works of art in the FIRING LINE

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 7, 7 May 1945, Page 11

works of art in the FIRING LINE

By

A great many people have been anxious about the fate of works of art in the battle areas of Europe. It may be the Parthenon, dominating Athens, the pictures in some Tuscan gallery ; a Calvary in a Breton churchyard, a chateau in Normandy, Chartres Cathedral—or a row of old houses in Bruges. They are disturbed to think of the ruin that war may have brought to such beauty. In the midst of war the fighting men have not neglected these things. The Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives branch of the allied armies was planned long in advance and began its work in the early days of the occupation of Sicily. The reason for its creation was given in a general order issued later to all commanders by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. “ To-day,” wrote General Eisenhower, “ we are fighting in a country which has contributed a great deal to our cultural inheritance, a country rich in monuments which by their creation helped, and now in their old age illustrate the growth of the civilization which is ours. We are bound to respect these monuments in so far as war allows.” That is essentially a task for the army. Our osldiers know that they are fighting to maintain the ideals which have been evolved slowly through the ages, ideals whose evolution is illustrated by the monuments of the past. They are not going to be called the vandals of the modern world. They are anxious to protect their own good name, and that, in practice, involves the protection of our common heritage of art. Of course, there are limits to the protection that can be given. We have to win the war, and nothing must stand in

the way of that. General Eisenhower makes this perfectly clear in the order issued to all his commanders. “If we have to choose,” he goes on to say, “ between destroying a famous building and sacrificing our own men, then our men’s lives count infinitely more, and the building must go.” There are four dangers that threaten the monuments of art. A building may be destroyed in the course of fighting, by bombing or by gun fire, ours or the enemy’s. A building may be not destroyed, but so damaged that unless prompt first-aid measures are applied the damage will in the end prove fatal to it, or to its contents. Buildings which have fallen into our hands, whether damaged or intact, may suffer from being used for military purposes ; ignorance or carelessness may do irreparable harm. Lastly, there is the danger of wanton damage to monuments and of the looting of the objects of art. To meet these dangers we have the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Branch, British and American officers selected from the ranks of architects, museum and picture - gallerv officials, art historians, and archivists. They are primarily advisers ; they are there not to give orders, but to assist in carrying out orders. In every theatre of war the Commander-in-Chief, British or American, has issued a general order laying upon every officer and man of the allied forces the responsibility of respecting historic buildings. The protection of these is therefore a matter of military discipline. But orders to be effective must be explicit. The soldier, bidden to do something, must be told what he has to

1 Sir Leonard Woolley, in The Listener (England), March I, 1945

do. What is required in this case is an official list of protected monuments. It cannot include every building that lays claim to beauty or interest ; so general a rule would tie the soldier’s hands and jeopardize military operations. When everything is at stake we must be content to save the best. So for every region of Italy there is a little book which lists the monuments of paramount importance in that region ; the same is true of France and Belgium, Holland and Greece, of Germany, Burma, and Malaya ; in fact, of every theatre of war. This book, which is issued to all officers of the fighting forces down to battalion commanders, is the monuments officer’s charter. For the safeguarding of the listed monuments he has the authority of the general order and instructions which serve as the book’s preface. “ I therefore direct,” writes Field Marshal Alexander, “ that every officer brings continually to the notice of those serving under him our responsibility and obligation to preserve and protect these objects to the greatest extent that is possible.”

Against the first of ■ the dangers to which a building is exposed there may be nothing that one can do. If the enemy occupy and defend a building, and it has to be captured, its destruction may be necessary to its capture ; if they use it for military purposes—and the Germans have no hesitation in using a

church tower as an observation post — then, too, it must become a target for our guns. " Military necessity,” writes Field Marshal Alexander, “ remains in all cases the overriding consideration. However,” he goes on, “ it is the personal desire of the Supreme Allied Commander that, subject to the limitations imposed

by military necessity . . . historical and cultural monuments should be spared from bombardment or attack by our land, sea and air forces.”

I will give you one or two illustrations of what this goodwill can do. In Normandy, Caen had to be laid waste before our troops could fight their way in ; but the two great minsters founded by William the Conqueror which were the chief glory of Caen are still there, standing miraculously among the ruins, one of them scarcely damaged and the other absolutely untouched. In Italy, Ravenna was a key-point in the German line of defence, and when the news came of the fighting there, instinctively one thought of the Ravenna churches with their priceless mosaics, the most glorious relic in all Italy of early Christian art ; but in that sorely battered town all but one of the churches are intact, and not one of the mosaics has suffered any hurt. Even in German Aachen, bombed and shelled into a heap of rubble, Charlemagne’s great cathedral survives relatively unharmed. By design, not by accident : the cathedral is one of the buildings listed in the army book for this area.

Again, as the Allies fought their way forward towards Arceno, in the middle of the battle a battery commander was hailed by an elderly Italian civilian who told him that in a villa hard by, actually in the. firing-line, there were stored pictures from the galleries of Siena and Grosseto. At once the officer detailed men to guard the treasure-house, and when at night a party of Germans attacked it with, a view to stealing or burning the treasures there, the guards drove them off and saved some of the greatest paintings in the world.

In this first phase, while monuments are still in enemy hands or in the battleline, the monument and fine arts officer’s main function is to advise. His more

active work begins when a place has passed into our possession. His first task, then, is to examine the listed monuments there and check their condition. We can then know whether any . damage subsequently noticed results from the unavoidable accident of war or from mishandling by our own men. Next he must decide whether, for example, a wall still standing but shaken by blast can be dismantled ; whether, if the roof has been damaged, internal decorations, frescoes, or sculpture will suffer from exposure to the weather. He must decide whether first-aid measures are necessary, and if so what, and how much they will cost. For this he will call in local help—the town surveyer, for instance, or the city -architect ; and, incidentally, it is quite astonishing how much such a call for help and initiative does to build up the morale of a people shaken by oppression and by war.

The money spent on such work is, of course, not allied money. In the case of a French or Belgian building we make suggestions, but it is for the French and Belgian authorities to decide the issue and put the plans into effect. In Italy, under military government, the monuments and fine arts officer presents his project, with the estimate of costs, to the senior civil affairs officer of the area, and it is for him to decide. Sometimes the money may come from private resources a church may be repaired at the cost of the religious order to which it belongs, the Bridge of Santa Trinita at Florence is to be rebuilt by popular subscription ; but in most cases the charge is debited against the Italian Government. In this way a vast amount of good work has been done. In the city of Naples alone, where fortyfive churches were destroyed or damaged, the emergency repairs have been completed for twenty-one of them and are in progress on many more. In Sicily, at Palermo, where damage in the harbour area was very serious, over forty churches have been mended.

One case of emergency repairs already reported in the press calls for special notice. At Pisa, in July, 1944, a bomb set fire to the wooden roof of the Campo Santo, the great cloistered enclosure whose walls are decorated with frescoes by famous painters of the Renaissance.

For two months during the German occcupation the ruin stood neglected, the colour gradually falling from the blistered walls. Then we took Fisa. Without waiting for a monuments officer to advise them, the Army drew up plans for a temporary roof, produced building material and special plaster, sent for Italian experts in fresco mending, and within two days had pioneer troops at work clearing and re-roofing the building. That the glorious painting by Benozzo Gozzoli, Piero di Puccio, Francesco Traini, and others survive at all is due to the enthusiasm of the allied forces.

Protection does not stop there. In general orders it is laid down that “ no building on the official list of monuments will be used for military purposes when alternative accommodation is available or without the express authority in writing of the divisional commander.” Troops must not be billeted in a listed building. The monuments officer can have “ out of bounds ” notices posted. If necessary, he can get guards set upon a building. Suppose, for instance, that a museum has not been emptied of its contents and, owing to war damage, lies open to the public ; guards are needed then. They are needed most of all for the deposits of pictures and art objects which* had been organized by the Italians in the neighbourhood of Florence and other great centres.

The story is well known how, during one of the bitter fights in the country south of Florence, a 8.8. C. correspondent, going into an apparently deserted villa, found himself face to face with Botticelli’s “ Primavera ” and other al-

most equally well-known paintings from the Florentine galleries. Such a discovery—and it was one of many —involved an immense amount of work for the specialist officers. They had not only to check the contents of these extemporized treasure houses, some of which had been wholly or partly plundered by the enemy. They had also to make sure that the treasures were in conditions suitable for their conservation. That was not always the case, as when priceless canvases were found stacked against the wine-casks in a damp cellar. Many of our soldiers had looked forward to seeing the beauties of Italy and had been disappointed. They found buildings and sculptures masked by sandbags or anti-air-raid walls. They found picture galleries stripped of their contents. Now, with the discovery of these hidingplaces, the Monuments and Fine Arts Branch was able to organize picture exhibitions for the army. In Rome fortyeight of the finest canvases of the Italian Renaissance, which had been brought from all over Italy and stored for safety in the Vatican City, were exhibited in the Palazzo Venezia, Mussolini’s old office, and for months on end attracted from eight hundred to a thousand visitors a day.

Exhibitions of Sienese art at Siena, of Tuscan art at Florence, have given the allied troops an opportunity of seeing such collections of beautiful paintings as have never before been brought together under one roof, and of that opportunity the troops have taken full advantage, Admirable catalogues of the exhibitions, and guide-books to Rome and Florence. Siena, Naples, &c., prepared by the Army, have helped our men to realize the truth of what General Eisenhower said about Italy’s contribution to our common inheritance.

Lastly, the monuments and fine arts officers are concerned with the looting of works of art. On the one side their task has been made very easy for them, for the behaviour of our own troops in this respect has been exemplary. But the German State and the gangster leaders of the Nazi party have set out to enrich themselves by the systematic looting of works of art from the conquered countries.

Some they acquired by forced or fraudulent sales ; some they simply stole. In one case they failed badly. Near Strasbourg we found the repositories of pictures from Strasbourg and Colmar, including Grunewald’s Isenheim alter-piece, one of the most celebrated pictures in the world. The Germans had meant to loot the lot. Some were already packed ; in other rooms the empty packing-cases stood beside the paintings : but the allied armies were too quick for them, and the thieves fled empty-handed. But in one way or another great numbers of precious things, including works by the greatest artists, have been carried off into Germany. It is the avowed intention of the Allies that these ill-gotten gains should be disgorged and the pictures and other art treasures restored to their owners. The monuments and fine arts branch collect and substantiate the evidence for these thefts ; it is a slow and difficult task, but the charge-sheet already grows long.

I have tried to explain the aims and activities of this new branch of the army. How far has it succeeded in its object ? To what extent have the great monuments of the past escaped the ravages of war ? Well, there has been, inevitably, a great

deal of destruction. Very many buildings possessed of beauty or historic interest have been damaged, not a few have perished altogether. Yet, if one takes only the " protected ” monuments, that is the best, the loss has been surprisingly light. Normandy, as was to be expected in view of the bitter and prolonged fighting that followed the allied landings, suffered much. Detailed reports have been received dealing with a hundred and fifty-five monuments on the official list; of these, twenty-four are described as destroyed, gutted by fire or seriously damaged, and the number of those that have suffered some harm but can be made good is considerably greater. In Brittany, only four " listed ” monuments have been seriously damaged. The total for France is relatively very small. In Belgium, until recently at least, not one of the? major monuments had perished altogether.

In Athens the weeks of recent fighting have done virtually no harm to the monuments of classical Greece. There are two superficial scars on the Parthenon and a few scratches on the Theseum. The treasures of the Museum are intact. In Italy there are large areas that have suffered no loss at all. Where German resistance has been obstinate, war has

brought destruction to only too many treasures of art, destruction often deliberately wrought by the Germans, who mined the church towers and the major buildings so as to block roads and deny to us possible points of vantage. There has been much damage ; but a lot of this has been made good. Some of the greatest art centres have escaped altogether, as Rome itself, Siena, Assisi, Perugia, Orvieto, Aquila, Spoleto and others. In Florence, Pisa, Rimini, and Ravenna, cities which have suffered, the outstanding buildings are either intact or but slightly damaged and not beyond repair. The cathedral at Benevento and the church at Santa Chiara at Naples are the most important buildings that have been written off as a total loss, but even so in the ruins of Santa Chiara some of the best sculptures survive. That so little has been altogether lost is due primarily not to the efforts of the small band of officers charged with the task of protecting works of art, but to the army as a whole. That army has not behaved as a mob of " brutal and licentious soldiery ; ” from commander-in-chief to private, it has respected those things of beauty. By so doing it has won the good will of the peoples whose treasured belongings they are, and the gratitude of the world.