"You
put all your artwork in a basement?
You're crazy!" yelled James Rorimer at a director of the Louvre
Museum when, in the summer of 1944 he learned how the French had managed to
safeguard the Louvre's treasures against the ravages of World War II. According to Gerri Chanel, author of Saving
Mona Lisa, this exchange did nothing to endear Rorimer, who would go on to
become the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and who
would be immortalized by the actor Matt Damon in George Clooney's film
"Monuments Men," to the French.
In
Saving Mona Lisa, Gerri Chanel has
succeeded in an original work of scholarship that grips the reader in with
stories of French bureacrats tying up Adolph Hitler, Hermann Goring and the
various Nazi art looting efforts in administrative red tape. Any reader who has run into the famous
French bureaucratic intransigeance will laugh at Louvre Museum Director Jacques Jaujard's creative ways of thwarting a rogue's gallery of Nazis as he careens around
France with masterworks tied to unsteady trucks.
Chanel illustrates just why the French are the world’s
masters of diplomacy and intrigue. When Fieldmarshal Hermann Goering sought to
steal important artworks and hide his tracks by proposing a voluntary
"exchange" (under obvious duress) that would avoid an international
outcry that an outright theft would create, Jaujard brilliantly proposed that
France make a "gift" to Goering. Jaujard knew the gesture would
enrage Hitler and world opinion against Goering. The Fieldmarshal
was stopped in his tracks. Momentarily.
. Chanel
starts from the beginning, showing Hitler as a failed artist whose great
ambition was to possess the world’s great art treasures, particularly those in
France deemed of “Germanic’ origin. As
Nazi fortunes waxed and waned, Nazi attempts to seize, exchange, "safeguard"
the Louvre's treasures increased in innovation and dark violence. Jaujard's efforts to thwart the Nazis were
undercut by an eagerly pro-Nazi Vichy regime, on the one hand. On the other, sympathetic Nazis assisted
Jaujard in his game of administrative chess.
The Nazi military administration insisted on control, as did the
civilian overseers. By pitting Nazi
against Nazi in a delicate battle of the egos, the smooth French diplomat
Jaujard escaped from one frying pan into the next fire in a gripping narrative
that will have the reader, feeling Nazi hands around Jaujard's vulnerable
French throat.
Central
to the narrative is the Mona Lisa. A red
dot was placed on the crate of any important artwork. Very important works sported two red
dots. The Mona Lisa was the only artwork
sporting three red dots. To avoid Nazis
learning of the contents of a particular crate, the dots were the only
markings. Among thousands of crates,
important artworks were able to hide in plain sight, while the French pretended
to compile inventories to comply with orders emanating directly from
Hitler. Among thousands of crates, the
Mona Lisa spend the war dodging, ducking and evading.
Chanel's
tale is enhanced by enemies feared more than Nazi looters. Humidity, fire, Allied bombs, flame-spewing
transport trucks fired by coal (after gasoline supplies ran out), French
resistance fighters hiding weapons and literature among crates.... Chanel
brings all of these dangers to light in a compelling way that will cause any
art lover's blood pressure to rise and fingernails to be chewed off.
Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa - Still Smiling!
In
April 1943 London's BBC broadcast the radio message "the Mona Lisa is
smiling" to a puzzled, war torn continent.
This coded message let Jaujard know that the Allies had received his
maps showing the locations of the Louvre's treasures and that Allied bombers
had been instructed to avoid those areas.
Saving Mona Lisa is amply
illustrated. Photos showing the battle
scars on the wall of the Louvre and the masses of people stampeding in the
runup to the liberation of Paris emphasize how the Louvre was physically
located on the front lines of battle during hand to hand combat.
In
2014, the world's museums have come under fire for failing to research the
provenance of their artworks and to return them to Nazi victims. Saving MonaLisa is a great example of a greater history being told through the
provenance of one artwork. The story
contains deaths, failures (Nazis burned approximately five hundred artworks in
the Tuileries gardens despite the best efforts of Jaujard and his spy Rose
Valland who was stationed in the Jeu de Palme museum that was used as a Nazi
staging point). While Mona Lisa escaped, many other artworks did not,
including collections looted from Jewish families.The full story is yet to be told, and the museums of the world and
particularly the United States should commit resources to returning stolen
artworks to the families of looting victims.
Let's hope that Chanel's SavingMona Lisa will inspire a new generation of provenance researchers to look
at the fruits of Nazi art looting that may be found in their local museums.
George Clooney's The Monuments Men - Cate Blanchett as Rose Valland and Matt Damon as James Rorimer
Let’s
hope that Hollywood and history pays attention to Saving Mona Lisa --where the truth is more entertaining than
fiction!
www.dunnington.com
Copyright law, fine art and navigating the courts. All practice, no theory.Copyright Litigation Handbook (Thomson Reuters Westlaw 2012-2013) by Raymond J. Dowd
