The Priest, the Prince, and the Pasha by Lawrence M. Berman

Author:Lawrence M. Berman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: art
Publisher: MFA Publications
Published: 2015-03-03T22:11:53+00:00

38. Plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture displayed in the original Museum of Fine Arts on Copley Square.

Meanwhile in 1885 the MFA had hired its first professionally trained classical archaeologist. Edward Robinson (1858–1931) was a fine scholar who had studied in Berlin and excavated at Assos. In 1887 a separate department of classical antiquities was established, with Robinson as its first curator. Robinson loved casts and throughout his career believed in the importance of their role in the art museum. Yet still he yearned for originals. In his 1888 report he wrote:

So far as sculpture alone is concerned, we can hardly hope for any considerable collection of really fine Greek originals; and yet I need hardly remind you of the value which even one first rate specimen, if it were only a head or torso, would have for our Museum. It would fill a place which an entire collection of casts fills but imperfectly, both in attracting, interesting, and instructing the public, and as an inspiration for artists and students of art of our community.[38]

The opportunity for change came in the early 1890s when Sam Warren became a trustee and Ned began collecting in a big way. Sam provided the leadership; Ned, Johnnie, and Robinson the expertise. More important, funds from unrestricted bequests became available for the purchase of works of art.[39] In September 1894 Robinson paid his first visit to Lewes House. It was the start of a ten-year relationship between Warren and the Museum that “transformed the Classical Department from a great assembly of casts to a first-rate and highly varied collection of original works of art.”[40]

Warren’s first “sending” reached Boston in March 1895, comprising fifty-nine vases, eighty coins, ten gems, and various objects in gold, bronze, and marble. It was the first substantial group of Classical antiquities purchased by the Museum since the Cesnola collection in 1872 and far more important. Two sculptures—including the beautiful Mercury (Hermes)—arrived the following year.[41] The trustees were most interested in sculptures, but Warren was determined that the Museum should offer a broad selection: “This collection, to be intelligible, should contain, not sculpture only, but gems, vases, coins and good examples of all the minor arts. It does not provide exclusively for the demands of existing laymen; it rather supplies a field for thorough students of art.”[42]

All said, the trustees must be congratulated for giving Warren such a free hand—not only going along with his ideas of what constituted a proper collection, but also tolerating subjects so often depicted in Greek art that might seem to have been deliberately chosen to challenge their Puritan sensibilities. His very first sending included an erotically charged cup painted by Douris with a winged Eros clasping a youth in embrace, their naked bodies quivering in air, as well as a cup by Nikosthenes with explicit depictions of youths and courtesans having sex.[43] Just think that the proposed gift, in 1896, for the courtyard of the Boston Public Library, of Frederick MacMonnies’ fairly anodyne nude statue of Bacchante and Infant Faun caused a scandal.

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