Brooklyn bishop to sell 17th-century paintings to benefit schools

Published: 2005-05-03

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn has announced plans to sell four 17th-century paintings from his residence and put the proceeds in an endowment fund to support diocesan schools. The paintings, given to the diocese by Brooklyn Bishop Thomas E. Molloy, who died in 1956, are scheduled to be auctioned by the prominent art sales firm Christie's May 25 at Rockefeller Center in New York. In a telephone interview April 29, Bishop DiMarzio said he wants to increase the school endowment and find a more appropriate place for the paintings. "They are museum-quality pieces, and I don't want to live in a museum," he told Catholic News Service. The bishop said they should be in an institution that could care for them properly and enable many more people to see them. The most important of the four is one by the noted Spanish painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo titled "St. Augustine in Ecstasy," which Christie's estimates will bring $l.5 million to $2.5 million.

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