PIUS X, Pope
Description:
Bust length portrait, oil on canvas, 30” x 25”, signed and dated centre left, “A Muller-Ury, Roma, 1912”, framed as an oval.
Location:
Private Collection, Leukerbad, Switzerland.
Provenance:
The artist until 1947 when sent to Switzerland by Otto Muller; Mrs. Erik Muller (Elizabeth Muller), Leukerbad, Switzerland, until 2008; Private Collection.
Bibliography:
Possibly New York Herald, Monday September 7, 1908
Possibly American Art News, Vol. 7, No. 2, New York, October 24, 1908, p. 3
New York Herald, December 27, 1908 (reproduced)
American Society, January 31, 1910, Vol. V, No. V. (reproduced)
Exhibitions:
Probably the picture exhibited at FRENCH & CO. INC, in 1947, but it may have been the version in the Historisches Museum von Uri, Altdorf.
Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto was born on June 2, 1835. He was elected Pope on August 4, 1903 and died on August 20, 1914, aged 81. He was beatified in 1951 and canonised in 1954.
As well as finishing the 1908 copy of the first three quarter portrait Müller-Ury apparently painted a separate portrait of Pius X in the summer of 1908. However, the New York Herald, Monday, September 7, 1908, stated inaccurately that ‘It is smaller than the first picture Mr. Muller-Ury made several years ago, being a three-quarter-length.’ The newspaper also said Müller-Ury received four sittings for this, which might suggest it was merely bust-length, and later the New York Herald, December 27, 1908 stated specifically the smaller portrait was ‘a small oval bust portrait’ and reproduced this version. However, the same reproduction in American Society, January 31, 1910, shows it was signed upper right ‘A Muller-Ury, Vaticano, 1908.’
Muller-Ury evidently made more than one smaller portrait of the Pope in 1908, although it’s not impossible that this one was a sketch he had made in 1907 for the first three-quarter length picture which he later worked up and dated when finished. It is also possible that the artist made two versions of the 1908 portrait, and this is the second one which he later dated 1912, or that the original signature and date are hidden behind the oval frame.
