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Collateral
Damage
As
a "fine arts officer" in World War II, Yale art professor
Deane Keller helped to rescue Italian masterworks from the ravages
of war. His efforts are documented in a remarkable collection of
photographs in Sterling Memorial Library.
March
2003
by
Catherine Roach '02
Catherine
Roach catalogued the Deane Keller Papers while working for Manuscripts
and Archives as an undergraduate. The collection was a source for
her senior essay in the history of art, which focused on art theft
during World War II.
When
the Allies invaded Italy in the summer of 1943, Yale
art professor Deane Keller '23 was among the troops scrambling ashore
in Naples. In civilian life, Keller taught painting and created
portraits of Yale worthies that adorn dining halls to this day.
As a young artist fresh from the Yale School of Fine Arts, Keller
won the prestigious Prix de Rome, an award that sent him to study
in Italy between 1923 and 1926. But 20 years later, he landed in
Italy on a different mission. The artworks that Keller had emulated
as a student suddenly became his to preserve. As a fine arts officer
assigned to the U.S. Fifth Army, Keller was responsible for protecting
Italian cultural treasures against the threats of combat and looting.
Over the next three
years, Keller would encounter everything from endangered Roman ruins
to purloined Renaissance altarpieces. In places like Pisa, Keller
and his fellow arts officers struggled to salvage shattered medieval
frescoes. After the liberation of Florence, they were greeted by
empty museums. The city, famed as the cradle of the Renaissance,
had been a contested site in the war, and many of the artworks that
had made Florence famous were missing. Works by artists such as
Botticelli and Duccio that had been removed from the city to protect
them from bombing were later seized as spoils of war by retreating
German forces. When the looted artworks were discovered piled haphazardly
in a carriage house near the Austrian border, Keller was in charge
of seeing them safely back to Florence.
The photographs on
these pages record some of the most dramatic moments in Keller's
efforts on the cultural front of the war. Keller and his friend
Charles Bernholz were authorized to take pictures of their duties,
a commission that resulted in a remarkable collection of some 12,000
images depicting heroic restorations as well as terrible damage.
After his death, Deane
Keller's widow, Katherine H. Keller, donated his papers and photographs
to Yale. Now in the collection of the Manuscripts and Archives department
at Sterling Memorial Library, these records will provide a resource
for years to come. By depicting familiar masterpieces in perilous
situations, they challenge us to rethink our concept of the eternal
artwork, untouched and outside of time. Instead they show us that
works of art are human creations, and as such are subject to human
conflict and human intervention. The photographs seen here testify
to one Yale professor's efforts to salvage these creations in the
midst of war.
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Deane
Keller had studied Italian art on a Rome Prize fellowship in
the 1920s. The war brought him back to Italy to protect the
country's art, a task that included the rescue of masterpieces
looted from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. |
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The
great bronze statue of Cosimo de Medici by Giambologna was hidden
outside Florence during the war. Keller oversaw its return to
the main square, which U.S. Army officials hoped would boost
the city's morale. |
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Keller
rests his hand on the forehead of the statue of Cosimo de Medici
and contemplates the statue before its return to Florence. |
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Resembling
a modern-day Trojan horse, the equestrian portion of the Cosimo
de Medici statue is wheeled though the plaza as Florentine citizens
look on. Restoring the massive statue was a huge undertaking
requiring engineers as well as art experts. |
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Workers
gaze at Michelangelo's David, which has just been freed
of protective masonry coverings designed to protect it from
bombing. |
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