Waiting for “The Monuments men”, starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Daniel Craig and Cate Blanchett. Coming soon…
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- Bernterode, Germany, may 1945: The bronze coffin of Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia was one of four enormous coffins found at the Bernterode repository by Monuments Man Walker Hancock. (Photo credit: Walker Hancock Collection)
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- Vermeer’s Astronomer found in the Altaussee mine by the Monuments Men. (Photo credit: Robert Posey Collection)
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- Michelangelo Buonarroti, Bruges Madonna, 1503-04. Marble, Notre Dame Cathedral, Bruges, Belgium.
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- Paris, December 2, 1941: At the Jeu de Paume Museum, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, painting in his left hand and cigar in his right, sits gazing at two paintings by Henri Matisse being supported by Bruno Lohse. Standing to Göring’s left is his art advisor, Walter Andreas Hofer. Both paintings were stolen from the Paul Rosenberg collection by the Nazis and were recovered and returned after the war. The painting on the left, titled Marguerites, today hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. The other, titled Danseuse au Tambourin, is at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. (Photo credit: Archives des Musées Nationaux)
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- American GIs hand-carried paintings down the steps of the castle under the supervision of Captain James Rorimer. (Photo credit: NARA / Public Domain)
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- American GIs admire In the Conservatory, a masterpiece by Edouard Manet. This painting from Kaiser-Friderich Museum in Berlin, had been brought to the mine for safekeeping. (Photo credit: National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD / Public Domain)
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- Altaussee, Austria, May 1945: One of the many mine chambers in which the Nazis had constructed wooden shelves to house the enormous number of stolen works of art (Photo Credit: Robert Posey Collection)
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- The Allied Commander-In-Chief General Eisenhower communicated to commanders the importance of respecting monuments and artworks so far as war allowed (Photo credit: NARA / Public Domain)
The “Monuments Men” was a group of approximately 345 men and women from thirteen nations, most of whom volunteered to serve in the newly created Monuments Fine Arts and Archives section during World War II. Many of them had experience as museum directors, curators, art historians, artists, architects, and educators. The Monuments Men worked to protect monuments and other cultural treasures from the destruction of World War II. In the last year of the war, they tracked, located, and in the years that followed, returned more than five million artistic and cultural items stolen by Hitler and the Nazis.
Thanks to this group, nowadays, we are still able to admire many works by Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello, Vermeer, Rembrandt, van Eyck and others, which would have otherwise got lost.
The existence of the Monuments Men was discovered by Robert M. Edsel during a trip to Florence in the late 90’s. Since then he has been developing a deep knowledge for this affair. He founded the Monuments Men foundation for the preservation of art. And he wrote the book entitled “Monuments Men”, which inspired the movie, with the same name, that will be released next February (starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Daniel Craig and Cate Blanchett).
July 15, 2015
