Theodore Gehlen

Theodore Gehlen was the man who put Cesnola's broken Cypriot statues back together, and in 1883 he told a New York court how. Marangou calls him a German cabinetmaker expert in mending old furniture¹. In his own testimony he described himself as a wood-carver who in his native Westphalia had studied Greek, Roman and Assyrian art as a draughtsman and exhibited carvings². The Art Amateur prints his name as "Feodor Gehlen", Marangou's text as "Theodore"^1,2.

He worked for the Metropolitan Museum's authorities for six months at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-third Street and for two years at Fourteenth Street, and said Russell Sturgis had introduced him to Luigi Palma di Cesnola². Called as a witness for Felix-Bienaime Feuardent, he testified that Cesnola designated which fragments were to be joined. He sawed, joined and filled them with plaster of Paris, made parts of heads, hair, ears, noses, limbs and drapery in plaster, and shaped some noses "according to his own ideas". He said he built a leg of four stone pieces for the one-legged Hercules, gave the "bearded Venus" a dove with a wooden wing and tail under plaster, and turned a stone face into a female head. Plaster was used, he said, because it was easier and Cesnola was in a hurry to have the figures ready for the opening². Cesnola's letters to Hutchins from Cyprus, read in court, called his work "in every way excellent and satisfactory"².

At the end of the trial Cesnola told the jurors that Sturgis was mainly responsible for Gehlen's repairs; Sturgis wrote from Florence that this was wholly untrue³. Charles Balliard later replaced Gehlen's leg and sandals on the Hercules at Central Park². Nothing is recorded of Gehlen's life after the trial.