Does everyone know the story of how pictures from the National Gallery were stored in Welsh slate mines during WW2 to save them from potential damage?
Winston Churchill sent a telegram forbidding the planned shipment of the National Gallery's paintings to Canada for safekeeping. "Bury them in caves or in cellars," he commanded then director Kenneth Clark, "but not a picture shall leave these islands."
The museum then decided to display one old-master work a month in response to public outcry. Somehow they canvassed a nation. "The picture that the public wanted most of all was Titian's 'Noli Me Tangere,'" Director MacGregor recounts, describing it as "surely the deepest investigation in Western painting of a love that survives death.... It is an incomparable meditation on love continuing without physical contact."
Something to ponder on the eve of Holy Week.
1 comment:
I didn't know that story. Thanks.
Post a Comment