The piece, which was removed from St. Stephen's sanctuary earlier this year, went on display last week at a New York gallery and will be there through Dec. 17 as part of a 60-piece show of American sculptures.
In February, after it had been removed, St. Stephen's pastor, the Rev. Charles Flood, said he had taken the piece down for cleaning and that it might be sold.

Flood, who would not comment yesterday, said then that proceeds from any sale would go into the church's endowment.

"It is a treasure, and to rip it off a wall and sell it is beyond belief," said Roger Moss, director of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia and author of Historic Sacred Places of Philadelphia.

The neo-Gothic St. Stephen's, on 10th Street below Market, is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a certified local landmark, but neither the government nor the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania restricts what it and other historic churches may do with their holdings of fine and decorative arts.

Parties to the sales talks declined to divulge the current asking price, but one said the piece had been offered to the Philadelphia museum for more than $2 million.

Art Museum officials were "keen on having it," said Alice Duncan, director of sculpture for the Gerald Peters Gallery in Manhattan, who added she had been in protracted talks with the Philadelphia museum.

Duncan praised St. Stephen's for not auctioning the piece but "designating it to a private institution," which she called "a much more controlled, careful way of placing a masterpiece." This was the first time we've had that "liberty," she said.

The sculpture was offered to the museum at "a serious discount," Duncan said. But after nine months elapsed with no deal, she said, "we raised it to the real-market value. They had their chance."
Museum director Anne d'Harnoncourt said the discounted price "was extremely substantial for us. I don't mean for the object but for us, because we, for our size, have very modest purchase funds.

"We would love, love to keep the sculpture in Philadelphia," d'Harnoncourt said. Though the museum approached benefactors to raise funds specially for the deal, she said, "we were not close [to reaching the total]. It makes me sad, but we have not lost hope."
Philadelphia has two other Saint-Gaudens masterpieces on public display, the 13-foot-tall goddess Diana that presides over the Great Stair Hall in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Pilgrim, on Kelly Drive across from Boathouse Row.

St. Stephen's is a "jewel box" of art, including Tiffany windows and furnishings, said Robert Jaeger, director of Partners for Sacred Places, a preservation advocacy group based in Philadelphia. But the 8-foot Saint-Gaudens was its pinnacle, "one of the finest works of art I've seen in any of our church interiors."

Preservationists and others had mild praise for the goal of placing it in the Art Museum, and keeping it in Philadelphia.

"Inasmuch as, right now, the work of art is seldom seen by large numbers of people, it would be an advantage to those who care about culture to place it in a more accessible venue," said Bishop Charles Bennison, head of the Diocese of Pennsylvania.

Bennison said Flood told him yesterday that St. Stephen's was not driven to act by the financial straits that beset many other aging urban churches.

The parish "is doing well financially, so it does not need this money," he said. "But if from the sale it could considerably increase its endowment, it could do more in the city and maintain the rest of its artwork which is not able to be sold, which includes the [Tiffany] windows... . His intention is to protect those windows."

To read a previous story about the artwork at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church and other churches, go to: http://go.philly.com/churchart.