PIUS XII, Pope (1941)
Description:
Bust length dressed in his white robe, his hands folded before him. Oil on canvas, 30” x 25” (76.2 x 63.5 cm), signed and dated lower right outside the painted oval ‘A. Muller-Ury 1941’. The frame bears a Lucerne seal upon it.
Location:
Private Collection, Switzerland.
Provenance:
The Misses Iva, Doris & Ines Müller, Andermatt, Switzerland.
Provenance:
Returned from New York in 1947.
Eugene Maria Giuseppe Giovani Pacelli was born on March 2, 1876. He was elected Pope on March 2, 1939 and died on October 9, 1958.
The story has sometimes been related that Muller-Ury painted the then Cardinal Pacelli in 1936 during his visit to New York, but apparently he did not colour in the robes, and when in 1939 he was elected Pope, he painted in the white robes. However, there is no mention of meeting or painting Pacelli in his 1936 diary. Further one extant version is signed and dated outside the oval ‘A. Muller Ury 1941’, and a photograph of another – but with a dark background not a sand coloured one – is also dated 1941. There remains the possibility that this version had its background altered from dark to sand-coloured after it was photographed by Peter A. Juley & Son and that this is the same portrait.
A version of one of these portraits was exhibited at FRENCH & CO. INC., 210, East 57th Street, New York, April 21 – May 3, 1947, No. 4. It was mentioned in American Art News, New York, Vol. XLVI, April 1947.
Muller-Ury copyrighted a version of the portrait on 21st March 1946 (New York, G.790) according to the Library of Congress, Catalog of Copyright Entries. Part 4. Works of Art, Etc. New Series.
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