By Kevin McCauley
Embattled Church of England, enduring a schism over its decision to ordain women as bishops, faces another media backlash.
Francisco de Zurbaran self-portrait
Image: Wikimedia |
It has hired Chelgate to handle the anticipated uproar over a plan to auction a dozen paintings by 17th century Spanish master Francisco de Zurbaran, according to the Mail of London.
The dozen large canvasses have hung together for the past 250 years in Auckland Castle, home of the bishop of Durham. The paintings depict the Old Testament Jacob and sons.
Church Commissioners, which include the Archbishops of York and Canterbury, first proposed selling the paintings ten years ago, but retreated after a storm of opposition.
The Mail obtained a document from Chelgate CEO Terence Fane-Saunders in which he asked if it’s wise for the Church to be "flagging up its debt-free wealth" when "many are in financial difficulties, and with so much poverty and suffering being shown on our TV screens every day."
The most positive outcome of the sale, according to the Chelgate chief, would be one in which the paintings were sold as a group to someone or institution based in the U.K.
A piecemeal sale or "disappearance into the private collections of a billionaire in Russia, Japan of the Middle East would be less acceptable to public opinion and quite possibly stimulate criticism of the Church Commissioners."
Another "unattractive development" would be to have a buyer "flip" the painters at a higher price, according to the Chelgate boss.
He told the Commissioners that bad PR could be minimized if a "friendly" arts journalist covered the story in depth and applied a "helpful perspective" to "filter out across the rest of the nationals."
Fane-Stevens counseled the Commissioners to keep Chelgate’s advisory role secret.
The Church has backed off the original plan to sell the paintings at Sotheby’s in December. The potential auction, which could raise more than $20M, has been pushed into the next year.
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