Vulnerable village virgins

Press, 14 December 1977, Page 12

Vulnerable village virgins

Just before midnight on July 6, 1972, a diabolical storm hit the tiny Pyrenean village of Abella de la Conca. Early the next morning a woman went into the village church. Moments later she rushed out, crying: “The virgin has gone.” The village’s most precious possession, a Catalan-Gothic retable painted with scenes from, the life of the virgin, had vanished. The retable is made of wood and measures seven feet by five. It is not the sort of souvenir even the nicest customs man overlooks. Yet somehow it reached America. Last month it surfaced in New York, where virgins are conspicuous. The police set a trap and arrested a young Dutchman who was trying to sei! it for $17,000 — a low price which suggests that the theft was not the work of a professional gang. The problem now is what to do with the retable. The villagers of Abella de la Conca, over whose devotions it has watched for six centuries, want it back. The episcopal authorities say it beglongs to the church, not to the village, and should remain in their possession for safe keeping. Every other day an object of artistic or historic value is stolen from an eccelsiastical building. The Spanish church is jrobably the second richest in the world (after the Italian church) in works of art, gold, and jewellery, inherited through history, given by the rich or bought with the pesetas of the poor. Although some cathedrals have invested in electronic alarms or guard dogs, others — and most village churches — are staggeringly vulnerable, In the last 13 months thieves have broken into four cathedral treasuries; from Murcia

cathedral alone they took gold crowns and jewels worth more than SSM. Occasionally, members of the clergy contribute to the depredation. The theft of 700 medieval manuscripts and books from the Seo of Saragossa, for which an Italian book dealer was publicly blamed, was, in fact, a leisurely but illegal sale organised by two or three priests. A later, unpublicised, theft of about 600 items is also said to have been an inside job. Modest parish priests, many of them ignorant of the artistic value of their churches’ patrimony, often sell unused furniture and unregarded paintings and carvings in order to finance repairs or for personal gain. The Archbishop of Seo de Urgel is understood to favour placing the altarpiece of Abella de la Conca in his diocesan museum. Abella’s inhabitants and .other object that museums, too, can be burgled or catch fire. Many Roman esque and early Gathic retables and frescos have already been transferred from Pyrenean churches to the great museum of Catalan art in Barcelona. They are still beautiful, but piognant, like caged birds. The collection is, of course, a godsend to the lazy tourist — and to any lunatic with a bomb. An optimistic antiquarian believes that the traffic in genuine ecclesiastical art may soon diminish because good craftsmen are making copies that are becoming widely acceptable. He pointed to a Romanesque virgin that looked as old as Spam. “Note the clay in the cracks,” he says. “It was buried to save it from the Moors and found only recently by a farmer — or so one might think. Don’t worry about the wormholes. The manufacturer guarantees they are I phoney.” A traffic may now be ’ developing in good fakes. I A French client of the anti- ' quarian’s told him that j virgins like his were on I sale in Paris — at five ; times his price. Good ; news. Every false virgin : in the market-place means , a true virgin saved. — “ECONOMIST”