AUTHORS ON THE RECORD

the venus fixers

The Efforts to Save Art Treasures From the Ravages of World War II
by hilary parkinson

As the Allies moved into Italy and the Germans retreated during World War II, the country’s buildings,
sculpture, paintings, and manuscripts suffered through bombing raids and bullets along with the Italian people.
The Last Supper was behind sandbags, and Michelango’s David was bricked up. Paintings were moved
out of museums and secured in castles—but this did not keep them safe from a shifting front line, theft,
or art-destroying temperature. The Venus Fixers tells the story of the monuments officers who traveled
though Italy with the Allied troops, recording the devastation and attempting to prevent and mitigate
Ilaria Dagnini Brey

the loss of centuries of art.

This Ilaria Dagnini Brey’s first book. She was born in Padua, Italy. She is a journalist and translator who
lives in New York City with her husband, Carter Brey, principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic,
and their two children.

In your acknowledgements, you note that the book began as
research into the destruction of the Ovetari Chapel during World
War II, but then shifted to the story of the monuments officers.
Were there any documents or records that sparked your interest
and made you feel this was the direction to go?
I will never forget the day when I came across a letter written by
American Lt. Frederick Hartt to Ernest De Wald, the director of
the Subcommission for the Protection of Monuments and Fine Arts
and Archives during World War II. I was working in the Rare Books
and Manuscripts Division of the Firestone Library of Princeton
University, reading De Wald’s papers. I was researching the destruc-
tion of the Ovetari Chapel at the time, and Hartt’s handwritten letter
described his reaction on witnessing the explosion only a few hours
after the air raid on Padua. The document was extraordinary for me,
a firsthand account of the artistic tragedy I was investigating.
But it was the urgency of Hartt’s words that struck me the most.
Fred Hartt, a photo interpreter at the time, was pleading with De
Wald to become a monuments officer. I already knew of the existence
within the Allied Armies of the Subcommission for the Protection of
Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives, or MFAA, but I had never ex-
perienced firsthand its officers’ passionate dedication to my country’s
art. I became intrigued by these men, their backgrounds, personali-
ties, and individual contributions, and slowly began to realize that
it was their story that I wanted to tell in a book.
You made use of several archives in your research: the National
Archives in Washington, D.C.; the Archivio di Stato in Florence;
the National Archives in London; and other collections of
papers at Yale, Princeton, and the British School in Rome.
Did the British, American, and Italian archives each have their
own culture and attitudes, or would you say that whenever you
go, researchers are the same?
If writing the story of the Venus Fixers in Italy was the goal of
my efforts, working in so many different archives was the journey
that led me to that goal, and it was a fascinating one. To a degree,
I think that every archive has its own distinct personality, and that
personality, especially in the case of smaller ones, may come down
to the individual archivist or librarian who assisted me.
I was an Italian researcher, with no affiliation to any institution
or publication, and all my published work to date was in Italian. Yet
once I described the purpose of my research, I was received graciously
and given complete assistance at all the American archives and librar-
ies that I visited. I spent weeks on end at the National Archives in
College Park, and once I managed the commute—I remember wait-
ing, in freezing temperatures, for buses that seemingly never came
or rushing to make the last shuttle back into town—it was ideal: I
loved the light in the reading room, and the view over the trees gave
me a sense of intimacy within nature, yet I could get all the help I
needed at any time.
The National Archives of Great Britain—still called the Public
Record Office when I worked there—was equally friendly and well-
organized, if a bit more spartan. The atmosphere at the Photo Library
of the Imperial War Museum in London, with its open stacks and fat
albums of old war photographs, brought me back in time, although
the assistance and technology there were impeccable.
Access to Italian archives was more complicated. We Italians tend
not to take people at their word, and, as a result, I found that bu-
reaucratic hurdles often stood in my way. But difficulty of entry was

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compensated by surprising discoveries.
By discovery—which didn’t, by any
means, happen only in Italy—I mean
the sudden turning up of a document
that I didn’t suspect existed and that
answered a question I had been asking
myself for a while, or that confirmed
that the path I was following was the
right one. I believe it is these moments
that not only refuel a researcher’s ener-
gy and purpose but, most of all, make
these strange, solitary pilgrimages we
embark on well worth enduring.
The monuments officers focused
mostly on the buildings, paint-
ings, and sculptures. But docu-
ments suffered the ravages of war.
Manuscripts were left in the street
or used as wrapping paper for fish
and cheese. After seven years of
research in archives, do you find
this as distressing as the smashed
churches? Do you think the monu-
ments officers should have focused
more on the Italian archives?
I do find the burning of the better
part of the Naples archives by German soldiers almost as distressing as
the destruction of Monte Cassino. The monuments officers did what
they could to salvage archives, but there were few of them in their
ranks, and their priorities were stringent. Roger Ellis, a British archi-
vist and monuments officer, described himself as a “jack of all trades,”
having to divide his time and work between monuments and archives.
The protection of archives and libraries was often trickier than that
of monuments, since paper seemed humble and worthless to many
civilians and soldiers alike. Still, the monuments officers were able
to locate many archives that the Italian Fine Arts officials had taken
out of towns and into abbeys, castles, or villas in the countryside
and return them to their sites. They also found Mussolini’s “ordinary
archive” in the Viminale Palace in Rome, where the dictator’s men,
in their hasty retreat to the north of Italy, had left it. The political
significance of this discovery certainly helped “raise the stock” of the
monuments officers in the eyes of their fellow army men.
In your book, you mention that the Germans used propaganda
leaflets to tell the Italians that the Allies would steal their art. Did
you ever come across any of the originals?
I was not able to see any of the German originals, although I
did see Allied transcriptions of Radio Berlin’s broadcasts accusing
the Allies of shipping large amounts of artworks from the port of
Palermo to New York, destined for sale. And I did come across many
The Venus Fixers
examples of Fascist propaganda in re-
sponse to real or fabricated news of
Allied destruction. A series of articles
in national newspapers, for instance,
that commented with words and pic-
tures on Allied air raids over Italy were
titled L’opera dei liberatori, “the libera-
tors’ work.” Fascist propaganda was
never very subtle.
You read many letters from the
Venus Fixers. Was it strange to read
about the experience of Americans
and British officers in your home-
land? Did you feel that you came to
know them personally?
For the seven years of my research
the Venus Fixers were very good
company. I grew fonder and fonder
of them as my research progressed,
although like every long-time rela-
tionship, we had our ups and downs.
I loved Basil Marriott’s cultivated wit
and Roger Ellis’s bonhomie, while
Deane Keller’s occasional grumpiness
sometimes irritated me. It took me a
while to realize how important Fred
Hartt’s work in Florence and Tuscany had been. Most of all, I loved
these men’s love for my country. Through their descriptions I got to
know an Italy I had never seen, since I was born well after the end
of the war. Through the ravages of the Italian campaign they saw my
country’s innocence and almost magical beauty and conveyed their
reaction to it in their letters with vivid immediacy. I know it may
sound odd, but at times I felt jealous of their experience.
Your chapter on the fate of the bridges over the Arno in Florence
is shocking. Few tourists would guess that city was in terrible
shape in 1944. As a child growing up in Padua, were you aware
of the extent of the damage during the war, or were you surprised
as an adult by the descriptions and images of destruction?
I grew up knowing very little of the destruction that my country
suffered during World War II. I knew nothing of the blowing-up
of the bridges in Florence, and seeing the photographs of the de-
struction for the first time a few years ago in Fred Hartt’s memoir,
Florentine Art Under Fire, was shocking. By asking around, I soon
realized that this ignorance is shared by most people of my genera-
tion. But from my childhood I remember vividly two photographs
of the destruction of the Ovetari Chapel in Padua, my hometown.
Those pictures are still displayed inside the church, and it was my
curiosity to find out more about what happened that led me to writ-
ing the story of the Venus Fixers.
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