightmare, virtually emptied of its endless inventory of treasures, most having been long before dispatched to safety in the Tuscan hills while the rest was walled up and sandbagged in place. Already stripped of its identity as a city of art, Florence was, in a final tragedy, wantonly and hideously gutted by the retreating Germans during the night of July 10, 1944. Every bridge spanning the Arno, including the Ponte Santa Trinita, Ammanati’s sixteenth-century masterpiece, was dynamited. To “save” the Ponte Vecchio, it’s ancient surrounding urban context was pulverized. In a particularly poignant moment, Bray puts us in the shoes of Ugo Procacci, a brilliant young art historian and Uffizi curator. Having heard the explosive charges being detonated from his perch at the Palazzo Pitti, he wonders what of his beloved city he will find still standing the next morning. To his dismay, he discovers that the devastation is massive, but, miraculously, two irreplaceable monuments survived: the church of Santa Felicita with frescoes by Pontormo and Bronzino and the Romanesque jewel, Santo Stefano al Ponte.

The story of the Italian campaign and of those who heroically assumed the staggering responsibility of guarding Italy’s art is set against the backdrop of the Fascist collapse in the summer of 1943 and Italy’s subsequent submission to Nazi military and political domination. Understaffed, ill-equipped, and often at odds with their superiors, English and American officers labored mightily in the race against destruction and depredation. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Dagnini Brey’s book is its account of the remarkable dedication of Italy’s own fine arts functionaries who often found themselves dangerously torn in their political loyalties but united in their efforts on behalf of the nation’s artistic patrimony. Their exploits in evacuating and protecting art as the war began, and later as the front engulfed it, are an inspiring testimony to their bravery and resourcefulness. They received precious cooperation in this herculean task from the Allied Venus Fixers after the liberation, but also occasionally before it. Courageous individuals such as Dr. Gerhard Wolf, the German consul in Florence, energetically opposed the combined destructive powers of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS, thereby sparing the city an even worse fate.

The senseless outrage perpetrated by the Nazis in Florence was matched in barbarity by a campaign to “remove to safety” countless paintings and works of art, essentially stealing them for future disposal within the Reich. Most of this looting, however, was a last, desperate measure, perhaps an attempt to salvage something from the ruinous military defeat. In fact, most of the stolen artworks never made it across the Alps, and almost all were recovered during and after the war thanks to the tireless endeavors of the Italian authorities and the Venus Fixers. Brey recounts these dramatic events with a good sense of timing and suspense. More importantly, she has obviously studied closely the chronicles, diaries, and letters of many of the Italian participants, thereby expanding the story and bringing to light a wealth of interesting and previously unpublished facts.

With The Monuments Men (unlike the Venus Fixers, the nickname is at least more appropriate), the attention shifts to Northern Europe: France, Belgium, the Lowlands, and Germany, countries whose rich artistic patrimony was as cruelly affected by the war as it was in Italy. Robert Edsel explored the subject in an earlier book but here, with the assistance of Bret Witter, he focuses specifically on the American unit known as Monuments Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA). Although the planning and preparation for this laudable undertaking began as early as 1941 and culminated in 1943 with the formation of the so-called Roberts Commission, the real action in Northern Europe began with the Normandy landings a year later. Like their counterparts in Italy, the Monuments Men found themselves all too sparsely spread across the vast Allied deployment of over a million men, armed with little more than abundant energy, goodwill, and, at best, only reasonably accurate maps indicating the location of important monuments. They never numbered more than two dozen, often operating very close to the front, mostly without independent transportation, adequate communication, or appropriate equipment. That so much was accomplished in the grueling march across Europe to Berlin is an eloquent testimony to these men’s courage and dedication.

The plight of Italy’s art during the war was similar in many ways to the fate of works in the north: The Monument Men is a tragic litany of harrowing aerial bombardments, crushing battlefield devastations, and careless, almost haphazard destruction, punctuated by miraculous survivals and retrievals. The two theaters, however, differed in one important respect: Italy had been an ally of Germany, at least until September 1943. Even after the separate armistice, the puppet Fascist government remained nominally autonomous of the occupying German forces. France, Belgium, and the Lowlands, on the contrary, were victims of a hostile invasion. The Nazi authorities held virtually unobstructed sway over their populations and their national resources, including, of course, the art. The northern occupations lasted more than three years and allowed the Germans systematically to appropriate, confiscate, requisition—that is, simply steal—an enormous amount of artistic material. The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosemberg (EER) was just one of the smoothly functioning units charged with enriching the Reich: in the case of EER, specifically at the expense of Jewish institutions, collectors, and dealers. Then there was the “private” activity of the Nazi magnates, most notoriously Göring, whose rapacious appetites for art fueled a thriving but fundamentally clandestine and corrupt market.

The Monuments Men follows its protagonists in their eastward progress and describes the painstaking task of identifying, tracking, and saving works such as the Bruges Madonna by Michelangelo and the “Ghent Altarpiece” by the Van Eycks, which had been abducted by the Germans in their retreat. But these two treasures were only the last-minute spoils of a regime still clinging to the conviction that Europe’s culture should not fall prey to the Allied “barbarians.” They were desperate operations preceded by years of methodical selection and removal of cultural patrimony, the bulk of which was supposed to have constituted Hitler’s delusional vision of a vast “Germanic Museum” in Linz. The Monuments Men proved to be relentless pursuers and were aided in their hunt by a handful of civilians whose role is well worth remembering. The book pays particular homage to Rose Valland, a curator of the Jeu de Paume museum, whose careful inventories compiled during the German occupation served as an invaluable roadmap for the successful recovery of most of the missing art after the war and are still consulted to this day in restitution cases.

The Monuments Men is certainly compelling and, indeed, parts of it were previously unknown. The narrative structure of the book, however, draws attention away from the facts and tends to dilute them: Edsel and Witter adopt a novelistic, Cornelius Ryan–like, approach that burdens the otherwise well-researched material with invented dialogue, imagined atmospheric descriptions, unnecessary character development, and incessant cross-cutting through the time-line. The intention is to engage the reader in the personal experiences of the three principal American protagonists: James Rorimer, George Stout, and Walker Hancock, all of whom were to enjoy successful postwar careers in the arts. But a straightforward exposition of these brave men’s accomplishments might have resulted in a more coherent account of their critical role in saving Europe’s artistic patrimony.

Both books dramatically illustrate how perilously close that patrimony came to annihilation. The perfidy of the Nazis was limitless, but, ironically, three of the greatest artistic casualties of the conflict succumbed to Allied bombardment: the Mantegna frescoes in Padova’s Ovetari Chapel, the Camposanto in Pisa, and, of course, Monte Cassino.