Robert Edsel, author and founder and president, Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art.

In August 1943, on the eve of the Allied invasion of Italy, Allied bombs threatened Michelangelo's David and nearly destroyed Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. In this lecture, recorded on May 19, 2013 at the National Gallery of Art, best-selling author of The Monuments Men Robert M. Edsel tells the blockbuster story of the race to save the world's greatest masterpieces. Edsel's new book, Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis, follows Monuments officers as they search for the location of billions of dollars of missing artwork taken from the great museums in Florence and Naples.