in my final semester, i took the advanced course in medieval sculpture. this was taught by the distinguished miss teresa frisch, viennese by birth, with a strong teutonic accent and very good tweed suits and italian shoes (not that i recognized gucci at the time, but i did admire the little snaffle-bit pseudo buckles). miss frisch also served as our class dean for several years. my unexceptional behavior (i was never caught sneaking out of the dorm at night to meet boys, like a certain friend of mine), and the fact that i sat in the back of the classroom and never asked nor answered a question, meant that miss frisch and i had very little contact.
like many another impressionable student, i was attracted to medieval art. it exuded a spirituality missing from the dry protestantism that i'd been brought up on. i decided to write my final paper on a gothic sculpture in the college museum, a typical madonna and child. this was a limestone piece, about three feet high, with the elegantly crowned and dressed madonna holding the child on her left hip. baby jesus was strangely mature and held a small fat songbird, a symbol of the holy spirit. there was a little damage to the madonna's crown and some pieces missing from the folds of her garment--those crude protestants loved to take their mallets and try to destroy such things--but the overall condition was good.
its label said 'french' but its exact provenance was unknown. the game was to compare it to other, similar figures, and try to determine where and when the sculpture was made. i looked at every detail in every book on medieval sculpture in the library, and every similar statue in collections in the greater boston area. i found enough similarities in style to conclude that this figure must have been carved for a small church in the central loire valley and date to about 1360.
the written paper replete with footnotes and bibliography had to be turned in, but miss frisch asked that students working on objects in the college museum present their findings to her in person. this was scary for me, but i wouldn't be around much longer to be embarassed by my mediocre academic performance.
the professor and i stood in front of the madonna. i had brought along a stack of library books flagged with illustrations that supported my findings. it didn't take long for me to finish my presentation.
miss frisch smiled and reached down. out of the jaws of her well-traveled briefcase came my paper, with an 'A' clearly written on the front.
"congratulations, my dear," she said. "this is a fine piece of work."
i was surprised and pleased.
but then she looked closely at me, blue eyes through tortoise shell glasses, and asked, "but who ARE you? why don't we KNOW you?"
this made my absolute lack of academic distinction clear.
she would like a copy of my paper. they were planning a new guidebook to the collection, and my research would be useful to her in writing about such an important piece. i gave her the original. it wasn't easy to make copies in the '60s.
the next week, i graduated.
years later, i was attending the college art association meeting in boston, and a special trip was offered for an evening reception at the new wellesley college museum. a large building had been designed by the distinguished spanish architect rafael moneo. i hadn't been back to the college for thirty years, so i was happy to have this opportunity. along with a flock of other art historians, i had a glass of wine and some brie and wandered around admiring familiar and new works of art and puzzling over why the architect had designed a strange double staircase to allow access from one level to another.
i wanted to have a look at the madonna and child but i couldn't find her anywhere among the triptychs and other examples of medieval art. i asked around and someone finally introduced me to the museum's curator, a slender, pleasant young woman all in black. i said congratulations and made polite comments about how well the collection looked. then i inquired about the sculpture. where was it?
she thought for a moment. "oh yes," she said, pausing. "yes, i know the one you mean. it's somewhere down in basement storage now. i'm afraid it's a fake."
"avarice" from the cathedral of autun in burgundy
