The Glitter and the Gold: Luigi Palma di Cesnola

Luigi Palma di Cesnola (1832-1904) was the first director of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. He held the post from 1879 until his death in 1904. The Glitter and the Gold by Elizabeth McFadden is a detailed and well-documented biography about this controversial figure who had a colourful and dramatic life. The book was published by the Dial Press in 1971. On the dust jacket the author is presented in the following way:

“Elizabeth McFadden, a working journalist with the Evening News of Newark, researched her book in Turin, New York, Cyprus, Leningrad [today St. Petersburg], and at the Cesnola collection at Dartmouth. She has produced a vivid, lively, carefully documented work, worthy of the glamour of the man and his times.”

[The Evening News of Newark, New Jersey, was founded in 1873. It ceased publication in 1973, only two years after this book was published.]

The main text is divided into sixteen chapters, which follow a chronological line. At the end of the book there are notes with references, a bibliography and an index. The book is illustrated with 32 well-chosen drawings and photos placed in a block between pp. 150 and 151. All illustrations are in black-and-white.

Cesnola was born in 1832 in Rivarolo in Piedmont (in Italian: Piemonte) in the northwest of Italy. At that time Italy was a geographical area, and not the name of a state. The modern state of Italy was not proclaimed until 1861. Cesnola served as a soldier in the army of Piemonte (1852-1854) and with the British army during the Crimean war (1854-1855). After returning to Italy, he immigrated to the United States. According to his own account he arrived in 1860, but as McFadden says, there is evidence that he arrived in 1858 or 1859. His first years in the US were not very successful, and that is probably the reason why he decided to forget about them. As McFadden shows, this was not the only time used he fiction in an attempt to impress the people around him.

In the US he met Hiram Hitchcock, who was born ca. 1833. With two partners, Hitchcock ran the famous Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, before retiring in 1866 to pursue his interests in travel and archaeology. The two men formed a strong friendship which lasted until Hitchcock died in 1900.

When the US civil war broke out in 1861, Cesnola signed up to fight for the Union (the northern states). Because of his previous military experience in Europe, he began his career as an officer. His service record in the US was not so glorious. McFadden provides the details: Cesnola resigned. One week later he was arrested for slandering his former commander. He was dishonourably discharged, accused of stealing government property. But each time he managed to extricate himself and start over. In June 1863 he was captured by the enemy and forced to spend several months in a confederate prison in Richmond. He was liberated as a result of a prisoner exchange in March 1864 and when the war ended in 1865 he had the rank of a colonel.

After the war, he managed to get a government job: he was appointed as the US consul of Cyprus. At the time this Mediterranean island was still a part of the Ottoman Empire. During the journey to Europe, he decided to “upgrade” his military rank. From now on he described himself as a former general, although he had only been a colonel.

While working as a US consul, Cesnola started on a new path: he became an archaeologist who was digging for antiquities on the island. Or to put it more precisely: he became a collector who hired a number of workers to do the digging for him. He himself was not always present. He would show up when the workers found something of interest and then take credit for finding it. Working this way he built up a substantial collection of antiquities, which he tried to sell to museums around the world: the Berlin Museum, the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris, and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. However, he was not very successful.

McFadden demonstrates how he tried to play one institution against another, telling one museum that they had better hurry up and make an offer, because another museum had already shown much interest in his collection. In the end, he was able to sell his collection “en bloc” to a new museum, which mostly existed on paper: the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (colloquially known as the Met) had been founded in 1870, but at first it had no collections and no permanent address.

The Cesnola collection of ancient art from Cyprus was for many years the largest and most important collection of the Met. He was hired to prepare his collection for public display, since nobody knew it as well as he did. In 1879, he was hired as the first director of the Met. Before accepting the offer, he made sure he could keep the job until he died. And he did. Even though there were several crises and at least one serious attempt to remove him from his post, he served until the end of his life in 1904.

As stated above this is a detailed and well-documented biography. McFadden’s account is based on primary material from the key characters in her book, including Hitchcock and Cesnola. The private letters of Cesnola are highly revealing, because they were not written for publication.

As for the quality of McFadden’s writing, I think it improves the further you get. The first few chapters may be a bit slow, but once Cesnola gets to Cyprus, the account starts to take off and when he arrives at the Met, it becomes really captivating.

One of the high points of the book is in chapter eleven: first McFadden describes how Cesnola discovered the treasure of Curium; then she reveals is was a hoax!

Another high point is covered over several chapters: the conflict between Cesnola and Gaston L. Feuardent, who tried to expose the director of the Met as a fraud.

I like this book, but I have to mention a few things which bother me:

(1) The first point concerns Cesnola himself. On page 1 McFadden claims Cesnola was born on 28 June, but all other sources I have seen say 29 June – even his tombstone, which is not shown in the book. Obviously, the tombstone may not be reliable, since it describes him as a former general, which is not true.

(2) The second point concerns the general background which is added from time to time to make us understand the social context. On page 142 McFadden says:

“The talk of the soirées at the end of the Christmas holidays in 1872 was of European royalty. Napoleon the Third had died…”

But Napoleon III, the former emperor of France, died on 6 January 1873, so any talk about his death during the Christmas holidays in 1872 would be premature.

(3) The third point concerns the geography of Cyprus. On page 157 McFadden says:

“In a five-hour ride, they skirted Limassol, the largest town on the south coast besides Larnaca and, passing the ancient villages of Kolossi and Episcopi, came at last to the western shore. There stood the remains of the royal city of Curium.”

But Curium (or Kourion) is not located on the western coast; it is on the southern coast.  There is no map of Cyprus in the book. If the author had studied the map one more time, she might have avoided this error.

(4) The fourth point concerns the spelling of foreign names. I can accept Piedmont, the English version of Piemonte, which is mentioned several times, but I have to object when McFadden gives the king of Italy the name “Humbert” (page 208). His name is Umberto!

Cesnola was a most controversial figure. He had many enemies, but he also had friends, and many of them remained loyal to him when he was in trouble (which happened frequently). Even after his death he had supporters who refused to believe he did anything wrong. A case in point is Arthur Fairbanks (1864-1944) who worked for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as curator of classical art (from 1907) and as director (1908-1925). In 1917 the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences published a brief note written by Fairbanks. In this note he gives a very positive survey of Cesnolas’s life and career (vol. 52, no. 13, October 1917, pp. 833-834).

PS # 1. The Cesnola collection disappeared into the basement of the Met during the twentieth century, but it came back again in a much-reduced version in 2000. For information about the Cesnola collection currently on display in the Met, see Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2007) pp. 222-263. There is a good map of Cyprus on page 456 of this book.

PS # 2. For general information about the history of the Met, see Rogues’ Gallery by Michael Gross (hardcover 2009, paperback 2010). Chapter 1 of this book covers the founding of the museum in 1870 and the long period when “the former general” served as its director (1879-1904).

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Elizabeth McFadden,

The Glitter and the Gold:

A spirited account of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first director,

The audacious and high-handed Luigi Palma di Cesnola,

The Dial Press: New York, 1971, 277 pages

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