Hawk Hill’s hidden treasures

To dispel a few myths about the statues in the Drexel Library: Dennis McNally, S.J., didn't make the Mouth of Truth sculpture and the Zeus wasn't fished out of the sea. Well, not exactly.

Both statues are actually part of collection of about 40 plaster casts made of famous sculptures that were loaned to St. Joe's by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1999.

While the university has the large collection, only six are on display on campus. Two sit in the library and the other four are displayed in the University Press office at 54th and City Avenue.

"Most of them are in storage because St. Joe's doesn't have an art museum," said Carmen Croce, director of the University Press who helped obtain the loaned pieces.

While the casts may not have the same value as the originals, they have a history all their own.

The Met, along with other American museums, commissioned plaster casts of famous European sculptures, such as Michelangelo's "Bacchus and Fawn" and the Parthenon's frieze, both of which are in the university's collection. Before World War I, people rarely had the opportunity to see the original works that never left Europe, according to Croce.

Making casts was the next best option, and the casts were highly valued in their heyday for their accurate replication of originals and use as an art-teaching tool.

Today, the casts offer accurate representations of many original pieces that have been ruined by 150 years of acid rain, Croce said.

All of the plaster casts now part of the university's collection were on display at the Met from about 1880-1940, said Croce.

How St. Joe's got such a fine collection of them is a story of a chance inquisition. When Croce's friend Elizabeth Milleker, a curator of Greek and Roman art at the Met, was visiting campus, Croce jokingly asked her for some of the Met's artwork.

"St. Joe's is looking for some art, what can you give me from the Met's collection?" he asked. To Croce's surprise, Milleker had a positive answer.

Movement of the casts was quite the task because of packing, lifting, and transporting the many large, heavy pieces in the collection.

"It was an enormous project, but it snowballed out of the sarcastic comment," said Croce. "We got this hoard of plaster casts that are the envy of [other institutions]."

"The Artemisian Zeus" on the first floor of Drexel Library is a particularly envied possession. Bryn Mawr College and the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts have both contacted Croce several times about obtaining the cast of the famous sculpture, Croce said.

"The piece is a remarkable piece. It should be outside somewhere," Croce said. But in his current location, Zeus stays tucked away behind a stairwell in the back of a library. "He would be the pride of so many institutions."

Another cast, the "Bocca Della Verita," or "Mouth of Truth," which is located on the second floor of the library, is the center of numerous folk stories about original purpose.

"It's one of the few [of the casts] that doesn't look exactly like the original," said Croce. The original is located in Rome and may have once been used as drain cover.

The story goes that the empress of Rome was suspected of infidelity and her husband devised the "Mouth of Truth" to test her faithfulness. Supposedly, if you told a lie while your hand was stuck inside the open mouth in the statue, it would bite off your fingers.

As for the future of the rest of the pieces not on display, stored in on and off campus locations, Croce said he doesn't know what's next for them.

"I've had 100 plans, but none of them have worked out," he said.

Inside the Mouth of Truth

The original "Mouth of Truth" is currently located at the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, in Rome. Anyone who tells a lie with a hand in the statue's mouth risks a finger-chomping. Rumor had it that the Empress of Rome was being unfaithful to her husband, who then devised a plan to make her put her hand in the Mouth of Truth and say she was faithful to him. To preserve her fingers, she had her lover dress like a beggar, jump out from the crowd gathered to watch, and kiss her. When the moment of truth arrived, she could truthfully say she had only intimately touched her husband . . . and the beggar.