18-6-2008
Joana
Almeida Troni – Catarina de Bragança (1638 – 1705)
Ana
Cristina Duarte Pereira – Princesas e Infantas de
Portugal (1640 – 1736)
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Acabam de ser lançados entre nós
mais estes dois livros de história. Em ambos os casos, trata-se de teses de
mestrado defendidas na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de
Lisboa, por jovens licenciadas pela mesma Faculdade. A publicação só foi
possível porque as autoras conseguiram encontrar generosos patrocinadores, pois
o subsídio da Fundação de Ciências e Tecnologia seria manifestamente
insuficiente para que alguma editora aceitasse a publicação. O primeiro foi
patrocinado pela
Fundação Maria Manuela e Vasco de Albuquerque d’Orey,
com sede na Avenida D. Carlos I, Nº44 - 4º , 1200-649 Lisboa e o segundo pela
empresa
TURBUS – Turismo Internacional Rodoviário, L.da, com
sede na Travessa do Calado, nº 23 – R/C D.to, 1170-068 Lisboa. |
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Catarina de Bragança (1638 –
1705), Princesa de Portugal, Rainha de Inglaterra
Possivelmente, a jovem Princesa
portuguesa que foi Rainha de Inglaterra é mais conhecida no estrangeiro do que
em Portugal. Como todos os casamentos reais, também o de Catarina, filha do Rei
D. João IV, tinha sido combinado pela diplomacia dos dois países. Portugal
travava com a Espanha a guerra da Restauração e precisava urgentemente de
aliados na Europa. A França não nos inspirava confiança, pois queria fazer as
pazes com a Espanha, nem que fosse à custa de Portugal. Havia que pedir a ajuda
da velha aliada, a Inglaterra. Por sua vez, o Rei Carlos II de Inglaterra tinha
os cofres vazios e dava-lhe jeito o elevado dote oferecido com a Princesa, de
dois milhões de cruzados, e ainda as praças de Tânger e Bombaim, tendo sido esta
última cidade o local onde se iniciou a ocupação inglesa da Índia.
O casamento não deixou de ter
problemas e a Rainha não deixou descendência. Falecido o Rei em 1685, a Rainha
abandonou a Inglaterra com o seu séquito em 1692. Mas deixou boas recordações
entre os britânicos.
Em Portugal, dedicou-se sobretudo à
caridade, mas foi ainda Regente do Reino por duas vezes em Maio de 1704 e
algumas semanas em 1705.
O livro descreve com rigor as
negociações para o casamento e está muito bem documentado como seria de esperar
numa tese universitária.
Princesas e Infantas de
Portugal (1640 – 1736)
O livro acompanha as implicações
histórico-políticas da vidas das filhas dos Reis D. João IV, D. Pedro II e D.
João V, que são as seguintes:
Filha de D. João IV e de D. Luisa de
Gusmão
D. Joana – 18-9-1636 – † 17 de
Novembro de 1653
Filha de D. João IV – ilegítima
D. Maria – 30 de Abril de 1644 – † 7
de Fevereiro de 1693
Filha de D. Pedro II e de D. Maria
Francisca
D. Isabel Luísa Josefa – 6 de Janeiro
de 1669 – † 21 de Outubro de 1690
Filha de D. Pedro II – ilegítima
D. Luisa – 9 de Janeiro de 1679 – † 23
de Dezembro de 1732
Filhas de D. Pedro II e de D. Maria
Sofia de Neuburgo
D. Teresa – 24 de Fevereiro de 1696 –
† 16 de Fevereiro de 1704
D. Francisca – 30 de Janeiro de 1699 –
†15 de Julho de 1736
Filha de D. João V e de D. Mariana de
Áustria
D. Maria Bárbara – 4 de Dezembro de
1711 – † 27 de Agosto de 1758
O livro descreve a educação, o
ambiente da corte, o património e, sobretudo, os projectos de casamento. Os enlaces matrimoniais possíveis eram
um investimento político cujo desenrolar estava fora do domínio das próprias
interessadas, que, quando muito, poderiam algumas vezes ter o direito de veto em
relação a algum pretendente. Não se trata de biografias, embora se narrem factos
da vida das personagens. Mas, mais do que pessoas de carne e osso, aparecem-nos
como pedras do xadrez político. Por vezes, é a morte prematura que deita por
terra todos os planos e negociações em curso.
Também este é um livro muito bem
documentado e escrito com rigor, que se lê com agrado.
Links sobre a Rainha D. Catarina de
Bragança
Biografias:
BBC
The
Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment
Wikipedia
Retratos:
Google
3rd Ser., Vol. 24, No. 2.
(Apr.,
1967), pp. 325-326.
REVIEWS OF BOOKS
Richer than Spices: How a Royal
Bride’s Dowry Introduced Cane, Lacquer, Cottons, Tea, and Porcelain to England.
and So Revolutionized Taste, Manners, Craftsmanship, and History in both England
at America. By GERTRUDE Z. THOMAS. (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf,1965 Pp. xx, 224,vii. )
While the number of books on the
decorative arts is legion, few writers have attempted a systematic assessment,
not simply of changing standards of taste, but of the transit of cultural values
and materials across continents ant oceans. Such an undertaking has been
overdue, and Mrs. Thomas has chosen the marriage of Charles II to the Infanta of
Portugal, Catherine of Braganza, in May 1662—a marriage of money and politics—
to examine the “eastern imports” and “exotic extravagances” that have “affected
our western heritage” and “in great measure shaped our geography. (p. vi).
In this urbane book the author has
essayed the peculiarly difficult task of reconstructing the social setting of
the arts in the Restoration and its aftermath; what she achieves is a successful
exploration ¡n those obscure and treacherous marches where the history of the
arts, of economics, and of social patterns all meet. The subtitle of Richer
than Spices indicates its major theme: the book suffers from having to cover
too much in too little space, but, with discipline and economy of language, Mrs.
Thomas tells an amazingly thorough story.
The terms of the royal bride’s dowry
brought Charles II a half million pounds in cash, free trading rights for
English ships in Brazil and the Portuguese East Indies, with Tangiers and Bombay
ceded to England: the former gave England a naval base in the Mediterranean and
the latter a foothold in India. The author presents a clear thesis, effectively
argued and deftly written, that the terms of this dowry changed the taste,
manners, and customs of England colonial America. Through the reactivation of
the East India Company and establishment of new trade routes, the chinoiserie
style was introduced into Restoration houses: Chinese silks and India cottons,
cane chairs and lacquer cabinets, tea and sugar and all the accoutrements in
silver, porcelain, and wood attached to the ritual of serving tea, the “fetish
of porcelain,” and the “china-mania” in furniture and architecture. By the
middle of the eighteenth century nothing in England escaped the Chinese
influence. John Shebbeare moaned in 1756 that “so excessive is the love of
Chinese architecture become, that at present the fox-hunters would be sorry to
break a leg in pursuing their sport in leaping any gate that was not made in the
eastern taste of little bits of wood standing in all directions.” (p. 172).
In her concluding chapter, the author
expresses views on the importance and success of imported “luxury items” from
the East Indies in colonial America. It was Benjamin Franklin who was to say
with a touch of optimism and pride, “The Arts have always travelled westward,
and there is no doubt of their flourishing hereafter on our side of the
Atlantic.” (p. 178)
This highly personal book, intended and
certain to be popular, is clear enough for the general reader and factual enough
for the expert. It is fascinating to watch Mrs. Thomas employing a variety of
evidence to bring to life the changing patterns of domestic fashions and habits
in England and America in the century following the Restoration. Her argument is
not original, but she states it with authority and a well calculated density of
detail. This book marks another stage in the growing maturity of decorative arts
history.
Antiques Magazine
WENDELL D. GARRETT
The failed attempt to put the Queen
in Queens
July 26,
1992
Catherine
of Queens?
By JOSEPH
P. FRIED
Catherine of
Braganza, a 17th-century Princess of Portugal who became a Queen of England,
just might become a 21st-century Colossus of Queens.
Catherine,
the largely forgotten figure in whose honor the borough is named, has a small
band of hardy partisans -- an ardent alliance of Portuguese and English admirers
and Queens residents seeking to promote their borough's heritage.
And they are
on a mission: to build a giant statue of Catherine, which, shooting skyward from
the Queens waterfront opposite midtown Manhattan, would pay highly visible
tribute to the royal namesake while "projecting the borough's identity more
strongly," as a leader of the effort put it.
All of this
is taken very seriously by the Friends of Queen Catherine, a three-year-old
group that has been doing some big things lately. It recently chose a design for
the monument, by the painter and sculptor Audrey Flack, from among two dozen
entries in a competition the group sponsored. Astride a Giant Globe
Whether Ms.
Flack's monumental conception -- a 36-foot bronze figure of the queen striding
purposefully forward on a 54-foot-high base comprising an elaborate staircase,
columns and a giant globe -- will ever become more than a monumental conception
remains uncertain. More than $1 million would have to be raised, and approval
might be needed from one or more public agencies that could be involved. The
proposed site is on the East River shore in the Hunters Point area of Long
Island City, across from the United Nations.
But if it is
built, "it will be larger than most statues in New York and broadly visible from
many sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens," said Janet M. Schneider, a member
of the Friends' board and head of the committee that chose the Flack proposal
from among five finalists.
The Flack
monument, roughly the height of a nine-story building, would be taller than the
Columbus monument in Columbus Circle (77 feet tall) but dwarfed by the Statue of
Liberty (395 feet tall).
Ms.
Schneider, a very pro-Queens Queens resident and former director of the Queens
Museum, leaves no doubt about her zeal for the proposed monument and her belief
in its importance.
"We expect
it to be a stop on the Circle Line," she said. Zealous Donors Wanted
But she is
also realistic, noting that the elaborate Flack monument could require a lot of
equally zealous, not to mention wealthy, donors.
Manuel A.
Sousa, the president of Friends of Queen Catherine, said funds would be sought
from the financial and corporate communities in Portugal, England and New York.
He said that Portuguese and British Government officials had endorsed the
project and that he hoped this would lead to some contributions from the
Governments.
How soon the
monument may be built depends both on how fast the money is raised and the
progress of Queens West, a major development project around the proposed spot
for the monument, on the shoreline between 47th Road and 48th Avenue.
But while
such practicalities are always on their agenda, the monument's champions never
lose sight of the ultimate purpose of it all.
"The main
idea is to bring to public knowledge who Queens is named after," said Mr. Sousa,
an official with the Portuguese Trade Commission, which promotes exports from
Portugal to the United States. Catherine Never Saw Queens
Catherine
herself never made it to the New World, even if her legacy does imbue that bit
of it that is now called Queens. The daughter of King John IV of Portugal, she
was born in 1638 and became a queen in 1662 by marrying King Charles II of
England.
After the
Dutch surrendered New Amsterdam to Charles's brother, the Duke of York, in 1664,
part of the area across what is now the East River was named Kings County, in
honor of Charles, and another part Queens County, in honor of Catherine. While
few people in Kings County today think of themselves as residents of Kings,
preferring its far-better-known name, Brooklyn, residents of Queens County live
in nothing but Queens.
In choosing
Ms. Flack's proposal, Ms. Schneider said, the committee she headed saw that
proposal as a "better realization of the goals of the project." These, she said,
go beyond simply picturing the historical figure to portraying concepts like
"universal peace and harmony" -- symbolized by the globe Ms. Flack would have
the queen stand on -- and the "courage and dignity of women."
The four
other finalists in the competition were Raymond Kaskey, who proposed a stone
figure of the queen on horseback against a background shaped like the map of
Portugal; Charles Parks, who proposed a standing, scepter-bearing queen in
stainless steel; Rhoda Sherbell, whose standing figure would have been in
bronze, and Clara Meneres, whose more abstract rendering of a marble-and-steel
Catherine was designed, she said, to "reflect the dignity of the queen and
relate to the surrounding architecture."
February
6, 1994
NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: LONG ISLAND CITY PROGRESS REPORT; Putting the Queen in
Queens
By BRUCE
LAMBERT
It will be
several years before a monument to Catherine of Braganza, for whom the borough
of Queens was named, is installed in Hunters Point. But it is already beginning
to take shape in a studio on the Upper West Side.
WHO?: A
Portuguese princess, Catherine became Queen of England in 1662 by marrying
Charles II. Through trade with Portugal, she is said to have helped introduce
tea to England. And because her dowry included Bombay, England gained entry to
India.
WHY QUEENS?:
During the reign of Charles and Catherine, New York City passed from the Dutch
to the English, back to the Dutch, then finally to England again. Kings County
(Brooklyn) was named for Charles, and Queens County for Catherine.
SIZE: The
statue will be about 36 feet tall on a 50-foot-high base.
HOW FAR
ALONG IS IT?: The project started with a 26-inch clay statuette with succeeding
models that size in plaster, wax and then bronze. Enlarged by the sculptor in
stages for adjustments in its proportions, the statue is now in its second size,
four feet tall. The next incarnation will be at 10 feet tall, followed by full
height.
SYMBOLISM:
Catherine stands atop a large globe and holds a smaller one in her left hand,
which convey her role in bridging the old and new worlds and also represent the
diversity of Queens today.
THE BOTTOM
LINE: $1 million; cost of base unknown.
WHO'S
PAYING?: The Government of Portugal donated $270,000, and $730,000 more is to be
raised there. American donors will be asked to pay for the base.
FACING:
Undecided. The artist wants a rotating base to give Catherine a one-quarter turn
with each season.
SPONSOR:
Friends of Queen Catherine, a nonprofit organization promoting her contributions
and Portuguese-American ties.
UNVEILING:
Planned for 1998, the 100th anniversary of the consolidation of Queens into New
York City. B.L.
January
9, 1998
The Queen
of Ethnic Nightmares; Cultural Politics Mires Statue of Borough's Namesake
By BARRY
BEARAK
Among the
homeless of New York, there is none more conspicuous than Catherine of Braganza.
The Portuguese princess stands five stories high and is bronzed, bejeweled and
highlighted with gold leaf. She cost about $2 million to create.
The statue
is a gift, largely paid for by the people of Portugal. Its unveiling is
scheduled for this fall, and for the last 10 years, as the sculpture grew from
the conceptual into the colossal, its residence was intended to be Hunters Point
in Queens. There, directly across the East River from the United Nations,
Catherine would stand in one of the city's most prominent sites, eminently
visible from the towering leviathans of Manhattan.
Why does a
17th-century monarch merit so desirable a domicile in New York? Because
Catherine became the Queen of England after wedding its king, Charles II. By
most historical accounts, the borough of Queens was named for her ladyship, just
as Kings County (a k a Brooklyn) was named for him.
But now, as
so often happens with public art projects, the appropriateness of the statue
itself has come into dispute. This time, the conflict is about racial symbolism.
Queen Catherine has been linked to the trans-Atlantic slave trade of her two
nations. Late last month, the statue's donors were told to find it a home other
than Hunters Point.
And herein
lies a situation at once deadly serious and decidedly absurd, with Catherine's
strong chin and serene eyes adorning a face that has launched 1,000 spats.
Among the
principal participants are a self-described Portuguese nobody with a gift for
raising money, a bevy of politicians only too willing to attach their names to
his cause, a feminist sculptor whose vision of a European queen has multiracial
features, a borough president blown this way and that by the cross-cultural
winds, and community advocates who perceive evil imagery and terrible hurt where
others see good will.
The statue's
''hands are bloody with the murder of millions of Africans,'' said Betty Dopson,
the most vocal leader of a group formed to oppose the sculpture. ''Do we really
need a statue of a slave mistress? To erect this monstrosity shows disrespect to
every African-American whose ancestors were raped and shackled and shipped
off.''
While
historians find Catherine's connection to the slave trade tenuous at best, the
Queens Borough President, Claire Shulman, one of the statue's earliest and most
devoted advocates, has come to agree with critics who say guilt by association
is guilt enough.
''Decent
people are offended and that troubles me,'' she said. ''I don't think of
Catherine of Braganza as necessarily evil,'' but, she added, the queen did live
in a slave-trading nation ''in an age that was terrible to a portion of the
world.''
For this
reason, she said, she has reluctantly turned a 180 and declared that private
land must be used for the huge sculpture and not the Hunters Point site, which
she herself had helped negotiate from the Port Authority.
''I'm really
betwixt and between here,'' she sighed the other day, at one point sandwiching
her head between her hands as if trying to hold onto her mind. ''I can't tell
you how sorry I am about all this because I can really see both sides. I'm
losing a lot of sleep over this. Would you want to play King Solomon? Do you
have a solution?''
Ms.
Shulman's ''compromise'' has satisfied no one. Opponents do not want it to go up
anywhere in America, on public land or private. Their quarrel with Catherine is
similar to dozens of other battles over racial symbolism across the country.
Last October, a majority-black school board in New Orleans renamed George
Washington Elementary School because America's first president had been a
slaveholder. Patrons of the statue, on the other hand, say finding an equivalent
site will be impossible.
Among the
many in this mess there may be no more pitiful a figure than Manuel Andrade e
Sousa, the founder of Friends of Queen Catherine. The statue was his brainchild
in 1988 -- and ever since, his life's work.
A decade
ago, Mr. Sousa was only 28 and a minor official in the Portuguese National
Tourist Office in New York. When he learned how the borough of Queens got its
name, he reveled in the idea of some commemorative monument, something big like
the Statue of Liberty. His problem was how to get started, and he only had two
things going for him: Claire Shulman and the Mayor of Lisbon, a family friend.
In 1989, the
Mayor invited Ms. Shulman and members of her staff to the Portuguese capital.
The flag of Queens flew above City Hall. The Duke of Braganza accompanied Ms.
Shulman to Catherine's birthplace.
In recent
years, Ms. Shulman has been the project's honorary chairwoman. Others on the
honorary committee have included Jimmy Carter, Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, Mario
M. Cuomo, David N. Dinkins, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Gov. George E. Pataki,
Donald J. Trump and Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey.
If the
sculpture had been proposed for city property, a formal review with public
hearings would have been required. But the Port Authority demanded no such
proceedings. And Mr. Sousa, who said he was mindful that ''complaints are
inevitable even if you only want to plant a tree,'' nevertheless felt that
objections were unlikely because he had ''support from public officials
throughout the city.''
Mr. Sousa
may have been but a minor official, but he was a fund-raising whirlwind. So far,
he has raised some $1.6 million. By his accounting, $600,000 was donated by
Portugal's Government. Of the remaining $1 million, an estimated $800,000 comes
from Portuguese corporations and individuals, and $200,000 from Americans.
''Claire
Shulman's decision is wiping out 10 years of work,'' he said.
Similar pain
-- and even outrage -- can be heard from Audrey Flack, the artist who won the
competition to create the statue and has spent six years on the project. By her
reckoning, Catherine was a virtuous woman who faced her own particular
oppression. The magic kiss that had smitten King Charles II was an enchanting
dowry that included the colonial trading posts of Tangier and Bombay. In return
for their princess, the Portuguese received an alliance with England. For her
part, Catherine got a philandering husband.
Ms. Flack
saw in the queen ''a powerful and positive image of a surviving female.''
Hunters Point provided a perfect site. Catherine could look seaward with wind
blowing her hair and the sun lighting the colored glass on her bodice.
The scale of
the project was daunting, of course. How does a sculptor get the proportions
just right on a 35-foot-tall body atop a 15-foot base? Ms. Flack worried about
the curve in the eye sockets, the musculature of the mouth. She spent two months
lowering the bosom. ''The face fought me the whole way,'' she said. ''I believe
in energy webs, and I was picking up Catherine's energy. I knew there was a
truer face.''
That face,
once it had revealed itself to the sculptor, had full lips, a broad nose and
long curls that could well be dreadlocks. ''It is a multiracial face,'' Ms.
Flack said.
The statue,
now at a foundry in Beacon, N.Y., awaits the pouring of the molten metal and the
hot chemicals that will give it a green cast. As the design went into its final
stages, the sculptor was preparing herself for art-world critics who have called
her past work kitschy and overly conscious of political correctness.
Now, in
advance of that, her Catherine is called a racist. ''Here I made a statue with
healing and positive values, and things are turning into a civil war, a race
war,'' she said.
Actually,
many early objections did not even involve issues of race.
''American
ideals are not based on statues of a monarch,'' said Thomas Paino, an architect
who is chairman of a Hunters Point group that has opposed much of that
community's development. ''Consider the ironies. This statue will overlook a
Revolutionary War battleground.''
Mr. Paino,
Ms. Dopson, church leaders and educators formed a multiracial group to take on
the Friends of Queen Catherine, which was best done by taking on Ms. Shulman.
''Claire
Shulman would not accept a statue of Eva Braun or anyone else associated with
the Third Reich,'' Ms. Dopson said. ''Well, to us Catherine would be a black
swastika. How can she expect us to accept that?''
The Rev.
Charles Norris, executive secretary of the Southeast Queens Clergy for Community
Awareness, scoffed at the idea that the sculpture would benefit the borough,
saying that the way the statue would be turned, the people of Queens would only
see the back.
On Dec. 11,
Ms. Shulman called a meeting of both sides. Another invitee was Frank Melton, a
professor of history at the University of North Carolina who was prepared to
explain that there was no evidence that Catherine owned slaves or profited from
the trade, that in fact her will actually left a sum for the ''Redemption of
slaves as is customary to do by the religion of the Holy Trinity.''
But amid the
shouting, he was never permitted to speak. Indeed, as he tried to discuss the
will, the anti-Catherine forces walked out.
''Until
then,'' Ms. Shulman recalled, ''I guess I had never understood the depth of
their feelings.''
May 3,
1998
NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: LONG ISLAND CITY; A Statue Fit for Queens?
By
RICHARD WEIR
Reported in
newspapers from India to Germany, the furor over a planned statue of a
17th-century Queen Catherine returned last week to Hunters Point, the would-be
waterfront home of the 50-foot bronze sculpture honoring the monarch who is
widely considered to be the namesake of Queens County.
Opponents of
the statue clashed with a handful of supporters Tuesday at a meeting held in a
gallery of the former Public School 1, now an arts center. Much of the debate
focused on Catherine of Braganza's ties, however tenuous, to the colonial slave
trade. The Portuguese princess became Queen of England upon marrying King
Charles II in 1662.
''Their
history is awash in blood, African blood,'' Betty Dopson, the leader of a group
opposing the statue, said. She and others acknowledge that Queen Catherine never
owned slaves, but contend that as royalty of two countries involved in the slave
trade, she reaped its benefits.
The statue,
now being cast at a foundry in Beacon, N.Y., was the brainchild of Manuel Adrade
e Sousa, a Portuguese tourism official who envisioned it as a goodwill gift from
his country. In 1988 he founded Friends of Queen Catherine, which raised $1.6
million and attracted supporters like Mayor David N. Dinkins and the Queens
Borough President, Claire Shulman. But after hosting a heated December meeting,
Ms. Shulman has distanced herself from the project. And Mr. Dinkins now says he
opposes it.
Because the
Port Authority owns the site for the statue, on the East River shoreline, no
formal public review was required. The meeting Tuesday was held by a local
preservation group opposed to the statue.
The
half-dozen people who turned out to extol the Queen said she was as a symbol of
strength rather than tyranny. She endured anti-Catholic bigotry, they said, and
a husband who had six mistresses and fathered 14 children, none with her. The
supporters also pointed out that Catherine never profited from the slave trade
and said she left money after her death to help free slaves.
''Let us
forgive and move on,'' suggested Paul Claudato, who said the statue would bring
tourists to Queens.
But Dorothy
Morehead, a real estate broker, saw it as an insult to patriots of the American
Revolution. ''Almost within sight of the proposed statue, British soldiers
overran American forces,'' she said. ''British soldiers bayoneted them to trees
and left them to die.''
And Roy
Gussow, a sculptor from Long Island City, said the statue reminded him ''of a
17th-century Barbie doll.''
June 4,
2000
FOLLOWING
UP
By TINA
KELLEY
Not a Face to Launch Many Ships at All
The statue
of Queen Catherine of Braganza, once slated for a prime waterfront throne in the
borough named for her (Queens, not Braganza), has had a horrible couple of
years. Her supporters dwindled, her face was rearranged, and now, the woman who
designed her has described her in a lawsuit in Federal District Court in a way
no royal portraitist would dare. To wit: her nostrils are too large and uneven,
the whites of her eyes are different sizes, her forehead has caved in, her lower
lip protrudes too much and her chin has doubled. (The picture shows a 1994
model.)
Audrey
Flack, the Manhattan-based sculptor, is suing those involved in financing and
casting the 35-foot-tall statue.
The Friends
of Queen Catherine raised about $2 million to build and place it across the East
River from the United Nations building, but critics complained that the
17th-century queen of England, born in Portugal, had ties to the slave trade,
and the project seemed to stall. In March 1999, Ms. Flack discovered that the
molds and clay model for the statue's face, not yet cast, had been damaged at
the Tallix foundry in Beacon, N.Y., and an assistant of Ms. Flack's was asked to
make repairs.
Unsatisfied
with the results, Ms. Flack is suing the Friends of Queen Catherine and the
foundry. She is asking for millions in damages and wants to prevent the statue
from being cast with the new molds. ''I cannot let a piece go out that doesn't
meet the standards of my work,'' she said.
But in
recent court papers, Michael S. Oberman, the lawyer for Friends of Queen
Catherine, disagreed.
''The simple
and undisputed fact is that neither F.Q.C. nor Tallix wanted the truly
regrettable sequence of events that resulted from the political controversy over
the Queen Catherine project,'' he said. ''In many respects, F.Q.C. is the most
injured party here, for its mission has been wholly thwarted. It should not be
held liable for its own misfortune.''
Efforts to
get a response from the lawyer for the foundry were unsuccessful.
