Renoir Update

Last year I posted a story about a painting by French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) purchased at a flea market in Virginia by fifty-one year old Martha Fuqua for seven dollars. The painting turned out to have been stolen in the 1950s. I asked you to decide who rightfully owned this painting. The judge has made her ruling. Check it out (here).

 

Conspiracy, Theft And Sin

No, I’m not talking about current affairs in Washington. We’re in Venice, Italy, and the picture shows a mosaic celebrating a crime. What’s fascinating is that this depiction of a shameful event is proudly displayed in a most unlikely place—on the front of a church. And not just any church. Venice chose to brag about its misdeed on the facade of its greatest church, the Basilica of St. Mark.

The mosaic is called The Removal of St. Mark’s Body from Alexandria. Let’s replace the word removal with theft. Venice has never been a particularly religious place. The City’s unofficial motto for centuries was: We’re Venetians first and Christians second. Throughout most of its history, the city pursued trade and built a vast fleet to maintain a commercial empire, the quest for wealth eclipsing all other concerns. While other cities in Italy were producing saints by the handful, Venice was too concerned with worldly matters to produce a saint of its own.

Eventually, this became a municipal embarrassment with Venice unable to join other Italian city-states in the We Have a Saint and You Don’t Club. In the year 828, Venetian officials decided to crash the club. Who cared if no Venetian was saintly enough to be canonized? Venice’s leaders hired a couple of thugs to sail to Alexandria Egypt to steal the body of St Mark the Evangelist.

The mosaic above was created in the 1600s, but it replaced a similar one much older. The thugs on the left are offering to open the basket but the men in turbans (customs inspectors) are recoiling in disgust and refusing to inspect a basket about to be shipped out of Egypt. Why? The basket has been labeled with a word known to turn the stomachs of Muslims—PORK. Inside the basket is the body of St. Mark, being smuggled out of Egypt.

Rather than feeling shame over this despicable act, the Venetians have celebrated the theft for nearly twelve hundred years. In order to justify the larceny, a legend was created that when the Evangelist’s body arrived in Venice an angel appeared and said: “Peace to you, Mark my Evangelist,” showing in this way that God had determined Venice as the final resting place of the Saint. How convenient.

Over the centuries, Venice created many great artists, architects and musicians, but to my knowledge the city on the lagoon never produced a native born saint. Perhaps Venice shouldn’t have been so arrogant as to broadcast their crime. Maybe God was unhappy with Venice for not producing a saintly citizen of its own. It’s interesting to note that remarkably few Venetians became popes, the most recent lasting only thirty-three days.

By the way, the ancient bronze horses in this photo are replicas of originals now preserved in a Venetian museum. The originals, like the body of Saint Mark, were also stolen, this time from Constantinople.

Sex On Mountain Road

A few days ago I was on my way to a dental appointment when an impulse prompted me to detour through our old neighborhood. Years had passed since I’d driven down these streets and I saw a street sign that made me smile. It wasn’t a traffic sign; it was one of those chin-high decorative brick walls that announce the name of a new housing development or apartment complex. I pulled to the curb and studied it. Written on the bricks:

SEXTON MOUNTAIN ROAD

Sexton Mountain Road was a development of comfortable homes named for the street leading up to an unimpressive bluff called Sexton Mountain. The sign was in good shape, without any vandalism. This was intriguing because I remembered when this sign was created. The letters spelling out the name were made of individual pieces of wood attached to the brick backdrop. Thieves thought it great fun to steal the “T,” creating a message that made the prurient giggle:

SEX ON MOUNTAIN ROAD

The Operations Department in our city was responsible for maintaining signs, and replaced the “T” dozens of times. These letters always disappeared. They were eventually replaced with painted letters that couldn’t be stolen. Taggers wasted little time painting out the “T.” The poor fellows at Ops were constantly sent to repaint the “T,” but the problem persisted.

A police car was dispatched to persuade vandals to keep their spray cans away from the sign but the cops could never apprehend anyone in the act of vandalizing the sign. It was as if the taggers had an informant at City Hall warning them when a squad car was near. One tagger did more than paint out the letter “T.” He was skillful enough to execute a trompe l’oeil painting, clever enough to fool the eye; not only was the letter painted out but the tagger skillfully recreated the bricks beneath the letter to hide the fact that it had ever been there.

Mrs. Chatterbox worked for our city’s Operations Department at the time; she told me the city was going to repaint the sign and shield it with a sheet of bullet-proof plastic. And so they did, but the plastic vanished after a few days, along with the freshly restored letter “T.” Residents of our city gave up on a solution being found for this problem and began referring to the street as SEX ON MOUNTAIN ROAD.

As I sat there staring at the sign, my fingers itching, I was distracted by fond memories. Drives at midnight. Excuses to utilize my artistic skills and play with pompous concepts like trompe l’oeil. Yes, those were the days. Interesting that the sign was now left alone, with no one sullying it with wanton acts of disobedience.

But then I didn’t live in the neighborhood anymore.