The Medici Conspiracy

by Peter Watson

It was an important moment, psychologically speaking, for Bartoloni and the other experts. Yes, they had seen the photographs taken by the Swiss police. Their quality was excellent and gave the Italian experts a good idea of what to expect. But seeing the objects in the flesh, so to speak, was different, a much more emotional experience for the three distinguished “sacred monsters.”

  The Swiss judge had told Medici that he could be present at the examination, provided that he did not interfere. However, as the experts began to move around inside the warehouse and discuss the objects among themselves, Medici found it hard to keep quiet. Bartoloni gasped when she saw the boxes from a Cerveteri fruit cooperative filled with antiquities wrapped in Italian newspapers. There were other boxes where fragments had been sorted by type and color. “It was like a supermarket in there,” said Bartoloni. “And heartbreaking.”

  Medici wouldn’t keep quiet. At one point, Bartoloni and her colleagues were discussing where certain objects appeared to have come from, waiting for Amorelli Falconi to agree or disagree. Whereupon Medici turned on the judge, “How can my experts know the provenance of something, if I don’t tell them?” He perhaps didn’t realize at first what exactly he was saying.

  The judge insisted that Medici be silent, at which point the dealer went berserk, shouting words to the effect that “You can’t forbid a citizen to reveal the origin of his objects.” He claimed that all his objects in the Freeport had been bought legitimately. This was his idea of provenance. The judge, however, would not be intimidated by Medici and replied coolly, “You are not a citizen of Switzerland.” In other words, Medici did not enjoy all the rights he thought he did.

  The mood remained tense throughout the morning and during the lunch break, Medici decided not to return in the afternoon. From then on, Bartoloni and the others were left to themselves, able to inspect the objects in the Freeport without his constant interference.

  Bartoloni says she touched every single object in Corridor 17. On their initial visit to Geneva, they stayed for three or four days, but they returned several times over the next months. “We worked like slaves and talked very little,” she remembers. It remained an emotional experience for them all. At times, Bartolini says she felt ill, and she was constantly amazed at the quality of the antiquities Medici had. “My indignation grew . . . some pieces were so important, and so beautiful.” She even came across some pieces identical to those she had excavated herself, at Cerveteri in the 1980s. “Where did Medici get these things? We didn’t know about them until the dig I worked on. There was no way they could have left the ground before then.”

  She went on. “I grew up aware of the plague of tombaroli, but even I had never imagined the clandestine trade dealt in such quantity—and quality. From what I could see, Crustumerium was just then being raped, as Cerveteri was raped in the 1970s.” On that first visit, she also noticed a number of fakes, or pastiches. Many genuine objects had fake inscriptions—because they added to the value.

  But their scientific curiosity grew, too. Being so close to the material, seeing its quality, absorbing the sheer scale of the trade, seeing the dirt still attached to so many objects, that first visit to Corridor 17 was overwhelming for Bartoloni, Colonna, and Zevi. Never before had leading archaeologists been in the presence of so many looted antiquities—there was, as Conforti told us, no precedent at all for what was taking place that day in the Geneva Freeport. The Swiss realized it as well as the Italians.

  The Italians also grasped that the Swiss had changed, because they now began to talk about future visits, making it clear that the experts, who would need to examine the objects in great detail, could come and go virtually as they pleased, that Corridor 17 would remain sealed to Medici but not to them.

  The examination of the antiquities in Corridor 17, by professional archaeologists, would form a major element in the case against Medici, but it would also be much more. This was the first time ever that expert archaeologists had been anywhere near looted material in such quantity. As such, it became an exercise not just in law enforcement but in what was in effect a new branch of scholarship. It provided the opportunity for knowledgeable experts to examine illicit material in ways that had never been conceived before, and therefore to produce new insights into this aspect of human activity at a level and on a scale not previously contemplated. The investigations in Corridor 17 broke new ground in every conceivable way, and the results of the investigations carried out there will change the world of antiquities—and antiquities collecting and antiquities trading—for all time.

  5

  FORENSIC ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE FREEPORT

  IN ITALY, WITH ITS HUNDREDS of thousands of archaeological sites and with its history of widespread looting, a new specialty has grown up in tandem with Conforti’s section of the Carabinieri dedicated to combating the illicit traffic. This is the specialty of forensic archaeology. Forensic archaeologists, in addition to their usual activities undertaking legitimate excavations in ancient cultures, also make it their business to keep up to date where possible on clandestine digs and the techniques of tomb robbers, on which areas are being heavily looted and which cultures are being forged, on which cultures and objects are popular with dealers and collectors, on what is passing through the salesrooms and what has been recovered. They work closely with the various prosecutors and art squads around Italy.

  At the most basic level, they are called in when any seizure of looted antiquities is made, however small. It is their task to establish, in the first place, whether the objects that have been seized or recovered are genuine or fake. This is fundamental and clearly affects what charges will be brought.

  The forensic archaeologists are far fewer than the specialist Carabinieri Art Squads, but where they do exist they are attached to the various archaeological superintendencies that excavate and preserve different areas of Italy—Etruria, Campania, Puglia, and so on. From the photographs that were taken in Medici’s warehouse at the first raid, in September 1995, it was clear to the Italians that the material he had in Geneva consisted of many Etruscan objects and that therefore the Art Squad needed the help and advice of Daniela Rizzo, the forensic archaeologist at the Villa Giulia, Rome’s great Etruscan museum, who was well known to the Carabinieri and to the public prosecutor, Paolo Ferri. Besides her other duties, Rizzo was head of the Ufficio Sequestri e Scavi Clandestini, the Office of Clandestine Excavations and Seized Objects, so she was familiar with tombaroli techniques and the damage they can do. Another graduate of La Sapienza, Rizzo—an attractive, lively brunette in her forties—had, in the past, helped Ferri and Conforti in their prosecutions. It was she who, in collaboration with Anna Maria Moretti, at the time the superintendent for southern Etruria, today superintendent for the Lazio region, had helped Ferri to choose the team of specialist archaeologists—Professors Bartoloni, Colonna, and Zevi—who, besides having the requisite academic qualifications, could make the time available to study the objects in Geneva and would if necessary make good witnesses in court when the time came.

  On their first visit to Geneva, the Carabinieri had reserved rooms for the archaeologists at a hotel located between the city’s main railway station and its red-light district. The middle-aged archaeologists found this unsuitable and relocated to a smaller establishment in the more appropriate old town of Geneva. Though they worked like slaves during the day and hardly talked, they spent their evenings at restaurants on the hill of the old town, where the rest of the party were regaled at every meal by learned discussions between Professors Bartoloni and Zevi who, it seemed, disagreed on everything.

  The archaeologists visited the Freeport on six separate occasions, between July 1997 and April 1999, twenty-three days in all. They submitted their final report to Ferri on July 2,1999, almost two years to the day since the Swiss had offered to make the material available. It ran to fifty-eight single-spaced typed pages.

  Dr. Bartoloni and her two colleagues found that there were 3,800 objects in Medici’s warehouse, either i
ntact or in fragments. In addition to the actual objects found in Corridor 17, there was a mass of photographs—more than 4,000—that related to still more antiquities that had already passed through Medici’s hands and had almost certainly been sold to museums and collectors across the world. Taking these photographs into account, the experts examined something like 7,000 objects that Medici had handled.

  This was the first time that reputable academic archaeologists had been able to examine the inventory of an antiquities dealer with so many unprovenanced objects. Academically, scientifically, legally, commercially—and even philosophically—it was a historic occasion, and Professor Bartoloni and her colleagues were anxious not to waste such a precious opportunity.

  Their report was divided as follows. A preface was followed by a classification of “Antiquities Presumably Found in Italy.” Next came a list of antiquities “Presumably Found in Countries other than Italy,” and then a list of pastiches—that is, ancient objects that had been interfered with in some way so as to make them commercially more attractive. The most obvious examples of this were vases where the gaps between the fragments had been filled in by modern restorers or where inscriptions had been added to old vases by modern forgers. Next came a list of objects of “dubious antique production,” that is, the experts could not be completely certain whether these objects were genuinely old or were instead modern fakes. This was followed by a much bigger group of antiquities that the archaeologists described as “modern-made imitations of antique objects”—in other words, out-and-out fakes. Next came a list of objects “not imitating antiques,” a strange group that might take in an inexperienced collector but wouldn’t deceive a professional dealer, curator, or academic archaeologist. The report concluded with a number of technical appendices providing scientific information on all 3,800 objects from the warehouse. It was a massive enterprise.

  By far the largest group of antiquities was described as “Objects of Ancient Origin, from Prehistoric to High Middle Ages” and was itself divided into two: “(1a) Objects which can with certainty or very high probability be said to come from Italian territorial digs,” and “(1b) Objects coming from digs presumably made in countries other than Italy.” Category (1a) was clearly of the most immediate interest to the Italians, but Medici had some exceedingly interesting and significant non-Italian material in his possession.

  But first, the list of objects in category (1a), the material from Italian digs. This category ran to forty-nine pages. No fewer than fifty-eight different types of antiquity were involved, from Iron Age ceramics and bronzes of the Villanovan culture (ninth and eighth centuries BC), to Etruscan, Lazio, and Campanian architectural terra-cottas of the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries BC, to Attic black-figure and red-figure vases of every conceivable shape, to Apulian red-figure ceramics, Teano ceramics, votive terra-cottas of central Italy of the fourth and third centuries BC, Roman architectural elements, Roman wall paintings, Roman era silver, gold, gems, and ivories. Many other categories could be added, more technical but still very important, which mean a lot to archaeologists, museum curators, and experienced collectors—for example, Buccheri, geometric ceramics, owl skyphoi (a skyphos is a deep cup with two handles, usually standing on a low foot), reticulated lekythoi, and transport amphorae.

  The sheer scale and variety of Medici’s inventory was the first point that the experts’ report stressed. They calculated that thousands of tombs must have been desecrated for so many objects—of such variety and quality—to have been sequestered in Geneva. Next came the geographical reach. Still sticking with the Italian antiquities, we are talking here of material from Genoa, Tyrrhenian Italy, central Italy, Vulci, Tarquinia, and Cerveteri, all in the heart of ancient Etruria; north of Rome, Lazio, Campania (the region of Naples), Calabria (the deep south of Italy), Sicily, Puglia, Sardinia, the central Adriatic region, and Taranto. Nowhere in Italy was immune to Medici’s plunder.

  The size and the reach of the looting are not negligible matters. Far from it, they are the very heart of Italy’s attempts to draw attention to its problems in this field. But it was in regard to two other factors that the juxtaposition of Medici’s holdings and the access provided to three experts could really break new ground. These were: to prove beyond all reasonable doubt (1) that this great swath of material really did come illegally from the ground of Italy, and (2) that the illicit trade, contrary to what commercial interests often say, is not inconsequential but does in fact involve very important objects. Medici’s cache represented a unique historical opportunity that in scale may never be replicated.

  The most vivid evidence, leaning against the walls of the warehouse, and in one case lying on the floor, was a number of frescoes, wall paintings in red, green, blue, and gray. Some of the paintings showed women, horses, vases of flowers, architectural features of one kind or another. To Zevi, it was obvious from the style of painting that these frescoes came from Pompeii or Herculaneum, or somewhere similar—but where exactly? It would take them a few weeks to find the answer.

  No less vivid was the fact that in Medici’s warehouse, 300 fragments were found, consisting among other things of architectural roof elements, decorated terra-cotta tiles, and small heads that fitted on the outside of buildings, all of which were discovered—still dirty with earth—roughly packed in Italian newspapers dating to between December 1993 and October 1994. Furthermore, they were kept together in a large wooden crate and in some red-and-gray plastic boxes, bearing the writing, “ORTO FR. CERVETERI,” which stands for “Orto Frutticola Cerveteri,” a well-known fruit and vegetable cooperative, from the town of Cerveteri, north of Rome, near the coast.

  No less incriminating—when you think about it—was the fact that so many of the photographs in Medici’s warehouse, showing archaeological objects, often with dirt on them, were taken using a Polaroid camera, in particular the popular SX-70 model (two Polaroid cameras were seized, plus a regular camera). Polaroid photography was not invented until 1948, nine years after the relevant Italian law restricting the export of antiquities came into force, and the SX-70 was not introduced until much later, in October 1972 in the United States and in Europe later still. By definition, therefore, Polaroid photographs of dirty, unprovenanced antiquities are themselves evidence of a kind that these objects left the ground illegally. Furthermore, the state of many antiquities as shown in the Polaroids is such that, as any reputable and experienced archaeologist could confirm, these objects were obviously not excavated scientifically or professionally. Objects excavated professionally (and legally) have a very different appearance; they are photographed in situ, showing their context, with a measuring tool to indicate size, and are properly dated.

  The professional analysis that Professors Bartoloni, Colonna, and Zevi brought to Medici’s objects was detailed and cumulatively devastating, remorselessly linking specific objects to specific localities inside Italy, artifacts found in Geneva twinned with those known either from legal excavations at a specific tomb or villa, or from seizures of illicit material in the recent past, as part of Carabinieri undercover “sting” operations.

  Only with such a huge find were such telling comparisons possible. For example, among the objects seized in the Geneva Freeport was an Iron Age fibula of the ninth century BC. The fibula is aptly described as the “grandmother” of the safety pin, but its use was rather more dramatic in antiquity, being employed to hold together the drapes in clothing. It became a decorative object in its own right and often identified the social and economic status of the wearer. Part of this particular fibula was made from a twisted gold thread, which is very rare. The experts pointed out that this fibula was very similar to one legally found in Tarquinia in the necropolis of Poggio dell’Impiccato, which dates from the second half of the ninth century BC. Another fibula, decorated with a feline figure, was very similar to one found in the Tomb of the Warrior at Tarquinia. In hundreds of cases the experts were able to make specific matches (see the Dossier at the end of the book for
a fuller list).

  In another example, thirty-two miniature cups and twenty miniature olle (wine pitchers with fat handles) were “very similar” to a series of miniature vases (especially olle) found on an official dig at Bandinella, Canino, in 1992, after the discovery of an illegal dig.

  In yet another example, five kantharoi (wide drinking vessels with high handles, like big ears) and three amphorae had what are known as “cusped handles.” This is a highly unusual (and therefore valuable) design, in which the handles are embossed with small cones in a row. According to the experts, these “can be easily recognised as coming from Crustumerium,” where cups and amphorae “became famously cusped.” But more than that, they observe that Francesco di Gennaro, inspector of the Archaeological Superintendency for Rome, has reported widespread illegal digging in the Marcigliana or Monte del Bufalo area, where the necropolis of Crustumerium is located. In other words, the material in Medici’s warehouse and the illegal digging reported by di Gennaro are an exact match. This plunder is heartbreaking in that the Crustumerium necropolis has proved very important in providing knowledge about Etruscan funereal customs and the development of architectural styles, and for the study of production techniques for vases. Yet its largest sepulchre complex, southeast of Monte del Bufalo, has suffered clandestine digging on such a scale that the experts calculate thathalf the overall number of burials have been plundered. . . . The overall number of the plundered sepulchral monuments . . . is now evaluated at not less than one thousand; there is carpet-destruction and plundering of the burials.... Archaeological material of unquestionable Crustumerium provenance has recently been seized (for example, in Monte Rotondo near Rome, photographs of objects for sale were circulated in Cerveteri and Ladispoli) but are also exhibited for sale on the American antiquities market where a large quantity of Crustumerium objects is on show in antiquarians’ shops in Manhattan . . . .