Author & Art Historian Dr Laura Morelli Discusses her Historical Fiction Novel The Last Masterpiece and WWII Looting of Florentine Collections Warfare of Art & Law Podcast

To learn more, please visit Laura Morelli's site.

Show Notes:
0:00 Laura Morelli  discussing the WWII era art looting
1:15 genesis of writing about the looting of Florentine art collections in The Last Masterpiece 
2:45 German Jewish artist Rudolph Levy as guest of German Art History Institute 
4:30 Stolperstein for Levy
5:00 perspectives in WWII Italy: museum officials, German expatriates and Allies
8:30 German Eva Brunner and American Josephine Evans - characters in The Last Masterpiece 
9:30 decisions on where to begin and end The Last Masterpiece
13:30 decision to use fictional characters versus historical figures in book
14:40 German Art History Institute Director Prof. Friedrich Kriegbaum
16:00 Kriegbaum’s participation in Hitler’s 1938 tour of Florence
18:25 Brunner’s back story
20:10 German photographer Hilde Lotz-Bauer who worked for Prof. Kriegbaum photographing Allied damage to historical monuments in Florence 
24:15 Evans based on Women’s Army Corp (WACs)
28:25 women who worked with and supported the Monuments Men
29:00 justice in terms of the individual actions and decisions that enabled the survival of art looted during WWII
31:30 books by Robert Edsel and Ilaria Dagnini Brey
32:15 survival bias 
33:30 van Dyck painting
33:40 Uffizi Director Eike Schmidt’s work for Germany to return looted Dutch painting
35:00 impact of propaganda during WWII
38:10 Michelangelo’s Secret Room with 16th C drawings 
42:20 2024 release of book related to hiding places in Tuscan countryside in 1943-44


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Music by Toulme.

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© Stephanie Drawdy [2024]