Eugene Maria Giuseppe Giovani Pacelli was born on March2, 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.
A photograph of Archbishop Spellman seated underneath his portrait of the Pope in 1946.
The cover of Life Magazine, January 21, 1946.
Presumably this was the prime version of the portrait of Pius XII, which was reported in the newspapers in 1942 as being the property of Archbishop Spellman whom Muller-Ury painted several times as Archbishop and Spellman was photographed in front of the picture which was reproduced on the cover of Life, January 21, 1946. As such it was mentioned in: The Catholic School Journal, September 1944 (supplementary sheet); and, Peter Leo Johnson, Daughters of Charity in Milwaukee, 1846-1946, 1946, p.14 (reproduced courtesy of Francis Cardinal Spellman). It appears not to have been put into storage at St. Joseph’s Seminary at Yonkers, where three of Muller-Ury’s portraits are to be found today, and it maybe that Spellman kept the picture for himself or gave it away at the time of the Pope’s death in 1958.
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.
