Frank Owen Salisbury

(1874 - 1962)

oil on hardboard, signed, titled on the reverse, framed

from 51x38.5 cm to 51x38.5 cm (2)

Myron Charles Taylor, lawyer, financier and politician, in 1938 was the representative of the United States of America in the Evian conference on political refugees, which he chaired and in the international committee, of which he was vice-president from 1939 to 1944, and had in in this capacity frequent contacts with the Vatican. On 22 December 1939 he was appointed personal representative of the president, with the rank of extraordinary ambassador to Pius XII. Taylor was to serve as an intermediary between Roosevelt and Pius XII for any exchange of communications. After the war, Truman continued to send Taylor to Rome, for brief visits and with the mission of conferring with the Pope about means of establishing peace and alleviating human suffering. In 1927 he purchased Villa Schifanoia in Florence, a historic seventeenth-century villa in San Domenico, on the slopes of Fiesole, to house his art collections. Upon his death in 1959, he left the villa to the Vatican. His story is illustrated in C. Ewan Stewart's recent essay, Myron Taylor. The Man Nobody Knew: 2023.