The "Saint" in Upper St. Clair: A Lecture at The Frick Pittsburgh
For over half a century, the "Madonna 207B“, a Renaissance masterpiece from the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci, was a ghost. Officially recorded as "destroyed by fire" in a Berlin flak-bunker in 1945, its fate remained one of the great mysteries of the post-war art world until it was uncovered by Florian Schmitt in 2025. This talk moves beyond the dry archives of provenance research to explore the painting's secret "American reality": six decades spent as an unsuspecting centerpiece of suburban life in Pittsburgh.
Using a blend of microhistory and oral history, Schmitt reconstructed the biography of an object that transitioned from a war-torn bunker to the quiet streets of Pennsylvania. Brought to the United States in 1946 by an American GI, the Madonna evolved from a static museum piece into a cherished family member. Passed down through generations, the little wooden saint became an emotional anchor in changing households. Through interviews with contemporary witnesses, Schmitt's work paints a vivid picture of the painting’s domestic life: from overseeing Christmas mornings and "lousy boyfriends" to occasionally receiving conservation treatments with Windex - all while the Cold War, the Space Race, Watergate, and 9/11 unfolded outside.
With a background in ethics, Schmitt also focused on the pivotal moment of the painting's return. In 2011, the late Bryan Horney chose integrity over profit, voluntarily returning the masterpiece to the Berlin State Museums. It was a decision of remarkable moral clarity. However, this recovery leaves us with a haunting ethical ambiguity. Today, the painting resides in a museum vault in Berlin - the legally and morally "correct" location. Yet, if we consider the object’s own "desire," one might wonder if it would prefer the emotional warmth of its Pittsburgh home over the sterile safety of an institution. In Pennsylvania, it was once again used as a devotional object, fulfilling its original 16th-century purpose, rather than being treated as a mere specimen of art history. By proposing the title "Horney-Madonna," I argue for an identity that honors Bryan Horney’s legacy and acknowledges the sixty years during which a local family unknowingly preserved - and lived with - a piece of world heritage.
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