BROWSER'S PRIZE

BROWSING through an antique shop off London's Bond Street a few years ago, Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum Director James J. Rorimer came across a metal bust that caught his expert eye. Recalls Rorimer: "It was filthy with grime, tarnished, painted with a darkened varnish, and the face was covered with several layers of flaking paint." When he opened the bust's hinged miter. he saw that the inside was of carefully hammered silver. Concluded Rorimer: "There could be no doubt that here was an Italian 15th century reliquary bust."

For less than $1,000, Rorimer carted the bust off to the U.S. In the Met's workroom, Director Rorimer and his staff carefully cleaned off the layers of paint, found underneath the gleaming silver features of an unknown bishop whose miter was handsomely jeweled (see opposite). The enameled coats of arms and Latin inscriptions on the bust further identified the piece as a work commissioned by the great Italian Humanist Poggio Bracciolini and his wife Vaggia. A search of the records brought out the fact that about 1438 Poggio had indeed given to the Church of Santa Maria in his native village of Terranuova, south of Florence, a reliquary for the bones of St. Lawrence, one of Rome's most popular saints (who refused to surrender the church's treasures and in 258 was supposed to have been roasted to death on a gridiron).

One day Rorimer hopes to identify the sculptor who made the bust (now on show at the Cloisters, the Met's outpost on the Hudson River). He wonders if it might be the work of famed Renaissance Sculptor Donatello, known to have been one of Poggio's close friends. But for the moment, he says, "we must remain content to have brought back from oblivion a masterpiece of the 15th century."

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