Desiré Froc-Robert, Assumption Set, 1876. Carton-pierre. In the second Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church, Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Photograph taken in the 1970s. Courtesy of Robert A. Keefer
Desiré Froc-Robert, Pietà, ca. 1876. Carton-pierre. In the third Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church, Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Courtesy of Robert A. Keefer
Desiré Froc-Robert, Assumption Set, 1876. Carton-pierre. In the third Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church, Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Courtesy of Robert A. Keefer
Munich Statuary, Benziger Brothers, Catalogue of Church Ornaments, 1873, unnumbered page. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Virgin Mary, zinc statues, Benziger Brothers, Catalogue of Church Ornaments, 1879, p. 65. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Frame for station of the cross, Benziger Brothers, Catalogue of Church Ornaments, 1887, p. 142. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, the American branches of Benziger Brothers, a Swiss publishing house, sold more statues and paintings in the United States than perhaps any other purveyor of art. The company also sold stained glass, prints, banners, rosaries, holy-water fonts, and countless other religious articles that became part of the visual environment in which many of America's Roman Catholics developed their aesthetic sensibilities. Through its stores and trade catalogues, Benziger provided a respectable percentage of the paintings and sculptures bought to decorate homes and the new churches and parochial schools that were established as America's Catholic population swelled between 1870 and 1900 from 4,504,000 to 12,041,000.1
Despite the size of their operations, Benziger and its rivals, such as Fr. Pustet and Company and the I. Donnelly Company, remain almost unknown. Nevertheless, this sacred sculpture and painting made up one of several enormous markets of pictures and statues intended for working-class and newly emerging middle-class Americans during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.2 Though far more varied and dignified, the statues offered by this highly organized trade, dominated by firms with official links to the papacy, are the ancestors of the colorful religious figurines sold today by the Catholic Catalog Company, church gift shops, and mass marketers like the Franklin Mint, Lenox Collections, and the Bradford Exchange.
Each of the vast bodies of inexpensive works sold one hundred years ago served an art world distinct from and independent of the one familiar to students of late-Victorian-American culture. These large markets dwarfed in their number of clients and volume of merchandise the one driven by the artists, critics, collectors, and dealers who are today considered to be the principal actors in American art of the late nineteenth century. The inexpensive paintings and sculptures were American art for most Americans then.
Benziger's merchandise remained familiar fixtures in Catholic homes, churches, and schools until Vatican II of 1962–65 discouraged the use of imagery in both congregational and personal prayer.
Benziger Brothers began as printers in Einsiedeln, Switzerland, around 1792. Benziger opened its first American branch in New York in 1853, a second in Cincinnati in 1860, a third in Saint Louis in 1875, and its fourth in Chicago in 1887. Benziger began to manufacture sacred vessels and church furniture in 1864. In 1888 the papacy appointed Benziger "The Pontifical Institute of Church Art." Starting in 1894, Benziger made most of the church goods that it sold in America—though not its paintings or sculptures—in its new Brooklyn factory. Benziger's merchandise remained familiar fixtures in Catholic homes, churches, and schools until Vatican II (1962–65) discouraged the use of imagery in both congregational and personal prayer. Benziger closed its church furnishings and religious articles departments and stores by 1966. In 1969 the Benziger family sold the company to MacMillan.3
Exploring Benziger's marketing tactics for religious art will help us to understand all kinds of art made and sold in America during the late nineteenth century. To introduce this market in an easily assimilable format, I have limited this discussion to an analysis of Benziger's trade catalogues. Scholars increasingly use trade catalogues when studying the Victorian era, but their efforts are hampered by the scarcity of surviving catalogues from firms that made and sold art objects. Their efforts are also impeded because few libraries have organized their catalogue holdings. Fortunately, Benziger, primarily a publisher, deposited copies of its catalogues with the Library of Congress. The library's seven Benziger catalogues, spanning the years 1873 to 1888, allow us to understand the kinds of art Benziger made and sold during this period, assess the appearance of the works illustrated, and analyze religious and cultural patterns revealed by the kinds of merchandise Benziger sold and the prices it charged.
Benziger's catalogues illustrate the enormous range of sacred statuary and paintings that made Roman Catholic churches, in effect, among the most frequented museums of art in America.
In 1873 Benziger issued what it later called "the first attempt in this country at a complete descriptive and illustrated catalogue of Church goods." The catalogue offered extensive lines of paintings and sculptures, which suggests that Benziger's trade in both was already well established. From 1873 to 1888, Benziger's art wares changed steadily, though not radically. Although the company introduced several new product lines and discarded a few old ones, it expanded offerings principally by adding new sizes and subjects to existing lines. Benziger issued its second general catalogue in 1879, described as "double the size of the first one, and by far the most complete ever issued in this country."4 This catalogue was intended for permanent use and contained no prices; these were published separately, and, unfortunately, no price lists have been found. (Benziger's hope that this catalogue would remain usable indefinitely suggests a wishful conservatism at the heart of its operations.) In fact, Benziger issued new, ever-larger general catalogues in 1881, 1883, 1885, and 1887–88. The catalogue issued in 1887 was the first to include photographic reproductions of selected works and illustrations of Benziger's newest product, stained-glass windows designed by the Royal Bavarian Art Institute.
Benziger's catalogues illustrate the enormous range of sacred statuary and paintings that made Roman Catholic churches, in effect, among the most frequented museums of art in America, certainly the only ones that millions of impoverished Catholics visited regularly. The aesthetic and religious impact of gazing upon and praying before these statues and paintings lies far beyond the scope of this study. We do not know whether the aesthetic impact was negligible or possibly seminal in molding the nascent tastes of millions of Americans, many of whom were already graduating into America's urban, then suburban, middle classes.5
This study is divided into two parts. The first part analyzes six sociocultural patterns that emerge in Benziger's catalogues and the kinds of issues they raise. The second part describes and summarizes Benziger's main lines of sculpture and paintings to provide supporting information unobtainable elsewhere.
Patterns in Benziger's Catalogues
The first pattern we notice in Benziger's catalogues is that the company made a strenuous effort to provide even the poorest Catholics with inexpensive representations of sacred figures. Benziger seems to have gone out of its way to keep the smallest size of several of its product lines at a low, fixed price. For example, between 1873 and 1888, the cost of the smallest inexpensive painting, measuring twenty-four and one-half by eighteen and one-half inches, remained $2.50. However, the cost of the larger size of paintings, which measured thirty and one-half by twenty-four and one-half inches, nearly doubled over that same period, escalating from a range of $5 to $10, to one of $9.50 to $12. From 1881 to 1888, Benziger's largest new size of paintings, measuring forty-eight by thirty-six inches, rose in price from $18.50 to $25. Only the smallest size remained unchanged in price.
Benzinger made certain that even the most impoverished Catholics could possess these sacred figures.
This pricing phenomenon is harder to demonstrate in sculpture because sculpture was generally more expensive, and product lines changed regularly. Moreover, Benziger's inexpensive sculptures appeared only in its 1874 Catalogue of Religious Articles, or are priced in only one general catalogue. However, Benziger's desire to put statuary into as many homes as possible is manifested by the prices it charged for biscuit figures in the Catalogue of Religious Articles.
Biscuit figurines were Benziger's least expensive statues. Three subjects dominated this product line: the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin with child, and Saint Joseph, each of which came in fourteen sizes. Benziger made certain that even the most impoverished Catholics could possess these sacred figures by pricing two-and-one-half-inch figurines, its smallest size, at only four cents.
These figurines seem artificially inexpensive compared with larger ones, which nearly quintupled in price to nineteen cents when buyers wanted five-inch figurines. Similarly, persons buying biscuit figures could have a seven-inch Our Lady of Lourdes for forty-six cents, while an eight-inch statue cost eighty-four cents.
Benziger's statuary resembles the idealized figures in countless murals executed in courthouses and other public buildings during the last decades of the nineteenth century.
The second pattern that emerges in Benziger's catalogues is the wholesome blandness of its saints. There remains to this day a conflict between orthodox representations of sacred personages and the images prized by members of marginalized and isolated Catholic communities. The best-known examples of localized religious art are the santos of various Hispanic cultures. This regionalization of sacred imagery was the rule rather than the exception in preindustrial societies.6 But suddenly people who had lived in tiny, nearly self-sufficient villages began to concentrate in cities of unprecedented size. Diocesan leaders then needed to urbanize and Americanize these predominantly immigrant, peasant parishioners. Benziger's statuary resembles the idealized figures in countless murals executed in courthouses and other public buildings during the last decades of the nineteenth century. These murals were meant to inculcate proper thinking and conduct in people of the lower class, especially immigrants, who congregated in those halls. Benziger's decorous figures similarly encouraged temperate behavior, which was essential if people were to live and work closely together in an urban society.
Benziger's idealized saints also served another purpose. Since the fourth century, religious art in churches has helped to expose uneducated parishioners to biblical narratives. In 1876 the first American cardinal, James Cardinal Gibbons, commented on this traditional role assigned to images, "Religious paintings are the catechism of the ignorant" [Gibbons's italics], while noting the illiteracy of "a great proportion of the human race." Many immigrants could not read. Gibbons added that another purpose of religious figures was to stimulate the "imitation of their virtues" [Gibbons's italics]. Expressing a neoplatonic philosophy, Gibbons commented: "Contemplation of these pious portraits chastens our affections, elevates our thoughts, checks our levity and diffuses around us a healthy atmosphere."7 Bearing so weighty a responsibility, Benziger's imagery required the genteel blandness so patent in its catalogues.
Benziger's saints can be seen as a way to coalesce diverse groups around a single authoritative vision of sacred figures.
The idealized faces of Benziger's art served yet another purpose. A long-standing practice in Catholicism was identifying oneself with revered figures. It was common during the Renaissance and Baroque eras to visualize and even portray oneself in a proximity to or an imitation of saintliness that seems sacrilegious today. Artists encouraged this practice by giving their figures generalized features, so that worshippers could envision each saint as they desired. As scholar Michael Baxandall has suggested, worshippers brought to sacred art a sophisticated understanding of how to respond to particular saints and subjects, one comparable, I would add, to the participatory awareness we bring today to different film genres.8 Benziger's vague-featured figures became for worshippers the saints of their prayers.
The third pattern suggested by the catalogues is the northern European ethnicity of Benziger's saints. Premodern artists traditionally endowed saints with local ethnicity, but Benziger faced the new problem of selling imagery to people who lived in (and were from) numerous regions. The standardization in appearance of Benziger's saints was a commercial necessity, but it probably also helped unify the diverse body of Catholicism, the most centralized denomination. Benziger's saints can be seen as a way to coalesce diverse groups around a single authoritative vision of sacred figures. American Catholicism would have been too splintered had each constituency retained eccentric local versions of saints and beliefs. Benziger did offer an ever-widening range of regional saints, but it endowed these with orthodox features.
The American Catholic hierarchy encouraged a northern European ethnicity for sacred figures.
Because the papacy was Italian, as were the best-known Christian paintings and sculptures, we might expect that holy figures would be given Italianate features. That the racial character chosen for this authoritative imagery was northern European reflects the complex relationship that existed then between Rome and Catholics elsewhere and also contemporary attitudes toward Italy. Benziger's own Germanic heritage does not sufficiently explain this preference. After all, throughout the 1880s, Benziger primarily sold the statuary of Desiré Froc-Robert of Paris when the French, still smarting from the Franco-Prussian War, would have little to do with Germany. Froc-Robert would probably not have envisioned sacred figures as Germanic. I suggest that the racial character given these saints reflected nineteenth-century biases against Italy as well as popular and pseudoscientific beliefs about race.
The papacy of that day may have resided in Italy, but it was not part of Italy. The country became a unified monarchy in 1870 by conquering the Papal States, a territory for which the pope had been the temporal as well as the spiritual leader. The Vatican did not recognize the legitimacy of the Italian government until 1929, when it entered into the Lateran Pact with Italy. The papacy and, by extension, Catholicism itself were at odds with Italy throughout the last decades of the nineteenth century.9
The American Catholic hierarchy encouraged a northern European ethnicity for sacred figures. Post Civil War leaders of the American church were predominantly Irish and German. Beginning around 1880, church officials and, of course, the society at large had to deal with unprecedented waves of immigration from Italy and eastern Europe. Church leaders reviled Italian Catholic immigrants as slovenly in their religious practices and least likely to stay in the Church.10
I suggest that the racial character given these saints reflected nineteenth-century biases against Italy as well as popular and pseudoscientific beliefs about race.
These church officials thought that the saints, practices, and beliefs immigrants had brought to this country had not nurtured sufficient faith. Perhaps alien and forbidding saints could frighten immigrants away from their lax practices and inspire high levels of church attendance found among more settled American Catholics.
The fourth pattern noticeable in the Benziger catalogues is the prominence given to Saint Joseph. There is a powerful patriarchal appearance to Benziger's entire product line, which offered dozens of full-bearded male saints and a handful of female saints, who looked earthward, avoiding eye contact with viewers.11 In fact, after 1883 Benziger's catalogues became increasingly patriarchal. Its 1885 catalogue no longer advertised male and female saints on the same pages, but shifted all women except Mary and Saint Anne to pages following those devoted to male saints.
The most striking feature of this patriarchy, however, was Benziger's promotion of Saint Joseph. Before the nineteenth century, Joseph enjoyed limited prominence. Often, in fact, he was portrayed off to himself in embarrassed isolation, as in Gentile da Fabriano's 1423 Nativity. He was less a striking role model than a cuckolded husband. Joseph's position changed radically around 1850, coinciding with the beginning of the women's rights movement as well as a new emphasis on domesticity. The husband-father was portrayed and celebrated as absolute lord of his household during the late nineteenth century probably because his authority was starting to slip. Whereas it was acceptable to promote worship of the Virgin Mary when male control over society was absolute, the first slight challenge to male hegemony required church leaders to bolster father figures. Saint Joseph became the lord and master of the Holy Family, almost rising to the same level of prominence as Mary herself. Between 1850 and 1876, for example, the heads of most new Catholic churches in New York City dedicated separate altars and chapels to Joseph to keep pace with those honoring Mary.12
The husband-father was portrayed and celebrated as absolute lord of his household during the late nineteenth century probably because his authority was starting to slip.
We see this same attempt at parity in line after line of Benziger's sculpture. For example, in the inexpensive biscuit statuary, the three main subjects were the newly redefined Immaculate Conception, the Virgin with child, and Saint Joseph.13 Among plaster statues, the Mother of Grace was offered in six sizes and Saint Joseph in nine. In 1883 Froc-Robert offered eight different statues of Joseph, compared with approximately fifteen of Mary. Moreover, in 1885, when Benziger began to segregate female saints in its catalogue, it moved Joseph's statues from their traditional listing following Mary's to a listing preceding hers. Joseph could never (and can never) achieve genuine equality of presence with Mary, but he came as close to it in Benziger's catalogues as he ever would. Moreover, both the statuary and the paintings usually showed him holding or teaching the Christ child, thereby stressing his fatherhood and leadership.
The fifth sociocultural pattern that emerges from the catalogues is the proliferation of regional saints. The Catholics who immigrated to America during the late nineteenth century usually clustered in ethnic neighborhoods and replicated the parishes and churches they had known in Europe.14 The saints that Benziger offered in its catalogues seem increasingly directed toward these single-nationality congregations. The traditionalism of its original product lines is striking in the 1873 catalogue. Benziger's zinc statuary included only eleven postbiblical saints; only Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787) postdated the Counter Reformation. Aside from Saint Alphonsus, the only "new" saint among its Munich statues was the Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690). The only postbiblical saints offered in altarpieces were four national saints: Anthony (Italy), Elizabeth (Hungary), Boniface (Germany), and Patrick (Ireland). New saints were more readily available as inexpensive paintings rather than as sculptures, but these too were Counter Reformation saints, such as Rose of Lima (1586–1617) and Stanislaus Kostka (1550–1568).
Pricing disparities in each line of art objects Benziger sold seem to encourage customers to seek status by engaging in conspicuous consumption.
Through the sculpture of Froc-Robert, Benziger began to offer newer and less-conventional saints. Benziger's 1881 product line offered twenty-five postbiblical saints. By 1885 customers could order fifty-nine postbiblical figures, and the general catalogue of 1887–88 offered 110 of them. These newer saints represented numerous nationalities, including: Blaise (Armenia); Charlemagne (France and Germany); Conrad (Bavaria); Cyril (Egypt); Edward (England); Ferdinand, Ildephonsus, and Isidore (Spain); Fidelis (Germany and Switzerland); Florentius (Holland); Fridolin and Gall (Ireland and Switzerland); Germanus (Constantinople); Hilary, Louis, and Severin (France); Januarius (Naples); Martina (Rome); Maurice (Brittany); Monica (Italy); Ursula (British or Roman); Wendelin (Rhineland and Switzerland); and Zita (Italy). Despite the wide range of nationalities represented, these saints usually looked northern European.
The sixth and last pattern suggested by the catalogues is a prestige premium associated with certain paintings and sculpture. Pricing disparities in each line of art objects Benziger sold seem to encourage costumers to seek status by engaging in conspicuous consumption. This prestige premium seems especially strong in the pricing of small sizes of inexpensive goods, but some striking disparities are also found in various jumps in size within lines of costlier goods. I believe that careful analysis of Benziger's prices will reveal levels of expenditure equivalent to rungs on the social and economic scale available to America's Catholics.
Benziger's least expensive lines of sculpture and paintings charged the steepest prestige premium. Biscuit figures, as noted earlier, were Benziger's cheapest statuary. The three smallest sizes, standing between two and one-half inches and four and one-eighth inches, cost twelve cents or less, but as soon as buyers could afford larger figures suitable for display, they encountered prices so much higher as to seem inflated and arbitrary. For example, when consumers graduated from a ten-inch to an eleven-and-one-fourth-inch figure, they paid double the price, $1.90 rather than ninety-five cents. Their next step up, to thirteen and three-fourth inches, again doubled their costs to $3.80. Customers competing to win recognition or status by the size of their Christmas decorations paid equally striking premiums. In 1874 consumers paid only $2.30 for an eight-piece Holy Family standing six inches tall, while the price of that same group jumped to $11.25 for the twelve-inch size.15
Benziger's pricing was arbitrary unless it was meant to offer customers the intangible satisfaction inherent in conspicuous consumption, whatever its scale.
The pricing of Benziger's inexpensive plaster statues shows equally remarkable disparities. Benziger sold a pair of seventeen-inch kneeling angels for as little as $3. But for angels standing twenty inches, a mere three inches taller, customers paid $8, nearly triple the base price. Even more striking, if buyers wanted thirty-six-inch kneeling angels rather than thirty-four-inch ones, they paid $30, instead of $16. Individual standing angels doubled in price from $2.50 to $5 when buyers graduated from the twenty-four-inch to the twenty-eight-inch size. Mother of Grace statues quadrupled in cost, from $1.50 to $6, when customers traded up from the twenty-four-inch to the thirty-two-inch model. But adding another ten inches to the latter statuettes merely raised the price by half, to $9. Adding ten inches to a thirty-two-inch statue requires much more additional material—and possibly work—than does adding eight inches to a twenty-four-inch statue.
The inexpensive oil paintings reveal similar pricing discrepancies. The new size of paintings that Benziger unveiled in 1885 is irrationally priced. Measuring twenty-six by twenty inches, rather than the traditional twenty-four and one-half by eighteen and one-half inches, it cost between $5 and $7; the traditional size cost from $2.50 to $3. This price differential was outrageous compared to that between Benziger's two largest sets of inexpensive paintings, which measured forty-two by thirty inches and forty-eight by thirty-six inches. Upgrading from the former to the latter cost between $2 and $3, compared to the premium of between $2.50 and $4 charged for upgrading from the twenty-four by eighteen-and-one-half-inch to the twenty-six by twenty-inch pictures. Enlarging a forty-two-inch painting to forty-eight inches required much more additional material and labor than did going from twenty-four to twenty-six inches. Although special economic thresholds may have applied in producing statues, these thresholds did not exist for paintings. Benziger's pricing was arbitrary unless it was meant to offer customers the intangible satisfaction inherent in conspicuous consumption, whatever its scale.
These various jumps in prices may reveal Benziger's informed opinion as to the levels of expenditure that represented vital thresholds of material progress and sociocultural status.
The prestige premium also appears in the pricing of certain sizes of the statuary of Froc-Robert. Consider the price range for statues measuring in height between twenty-eight and fifty-six inches. Twenty-eight-inch figures cost $18.50; fifty-six-inch statues were priced at $60. Customers could also buy statuary in intermediate sizes. Statuary increased in size by four-inch intervals. To add these four-inch intervals between the twenty-eight-inch and fifty-six-inch sizes cost the following: $6.50, $3, $4, $11, $9, $6, and $2. These differentials seem extraordinarily capricious unless they reveal the threshold economics of statue making, which itself could be of great historical interest. It makes no apparent sense that adding four inches to a fifty-two-inch statue should cost only $2, when adding four inches to a forty-inch figure added $11 to its price. Enlarging a big statue must be more costly than enlarging a small one. These price disparities cannot reflect economics. Rather, they provide evidence of a status chase waged by Catholic churches, institutions, and families one hundred years ago. These various jumps in prices may reveal Benziger's informed opinion as to the levels of expenditure that represented vital thresholds of material progress and sociocultural status.
Benziger's Lines of Merchandise
From 1873 to 1888, Benziger offered four main kinds of sculpture and three categories of paintings. The product lines in sculpture included: zinc statues; Munich statues; inexpensive statuary in plaster, biscuit, and other materials; and what became its primary offering, the sculptures of Froc-Robert et Fils of Paris. Benziger's paintings consisted of altarpieces, sets of stations of the cross, and "cheap oil paintings."
Sculpture
Benziger's catalogues devoted more pages to sculpture than to any other kind of wares because sculpture predominated in the adornment of both Roman Catholic churches and private home chapels of more affluent parishioners. It remained the noblest medium, one whose expense had limited its patronage to governments, churches, and the wealthy and powerful. By the mid-1870s, John Rogers's plaster groups, Antoine-Louis Barye's bronze animals, and small plaster and bronze reproductions of famous statues began to erode the awe of sculpture that for a long time had made it seem too lofty for most people.16 Nevertheless, many still abhorred religious sculpture as graven images. Only within the Roman Catholic community do we find less affluent people in the 1870s and 1880s with a genuine affection, even reverence, for what was essentially "high-art" statuary.
In 1873 Benziger offered forty-eight figures and groups in zinc, some in several sizes. It manufactured these works in the United States.17 Zinc statues illustrated in Benziger's 1879 catalogue resembled its Munich statues. By 1881 Benziger subordinated its zinc sculpture to that of Froc-Robert. It dropped its zinc product line by 1885, though it still sold various sets of high-relief stations of the cross in that metal.
These zinc statues were "tastefully executed, and painted in different colors in imitation of nature, but can be painted in one color only, if desired." They were "not affected by dampness or rain, and are therefore equally well adapted for the open air and for any church. . . ." Any statue not listed could "be made to order." The zinc statuary varied in price from $3 for a nine-inch Mater Dolorossa and $4 for a thirteen-inch Crucifixion figure, to $210 for a ninety-six-inch Mater Dolorossa and $275 for a ninety-eight-inch Christ Pointing at the Sacred Heart.18
The Munich statues must have been Benziger's original line of sculpture because before 1879 the catalogues gave the greatest emphasis to them. They were made of composition materials and manufactured specially for Benziger. In 1873 Benziger illustrated nine of these statues. Catalogues later advertised that Munich sets of stations of the cross had "richly gilded grounds" and "figures painted in natural colors." It seems likely that the Munich statues were also painted in natural colors, that is, in flesh tones and richly colored garments.
The most popular Munich subjects came in many sizes. For example, in 1873 the Mater Dolorossa standing at the cross varied in size from twelve inches, priced at $8, to sixty-six inches at $84. That same year popular postbiblical saints, such as Saint Francis and Saint Clare, came as small as eighteen inches, priced at $18. Eight other medieval and Renaissance saints were available as figures standing fifty-seven inches tall and selling for $68. In 1873 the most expensive Munich statues sold for well over $100 in gold.19
By 1874 Benziger offered inexpensive statues in, among other materials, biscuit, imitation bronze, and papier-mâché.
Victorians loved inexpensive figurines and could choose among works in a variety of sculptural media, including Parian ware, china, biscuit, stoneware, wood, and plaster of Paris. By 1874 Benziger offered inexpensive statues in, among other materials, biscuit, imitation bronze, and papier-mâché. It also sold porcelain—and even "plastic"—medallions in a variety of gilt brass frames, to say nothing of gold, silver, and bronze medals, crosses, rosaries, reliquaries, and numerous other sacred articles that incorporated sculptural reliefs. Benziger did not offer these varieties of affordable sculpture in its general catalogues of church goods. They are listed only in the Catalogue of Religious Articles issued in 1874.20
Benziger did not illustrate its "small colored statues from Munich," but they were probably miniatures of the larger Munich statues because the lists of titles for both are nearly identical. Two additional subjects available in this cheaper line were the Good Shepherd, the oldest and least-pretentious personification of Christ, and Saint Margaret, patron saint of childbirth. These sculptures, about ten inches tall, were made of an unspecified material and described only as "finished in artistic style." Several sold for as little as $2.15.
Only a few subjects were available in biscuit: the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin with child, Saint Joseph, Our Lady of Lourdes, Saint Patrick, and Saint Bridget. The latter two saints cost forty-five cents each. The particular saints offered in biscuit suggest that these sculptures were directed primarily, if not exclusively, to struggling Irish Americans.
Benziger's statues in imitation bronze were most likely made of zinc patinated to resemble bronze. For a long time Europeans had traded in inexpensive secular sculptures in zinc, works now largely lost, or found most often in antique malls. By the 1850s these were already being exported to the United States.21 Benziger offered only two subjects: the Immaculate Conception and Saint Joseph.
"One of the chief features and points of superiority of these Statues is their coloring and richly gilt ornamentation, which are of a most exquisite and unusually finished kind, and do full honor to the French taste."—Benzinger catalogue
Perhaps the most colorful statuary that Benziger offered in 1874 was a type still common today: "Christmas figures of the Holy Family Made of Papier-Mâché and Colored." Devout families and churches could buy different groups of eight or more figures, which varied in height from three to seventeen inches. The most basic sets contained eight or nine principals and began at $1.05 for three-inch figures.
In 1879 Benziger added to its general catalogue a "list of cheap plaster statues…to accommodate the wants of poorer Churches and Chapels." The catalogue explained:
A demand having sprung up for this class of Statues, we are now prepared to furnish them either in plain White Plaster or artistically colored and decorated; the Dress painted in white or colors, with gilt border, the Face, Hands, etc., in natural colors. These statues are copies of European designs, mostly of recent date.22
These statues probably imitated or, at least, resembled the more expensive statues that Benziger sold. Plaster statues sold for as little as $1 and as much as $40 for a pair of sixty-inch kneeling angels. Each plaster statue could be purchased "Artistically Painted and Decorated." After 1881 Benziger no longer offered plaster statues in its catalogues.
Benziger's 1881 catalogue offered Americans for the first time "the celebrated religious statues of Froc-Robert & Fils, Paris." The catalogue boasted:
These Statues are acknowledged by connoisseurs as by far the most beautiful ever imported. That they have proved a genuine and undoubted success, the extraordinary sales they have reached, and the many flattering encomiums [be-stowed] on them will attest. Their exquisite proportions, artistic draping, and delicate and harmonious coloring have secured for them general approbation, and made them almost universally preferred [Benziger's underlining].23
Desiré Froc-Robert seems to have been the John Rogers of religious sculpture. After making several statues of saints for churches in the Paris area and receiving a commission from Pope Pius IX, he began to market an impressive line of religious statuary, publicizing his wares through lavish displays at worlds fairs, including Paris in 1867 and the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. The Centennial's jury commended Froc-Robert's works "for their very tasteful selection of religious statues and altars, perfect in style and workmanship, chasteness of outline, beauty of design, and excellence in all other details of ornamentation." Benziger's catalogue explained that "one of the chief features and points of superiority of these Statues is their coloring and richly gilt ornamentation, which are of a most exquisite and unusually finished kind, and do full honor to the French taste" [Benziger's underlining]. These statues were made of "a very solid and durable composition called 'carton-pierre,' similar to that of the Munich statues, and equal to them in strength, but not so heavy".24 Although Benziger had only recently begun selling Froc-Robert statuary in the United States, its 1881 catalogue named 171 churches that had already purchased statues, including Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York and ten other cathedrals.
In 1885 Benziger reproduced 202 of Froc-Robert's designs, making this particular catalogue a peerless source of illustrations of religious sculpture of the period.
Benziger sold Froc-Robert statuary in four grades of decoration. Catalogue illustrations usually show works in Froc-Robert's ordinary, or "rich style." Works in the rich style were "finished in perfectly artistic colors, invariably light, or all white. The mantle and robe are decorated with a rich gilt border of handsome patterns and set with gold ornaments; crowns, etc., all gilt." Each statue was also available in three superior grades of decoration called "very rich style," "extra rich style," and "all gilt." In the very rich style, works were "decorated in various colors and the garments entirely covered with a rich design in gold." On extra-rich statues, the "ground…is engraved with a rich design of gold to imitate gold brocade." In the all-gilt style, the entire statue was gilt, "excepting faces, hands, etc., which are in natural colors."25 Premiums charged for the very rich and extra-rich styles ranged from $9 to $14 for twenty-eight-inch statues, to $45 to $137 for the ninety-nine-inch figures. No prices were given for all-gilt statues. Froc-Robert's statues were priced like commodities in that, with very few exceptions, each statue of a particular size cost the same regardless of subject.
Froc-Robert's Holy Family, biblical figures, and angels differed little in appearance from Benziger's other sculpture. In fact, several Froc-Robert statues, most notably the adoring angels, look like Benziger's illustrated zinc figures. Froc-Robert may have based some of his sculptures on Benziger's popular figures, or Benziger may have commissioned certain subjects from Froc-Robert.26 The relationship between Froc-Robert and Benziger needs clarification.
In 1885 Benziger reproduced 202 of Froc-Robert's designs, making this particular catalogue a peerless source of illustrations of religious sculpture of the period. A "partial list of churches" to which Benziger had sold Froc-Robert statuary included over four hundred institutions, including twenty cathedrals. Benziger that year stopped advertising Froc-Robert's three superior grades and its own older lines of sculpture. Froc-Robert's rich-style statues had become Benziger's principal line of statuary. Photographs of selected Froc-Robert statues are preserved in the general catalogue of 1887–88.
Paintings
Benziger sold three categories of oil paintings: altarpieces, sets of stations of the cross, and what it called "cheap" and "small" oil paintings. In 1873 Benziger stated that all of its paintings were "imported." The general catalogue of 1887–88 clarified somewhat the source of the paintings: "We have peculiar facilities with celebrated artists in Europe for procuring paintings of any size and quality."27 It is never clear, however, how Benziger judged the quality of its paintings, i.e., aesthetically or by degree of effort and finish. Aesthetic language is rare in catalogues of firms that offered inexpensive paintings during the late nineteenth century.
By 1873 Benziger offered an extensive selection of altar paintings. Twenty of the twenty-two altarpieces that Benziger listed were "copied from originals of the celebrated Paul von Deschwanden."28 With one exception, these works measured either ninety-two by fifty-six inches or one hundred thirteen by sixty-two inches. The smaller works sold for between $92 and $136, and the larger for a uniform $185. Altarpieces were limited to standard biblical and doctrinal themes and to four popular national saints: Boniface (Germany), Patrick (Ireland), Elizabeth (Hungary), and Anthony of Padua (Italy). Of the four national saints, only Saint Boniface was offered in the expensive size; it was obviously aimed at prosperous German-American churches. Saint Patrick and Saint Anthony were priced lower, as if to meet the budgetary constraints of America's least affluent Catholics, those from Ireland and Italy.
Parishioners entered into a direct rapport with Benziger's stations of the cross when they used them on Fridays during Lent to reenact Christ's journey to Calvary.
By 1879 Benziger had added two more subjects, Jesus Blessing Bread and Wine and Saint Francis of Assissi,29 to its selection of altar paintings, which now totaled twenty-four. In 1881 it listed twenty-seven altarpieces, adding Mary, Queen of Angels, and Sacred Hearts of Mary and Jesus. The company charged a huge premium for the Queen of Angels. Benziger first illustrated its altar paintings in its 1881 catalogue and reused the same illustrations in later catalogues.
Parishioners entered into a direct rapport with Benziger's stations of the cross when they used them on Fridays during Lent to reenact Christ's journey to Calvary. During the rest of the year, however, people probably ignored them. Because there are fourteen stations, these were usually the most expensive paintings that poor churches bought. Moreover, they were the only category of painting Benziger sold exclusively to churches.
In 1873 Benziger sold two sets of painted stations: one copied Deschwanden and the other, Joseph Führich. Deschwanden's, which Benziger probably had been selling longer, came in four sizes. The smallest, measuring twenty-nine by twenty-one inches, cost between $110 and $140, and the largest, forty-eight by thirty-six inches, between $235 and $300. Führich's paintings came in two basic sizes: forty-two by thirty inches, which cost between $235 and $250, and forty-eight by thirty-six inches, which sold for $280 to $300.
Inexpensive oil paintings were probably the most influential paintings that Benziger sold because they were intended for homes, classrooms, and other loci of daily Catholic life.
In 1879 Benziger first illustrated some of the stations of the cross. Its 1881 catalogue stated that over one hundred churches had purchased its stations. In 1885 Benziger provided more information about the stations, including numerous illustrations. Deschwanden's sets were known for "their exquisite coloring and simple, faith-inspiring delineation, the most popular extant." Führich's stations, "though equally rich in color, are, from their more elaborate groupings, better adapted to the extra large sizes."30 In its later catalogues, Benziger provided an unprecedented number of illustrations of stations of the cross, but unfortunately did not specify the artist. These illustrations were probably meant to show off Benziger's extensive selection of fancy frames for the stations.
Inexpensive oil paintings were probably the most influential paintings that Benziger sold because they were intended for homes, classrooms, and other loci of daily Catholic life. Financially within the reach of most families and probably meant for home use, these paintings usually represented individual saints. Benziger changed this product line more rapidly than any of its other lines. In 1873 inexpensive oils came in two sizes: twenty-four and one-half inches by eighteen and one-half inches, selling for between $2.50 and $3; and thirty and one-half by twenty-four and one-half inches, costing between $5 and $10. By 1879 the oils came in four sizes, ranging from the original twenty-four and one-half by eighteen and one-half-inch size to forty-eight by thirty-six-inch pictures. The larger oils were often biblical, and thus perhaps intended for schools and other institutions. Benziger did not reproduce the inexpensive oils or usually name their artists, except to say that the Crucifixion was by Deschwanden and the Madonna by Schrandolph. The catalogue proudly declared: "These paintings, although wonderfully cheap, are copied after good masters, and executed in such fine coloring as to please everybody who sees them."31
Conclusion
In Visual Piety David Morgan "explores how popular religious images are understood by their admirers to distinguish one's own domain or group from others." In other words, one's choice of an image to revere is as self-revelatory as one's decision to admire abstract art, for example, rather than duck paintings.32 Wealthy and even middle-class collectors and art lovers have used their appreciation of specific kinds of art to assert and bolster their sociocultural status. Why would it have been any different for working-class and newly emerging middle-class Catholics who bought Benziger's sculptures and paintings? The search for status probably drives people at all levels of society. Today low-income and immigrant Americans keenly pursue brand-name goods because advertising has proclaimed them tickets of admission to mainstream society. People identify themselves with chosen groups by the goods they buy and the beliefs they espouse. A BMW or a bottle of Glenfiddich is as self-definitional for today's upwardly mobile Americans as overpriced kneeling angels were for Benziger's customers.
The biggest mystery facing students of religious art such as Benziger's is the role, if any, that aesthetics played in the choices of statues and paintings that people brought into their homes, and how these works influenced their tastes and thinking about art. The Benziger lode is now exposed. Exploiting it intelligently, and applying its lessons to late-nineteenth-century American art, is our next challenge.
This article results from work I began in 1993 as a National Endowment for the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the Winterthur Museum. I thank both NEH and Winterthur for their support. I also thank Louisiana Tech University for a travel grant in 1995 that made additional research possible.
Notes
1. Benziger's church wares were so popular that in 1874 the company issued a circular to warn customers that its catalogue had been "closely copied by another house." See Special Notice, Benziger Brothers, Jan. 1874, American Antiquarian Society. On the growing population of American Catholics at the end of the last century, see New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), s.v. "United States of America."
Benziger's catalogues, except for its 1874 Catalogue of Religious Articles, are all entitled Catalogue of Church Ornaments, Vestments, Material for Vestments, and Regalia (with slight changes in the title over the years), and will be abbreviated as Benziger, year of the catalogue, and page number. Because several of the catalogues do not have page numbers, I assigned my own, which appear in parentheses, for the convenience of future researchers. These catalogues are rare. The only known set resides at the Library of Congress; copies of its 1881 and 1900 catalogues survive in the Winterthur Library.
2. Another mass market consisted of very cheap oil paintings, mostly landscapes, made and sold by frame-and-moldings manufacturers, especially in Chicago. See Saul E. Zalesch, "What the Four Million Bought: Cheap Oil Paintings of the 1880s," American Quarterly 48 (March 1996): 77–109.
3. On Benziger's manufacture of sacred vessels and church furniture and its papal appointments, see The Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), s.v. "Benziger Brothers." The most complete description of Benziger's manufacturing facilities and sales rooms is found in Benziger's 1900 Catalogue of Church Ornaments, pp. 5–16. On Benziger in general, see Karl J. Benziger, Geschichte der Familie Benziger von Einsiedeln, Schweiz (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1923); Marieli Benziger, August Benziger, Portrait Painter (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1958); and The Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), s. v. "Benziger Brothers." In a letter to the author, dated 3 July 1996, James Comisky, Publisher, Benziger Publishing Co., Mission Hills, Calif., noted the sale of Benziger to MacMillan.
4. Benziger, 1879, p. 2.
5. The possibility that purchasers of these works did not think of them as art is irrelevant because most art created before the Renaissance also began as utilitarian objects. Since we view these earlier works as art, Benziger's paintings and sculptures must also be considered art.
6. For more on santos, see Mitchell A. Wilder, Santos: The Religious Folk Art of New Mexico (Colorado Springs: Taylor Museum, 1943; reissued New York: Hacker Art Books, 1976). Recently, interest has focused on the creative reuse of religious symbols. See James R. Curtis, "Miami's Little Havana: Yard Shrines, Cult Religion and Landscape," in Ray B. Browne, ed., Rituals and Ceremonies in Popular Culture (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1980). On the regionalization of sacred imagery, see Helena Waddy Lepovitz, Images of Faith: Expressionism, Catholic Folk Art, and the Industrial Revolution (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991).
7. James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers (1876; reprint, Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books, 1980), pp. 169, 171.
8. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 36.
9. On Catholicism's quarrel with Italy, see Richard M. Linkh, American Catholicism and European Immigrants (1900–1924) (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1975), p. 41.
10. Italian rituals were deemed more superstitious than orthodox because Italian children were thought to be ignorant of basic Catholic doctrine. See Linkh, American Catholicism, pp. 40–44.
11. A minor but striking example of this patriarchy is that the biscuit figurine of Saint Patrick stood eight and one-half inches, while that of Saint Bridget was an inch shorter. See Benziger, 1874, unpaginated (p. 19).
12. Descriptions of the furnishings of new churches reveal altars and chapels dedicated to Saint Joseph. See John Gilmary Shea, ed., The Catholic Church of New York City, 2 vols. (New York: Lawrence G. Goulding, 1878).
13. The Immaculate Conception was officially defined by Pope Pius IX on 8 December 1854. See Albert J. Nevins, ed., Maryknoll Catholic Dictionary (NY: Dimension Books, 1965), p. 286.
14. See Timothy Walch, Catholicism in America: A Social History (Malabar, Fla.: Robert E. Krieger, 1989), pp. 52–53.
15. Benziger, 1874, unpaginated (p. 21).
16. During the 1890s members of the National Sculpture Society, established in 1893, preached the awesome nobility of sculpture so insistently as to again deter middle-class Americans from bringing sculpture into their homes.
17. America was off the gold standard from 1863 to 1879. In Benziger's 1873 catalogue, domestic goods were easily distinguishable from imported goods because it priced all imported merchandise in gold. Items imported from Europe had to be paid for in gold, so Benziger sold them only for gold. In its 1879 catalogue, Benziger no longer differentiated prices according to the national origin of goods.
18. Benziger, 1873, unpaginated (p. 72). The zinc statues seemed intended primarily for cemeteries. New congregations were expected to replace these statues with stone figures as parishioners' improving finances made this both possible and socially desirable.
19. No later pricing information about the Munich statues is available, but these works probably declined in price before being discontinued. Benziger declared in its 1879 catalogue: "The great decline in price of both labor and material, as well as the absence of any gold premium, has enabled us, we are happy to say, to reduce the prices [Benziger's underlining] of both our manufactured and imported goods." See Benziger, 1979, To Our Patrons.
20. Intended more for private than church use, the specialized 1874 catalogue is preserved at the Library of Congress.
21. "Sketchings," The Crayon 2 (17 October 1855): 248–49.
22. Benziger, 1879, pp. 64, 78. Apparently, consumers sought the newest models of goods, even religious wares. Similarly, patrons of the "high art" of the day often valued the work of leading contemporary French and British artists more highly than that of the old masters.
23. Benziger, 1881, p. 71.
24. See Benziger, 1881, p. 71. Information on Froc-Robert is sparse. He is listed in Benezit and Thieme-Becker, but neither dictionary supplies information on him. Several of his commissions are discussed briefly in Légende Dorée du Limousin, Les Saints de La Haute-Vienne (Paris: L'Inventaire, no date), pp. 153–55. At least one catalogue issued by his firm may survive, although I have not seen it. See Cachal-Froc, La Statuaire et Le Mobilier d'Églises (Montrouge, France: Paul Schmidt, 1895). Froc-Robert's enormous success in the United States may have resulted in part from the strong Francophilia of American Catholicism. French educators firmly controlled religious and educational institutions. See Henry Blumenthal, American and French Culture, 1800–1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975), pp. 149–50. Among Froc-Robert's displays in Philadelphia was an Assumption group purchased for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Lebanon, Pa., where it survives today. This piece and numerous other nineteenth-century statues and reliefs are reproduced in Rev. Msgr. George W. Rost, A Century More or Less of the Religious Art Treasures and Furnishings of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church (Lebanon, Pa.: 1980). According to one witness, the Froc-Robert pieces in Lebanon when drenched by a flood showed the characteristics of heavy papier-mâché. John Foster, telephone conversation with author, Lebanon, Pa., spring, 1996.
26. Benziger may have used the same illustration for different product lines. If so, using the catalogue illustrations as primary evidence of its merchandise becomes foolhardy, if not unjustifiable.
28. See Benziger, 1873, unpaginated (p. 70). The two other altarpieces were copied from works by Ellenrieder and Deger.
29. Benziger, 1879, unpaginated (p. 84).
31. Benziger, 1873, unpaginated (p. 71).
32. See David Morgan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) p. 18.
Why people buy abstract art is addressed in chapter four of David Halle's Inside Culture. For the lighter side of this question, see Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1975).