the moon face, the small almond eyes. “It’s not a very penetrating portrait,” he admitted, and if it were, in fact, by Raphael, “it would not do him a great deal of credit.” On the other hand, he suggested, “there are people around Raphael not yet defined, and the picture could be the work of another artist of the period we have yet to discover.”7
By the time I embarked on my research, it was too late to meet John Shearman, who died in August 2003. A few months later, simply out of curiosity, I attended his scholarly memorial service at Harvard. In the bright and businesslike Faculty Room at University Hall in the middle of Harvard Yard, his loyal students and colleagues gathered to remember his contribution to the field. I listened for signs of the Boston Raphael story. But it quickly became clear that, while Shearman had continued to work extensively on Raphael at his various posts – as professor at the Courtauld, then Princeton, and finally Harvard – he had successfully buried the Boston Raphael in his past, surely embarrassed by the storm of publicity surrounding it, the challenges to his scholarship, and perhaps not least, the disaster his attribution had caused the Boston museum.
My parents staunchly believed in the injustice of the episode for the rest of their lives. They moved on, but it was like a cloud that had never completely blown away, a permanent blot on my father’s otherwise fine reputation, a heartache that every so often acted up again and required soothing. They would review the details and recastigate the characters they blamed for the fiasco. Most of all, my father blamed the Italian government for reclaiming a work of art that they ultimately had so little use for. “It was absurdly handled,” my father told an interviewer in 1981, “and someday, if I live long enough, I hope to have the strength to write about it.”8 To another interviewer he went as far as to say that he believed that someday the picture might return to Boston.
My father did not live long enough, nor perhaps would he have ever had the strength to write about it. Instead, the press version of “the Boston Raphael” trailed him for thirty years, all the way to his obituaries when he died in January 2000. For all his many successes, this fiasco remained, as he himself had called it, the greatest adventure of all.
But while the superficial press version of the story bothered me, so did my father’s obviously subjective account. Furthermore, the story was incomplete; there were many aspects of its outcome that remained mysterious, even to him. Meanwhile, the carapace of family myth hung stubbornly around it, obscuring further details, a web of ethical issues too delicate to untangle, discouraging further questions too painful to raise or to investigate. While I understood his motives implicitly, I could not help but wonder: Where had his judgment gone wrong? If character is destiny, what aspects of his character had brought him into the crosshairs of this life-changing event? Was the Raphael the only reason for his abrupt departure from museum work? To what extent was he the victim of circumstance, of changing times, and of a cluster of conflicting personalities closely involved in the case? How could the ground have shifted under him so suddenly? Or had it been shifting, imperceptibly to him, for years?
In his prime, Perry Rathbone was one of the most influential museum directors in America – a connoisseur of great breadth as well as a brilliant showman. Over the course of thirty-two years he played a crucial role in the modernization of the American art museum, transforming them from quiet repositories of art into palaces for the people. As director of the City Art Museum of Saint Louis (now known as the Saint Louis Art Museum) from 1940 to 1955 and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1955 to 1972, he ambitiously moved both museums forward into the postwar era. He staged unprecedented loan exhibitions, and with his flair for publicity, he attracted record crowds. He brought light and life into the galleries and expanded and improved auditoriums, restaurants, and gift shops. He established committees of women volunteers and with their help invigorated museum programs with films, lectures, and special tours both local and abroad. Under his leadership, attendance and membership increased exponentially, and consequently so did revenue. In Boston his staff tripled, the budget quadrupled, and the annual sale of publications increased more than 1,000 percent. These were achievements of which my father was justly proud, but he knew that numbers were not the only measure of success. More than anything, he was proud of the acquisitions he had made for the museums’ permanent collections. His career had been ascendant in every way, until the end. To this day many observers continue to wonder how the dean of American museum directors could have made such a fateful and avoidable error of judgment. More than one person has reflected that, in the manner of Icarus, Perry flew too close to the sun. Still others have called the behind-the-scenes drama at the MFA Shakespearean in the scope of its moral struggle. Some viewed Rathbone as a tragic hero, a martyr to the museum cause. As one former colleague said of his fall, “Perry had to take it for the whole rest of the art world.”9
Perry T. Rathbone celebrating fifteen years as director of the MFA with staff members (left to right) Lydia Calamara, Mary Jo Hayes, Virginia Nichols, Hanns Swarzenski, Jan Fontein.
A born optimist, Rathbone’s enthusiasm for art was infectious, and his powers of persuasion seemed almost limitless. His tall, impeccably dressed figure matched his commanding voice and ready eloquence. His democratic air exuded the spirit of his motto, “Art is for everyone.” With his youthful good humor and his genuine interest in people, he conveyed this belief naturally and effortlessly, surrounding wherever he stood with an aura of excitement and festivity. In addition to his formidable day job, he accepted invitations to boards of trustees, professional associations, and panels of experts, as well as invitations to lecture, write, and jury. He not only enjoyed these roles but also felt an obligation to be a part of the urgent, ongoing discussion, to speak out for what he believed in, and to take the heat when it came. On top of this was his nonstop social life, which he regarded as an essential part of his job and, fortunately for him, on which he personally thrived. In retrospect, how he fit all these activities into an average day remains hard to imagine. He lived life as if to defy the natural limits of one man.
Rettles de Cosson, #13, Murren, Switzerland, 1937.
Of course, there was a woman behind the man – his wife and our mother, Euretta “Rettles” de Cosson. Born in Cairo to an English father and American mother, Rettles spent her childhood in Egypt and later attended schools in England and finally Switzerland, where she became a passionate skier. Soon afterward she started training as a downhill racer. After winning several races in Switzerland and Austria, Rettles was made captain of the British women’s team in 1938 and then again in 1939, and she looked forward to entering the Winter Olympics for the 1939–40 season, to be held in Germany. But this would not come to pass. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the Olympics were canceled, and Rettles found herself stranded in the United States for the duration of the war. By a fortunate piece of timing Averell Harriman had just opened a ski resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, earlier that year. Rettles signed up to race against the American women’s team and spent the winter of 1940 in Sun Valley. Hailed as “Britain’s most fearless skier,”10 she lived up to her reputation for daring and perseverance. Despite taking a bad spill in the 1940 races for the Sun Valley Ski Club, she nosed out her American competitors and a year later earned the prestigious Diamond Ski.
It was in the wake of this triumph that Rettles first visited Saint Louis and met Perry Rathbone, the young director of the City Art Museum. Then and there she set her sights. Their wartime courtship began in earnest when they were both stationed in Washington, Rettles working for the British Information Services and Perry for the United States Navy Publicity Office. Over the course of several months, Perry fell in love with Rettles’s quiet worldliness, her fascinating background, and the independent and competitive spirit that rumbled beneath her shy demeanor. They were engaged on the eve of his departure for the South Pacific in May 1943. Thus, at the relatively advanced age of thirty-four, Rettles de Cosson won another race against the American competition: landing the most eligible bachelor in Saint Louis.
From a child’s point of view, my father towered over us, both physically and as an example of how to live