Art and Adventure in a Time of War
March 10, 2025 in Library Corner
By Robin Jacobson.
Perched majestically on a rocky hilltop, the Abbey of Montecassino has kept vigil over Italy’s Liri Valley for nearly two thousand years. During the Second World War, the grand monastery housed incomparable treasures of Western civilization – art, music, rare books, medieval manuscripts, and ancient gold coins. This is the bewitching setting for Derek Miller’s historical novel, The Curse of Pietro Houdini, which is simultaneously a coming-of-age story, a derring-do adventure, a tale of war and survival, and an homage to art.
Two Strangers Meet
In an Italian village in August 1943, a mysterious scholar calling himself Pietro Houdini (in tribute to the famous escape artist) encounters a young teenager going by the name Massimo. Massimo is lying in a ditch, bloody and bruised, after an attack by local thugs. Orphaned in the Allied bombing of Rome, Massimo had been enroute to Naples, the last known home of relatives. Pietro rescues Massimo and persuades the orphan to postpone this dangerous journey. Instead, Pietro invites Massimo to accompany him to the nearby abbey where Pietro is due to start work as a master of art restoration and conservation. He offers to make Massimo his assistant.
Over the next months, Pietro and Massimo live peacefully in the abbey while the war rages elsewhere in Italy. They befriend the monks, explore the labyrinthine buildings and grounds, and marvel at the priceless masterworks. Pietro cleans frescos and mosaics, while discoursing on art and history for Massimo’s benefit.
The arrival of Nazi officers at the abbey alarms Pietro, especially after the monks reluctantly agree to allow the Nazis to transport their prized collections to Rome. Ostensibly, this is to protect the treasures in case the Allies bomb the abbey. But Pietro suspects the Nazis of trying to steal art, as they have done systematically across Europe. He concocts a plan whereby he and Massimo will save three Renaissance paintings, proclaiming that it will be “the first art heist inside an art heist in the history of the world.”
The plan expands to encompass the saving of not just art, but the lives of a quirky group sheltering in the abbey – a nurse, a wounded German soldier, a café owner, a monk, two young lovers, and a heroic mule named Ferrari. Several of the characters harbor secrets, which they gradually reveal as the novel progresses. The author shows particular sensitivity to his female characters’ wartime traumas; he says he was profoundly influenced by Euripides’ timeless anti-war play, The Trojan Women (415 B.C.E.).
The Abbey of Montecassino
Dr. Derek Miller is a political scientist specializing in war and security; he takes pride in the historical accuracy of his novels. The Abbey of Montecassino, central in Pietro Houdini (Miller’s seventh novel), has a rich past. Once the site of a Roman temple to Apollo, the abbey was established by St. Benedict in 529 C.E.
During the 11th century, the monastery library became one of Europe’s finest as the monks collected, translated, and preserved manuscripts from many cultures, nations, and epochs. The abbey’s store of matchless riches mushroomed during World War II, when Italian museums and churches moved their collections to the monastery for safekeeping.
In 1944, the abbey found itself tragically situated between Allied and Axis forces. Mistakenly believing that German soldiers were directing military operations from the monastery, the Allies dropped more bombs on it than on any other single structure during the war. But in an ironic turn of events, most of the art survived because the Nazis had hauled it away from the abbey in the months preceding the battle.