Packing of Michelangelo’s ‘Pieta’

Abstract

MOVING Michelangelo's Pieta from the Vatican to the New York World's Fair presented a challenge unlike that of any package engineering problem we normally face. Pope John XXIII authorized the trip in 1962 when he gave permission to Francis Cardinal Spellman to exhibit the Pieta at the Vatican Pavilion at the 1964-5 New York World's Fair. Cardinal Spellman assigned overall responsibility for the safe shipment of the statue from Rome to New York to Mr Edward M. Kinney, Vatican Purchasing Agent in the United States. The shipping and packing was under the direction of a special committee known as the Vatican Pavilion Transport Committee. Mr Kinney acted as Chairman of the Committee, which included two other members, Mr Joseph G. Kearns, President of the D. F. Young Company (export broker), and Mr John Murray, Vice-President of McNally Brothers (trucking firm). Most package designs require confirmation by a series of tests. Consumer packages generally use test marketing, or a select panel review them. We either drop-test industrial packages at a predetermined set of conditions, or send them on a series of hazardous trips. The value, size, and unknown fragility of Michelangelo's Pieta precluded any tests on the statue itself prior to shipment from Rome to New York. When it moved, the pack had to be right. We had to predict and investigate every possible source of damage. The major concern with the movement of marble is interior fissures; any slight shock could cause marble to crack along a fissure. When Michelangelo selected the marble for the Pieta he declared it to be perfect. This was confirmed by a series of X-rays taken by Eastman-Kodak radiologists just prior to packing. However, in our planning, we had to assume fissures might be present; shock had to be reduced to a minimum. The shock-absorbing characteristics of cushioning materials are described by 'G' versus static stress curves. 'G', a dimensionless unit, is the ratio of acceleration a dropped object would receive at impact (strictly this is a negative acceleration) to the acceleration of gravity. It represents unabsorbed energy, so that the lower the 'G' of a cushioning material the more efficient it is. Since cushioning materials are most efficient within specific static stress ranges, the pack had to be designed so that the static: stress was within the most efficient range. The original shipping plans called for three cases, an outer steel case and two wooden ones. The estimate of the mass of the Pieta and the