The Boston Raphael
A Mysterious Painting, an Embattled Museum in an Era of Change, & A Daughter’s Search for the Truth
Belinda Rathbone
DAVID R. GODINE · Publisher Boston
First published in 2014 by DAVID R. GODINE· Publisher Post Office Box 450 Jaffrey, New Hampshire 03452 www.godine.com
Copyright © 2014 Belinda Rathbone
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact Permissions, David R. Godine, Publisher, Fifteen Court Square, Suite 320, Boston, Massachusetts, 02108.
Frontispiece: Perry T. Rathbone being photographed by Yousuf Karsh, MFA, Boston, 1966. Photograph: Ivan Dmitri.
Library of Congress cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Rathbone, Belinda.
The Boston Raphael : a mysterious painting, an embattled museum in an era of change & a daughter's search for the truth / Belinda Rathbone.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
HARDCOVER ISBN 978-1-56792-522-7 (alk. paper)
EBOOK ISBN 978-1-56792-540-1
1. Rathbone, Perry Townsend, 1911–2000. 2. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—History—20th century. 3. Art museums—Social aspects. 4. Raphael, 1483–1520—Authorship. I. Title.
N520.R38 2014
708.144'61—dc23
2014020036
CONTENTS
The Making of a Museum Director
The Changing Face of the Board
Appendix : Perry T. Rathbone to John Coolidge
To my father’s grandchildren Claudia, Sarah, Emma, Vanessa, James, Elliot, and Dylan
Part I
The Greatest Adventure of All
FLORENCE, ITALY, 2005
IT WAS THE EVE of the Feast of San Giovanni, and Florence was thronged with tourists. My sister Eliza, my cousin Cecilia, and I had arrived the night before, booked into a room at a small hotel in the heart of town, and spent the morning visiting favorite sights. The Bargello, with its quiet courtyard and timeless treasures, including Donatello’s bronze sculpture of the triumphant David in a feathered hat; the tiny chapel of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, where Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes envelop the visitor in a rich landscape through which the Magi make their journey to Bethlehem; and the Medici Chapel, where Michelangelo’s monuments to the great patrons of the Renaissance preside over his brooding allegories of Dawn and Dusk, Day and Night. We stopped for lunch at a local restaurant, practiced our Italian (Cecilia’s fluent, Eliza’s passable, mine nonexistent) on a cheerful waiter, ordered the spaghetti del giorno, and drained a carafe of vino della casa. But now it was time to make our only scheduled appointment. We threaded our way through the crowds of sightseers, street performers, and peddlers on the Piazza della Signoria and bypassed the line of visitors at the entrance to the Uffizi Gallery, all waiting their turn to stand before some of the greatest treasures of Western art in the world. Through a door at the far end of the East Wing, we entered the quiet seclusion of the staff entranceway.
Our appointment was with one small painting, at one time attributed to Raphael, that was not on view to the public. A receptionist at the desk called for Giovanna Giusti, the curator with whom I had been corresponding by e-mail since March. From her I had learned that the picture – which had dropped out of sight more than twenty years before – was, in fact, at the Uffizi, that it was in storage, and that it would require special permission to see it. The date was set: three o’clock, June 23. There we were.
On a midsummer day thirty-six years earlier, about 150 miles north of where we stood, another party had gathered around the very same painting. My father, Perry T. Rathbone, was considering its acquisition for the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, where he was then director. This would be a coup for the MFA, which was about to celebrate its centennial year, 1970. Nothing could adorn the centennial celebrations more than a previously unknown work by one of the greatest artists who had ever lived. Nothing could crown my father’s fifteen-year directorship of the MFA more gloriously than such a treasure.
The party had converged from various points: from Boston, Perry Rathbone and Hanns Swarzenski, the MFA’s curator of decorative arts, who was the first to have seen the picture and to urge Rathbone to consider it for the MFA; from Paris, John Goelet, a young museum trustee with deep pockets; and from London, John Shear-man, a professor of art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, generally regarded at the time as the foremost expert in the work of Raphael. Their appointment was with Ildebrando Bossi, a Genoese art dealer from whom Swarzenski had already bought a number of Renaissance works of art for the MFA.
They were full of excitement at the prospect. “In Genoa,”