by Peter Watson
The experts were thus able to use the cusped handles of the vases seized in Geneva to link Medici to some of the worst plundering of recent times.
Then there were 153 Etrusco-Corinthian aryballoi and alabastra. This number of objects, the experts say, can only have come “from the plundering of about 20–30 room-tombs of southern Etruria.” And in this particular case the evidence for recent plunder was vivid. One of the small vases still had the remains of a dirt-encrusted iron nail with which it was attached to a wall of the room.
Other aspects of the experts’ great learning were applied to the methods of manufacture. For example, Bucchero ceramics are a form of vessel invented by the Etruscans and are black inside and out. They are made by firing in an oven with no oxygen. “As is known,” wrote the experts, “they were the ‘national’ ceramic of the Etruscans,” being continually produced throughout Etruria and Campania from the mid-seventh to the beginning of the fifth century BC, with an early start in Caere around 675 BC. Bucchero have been widely studied, and the minute differences in the mineral composition of the clay have been associated with different specific sites. In Geneva, Medici had 118 intact vases. “With the knowledge we have today, the vast majority of the vases can be judged as coming from the ‘botteghe’ [workshops], active between 675 and 575 BC, of Caere or its cultural area.”
The three scholars employed a different type of evidence in the case of ceramics produced in mainland Greece. As their report makes clear, the Greek colonies of southern Italy and Sicily, together with Etruscan cities, were primary commercial destinations for vases made in Greece—in Athens, Sparta, Euboea, and Corinth. Amphorae and perfume flacons in particular were traded. However, Etruria was obviously a special area for some reason, because only in Etruria “have objects of exceptional quality been found.” Scholars believe that these exceptional objects were sent as examples, as “commercial propaganda,” to show what various “botteghe” were capable of, to encourage international trade. For example, it is known that certain shapes of vase were produced in Greece but solely for export to Italy or Sicily. The so-called Nolane vases are a case in point: They have an Attic shape, but their most important excavation sites have been at Nola, northeast of Naples; Gela, a city founded in the eighth century BC on the southern coast of Sicily by ancient Greek colonists; Capua, situated north of Naples; and Vulci. In fact, statistical studies have shown that out of more than 800 objects known, only one has ever been found in Greece itself. As the experts conclude, “One can without doubt say that the material of the Medici seizure includes an almost complete exemplification of the above-mentioned workshops.”
In addition, there was in the Medici warehouse at the Freeport another kind of evidence that the experts’ scholarship was able to expose: Even on vases of a type that could have come from Greece, some had “hallmarks.” These were inscriptions scratched on the vases after their arrival at their destination, for some as yet unknown commercial reason. The scholars referred in their report to a seminal study by Alan W. Johnston, Trademarks on Greek Vases (1979), which examined 3,500 vases of this type and concluded, “[U]p till now no vase found in continental Greece . . . bears hallmarks of this kind,” which are “basically limited to vases travelling toward the west . . . Etruria, Campania or Sicily.” Moreover, the hallmarks are scratched exclusively in the Etruscan alphabet. Some of these vases were those found wrapped in Italian newspapers.
Yet more support for an Italian provenance comes from the fact that many of these vases were intact. This all-important detail may not mean much to most of us, but to archaeologists and Etruscologists the fact that the vases were not broken is almost certainly due to the circumstance that in the Etruscan necropolises there were entities known as room tombs, which didn’t exist in ancient Greece. Almost all vases that have been found intact on legitimate digs have been found in room tombs.
Not unnaturally, in view of the events described in the Prologue concerning the vase by Euphronios, the experts devoted no little attention to objects by famous artists that were found on Medici’s premises in Geneva. In particular, they concentrated on Exekias and Euphronios.
As Bartoloni and her colleagues point out, J. D. Beazley, in his 1956 publication, Attic Black-Figure Vase Painters—still today a reference book for black-figure ceramics—identified sixteen vases by Exekias for which the provenance was known and another six for which the provenance was not known. According to Beazley, thirteen of the vases whose provenance was known came from Etruria—five from Vulci, five from Orvieto, one each from other places in Italy—whereas only three came from other countries (two from Athens, one from France). In the case of Euphronios, in a similar publication drawn up in 1963, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, also by Beazley, there were thirteen vases for which the provenance was known and nine for which it was not known. For those vases of known provenance, nine came from Etruria (two from Cerveteri, two from Vulci, one each from other places), three from Greece, and one from Olbia on the Black Sea.
The experts then added that, in the case of Euphronios, there was an exhibition held in 1990–1991, in Arezzo, Paris, and Berlin, in which eighteen vases, or fragments of vases, not known to Beazley, had come to light (this is not counting the Euphronios vase at the Metropolitan Museum in New York). Not one of these new vases, or fragments, had any provenance at all. Of these eighteen, eleven were in American collections or museums, five in Switzerland, and two in Germany. As the experts drily remark, “Paradoxically, objects which are part of old collections yield far more scientific data than objects of recent purchase.”
The role of J. D. Beazley was important in another way, too. His prestige and eye were such that, after he produced his books, even people with unprovenanced vases sought him out, because an attribution by Beazley was commercially valuable. At the back of subsequent editions of his book, therefore, Beazley illustrated these unprovenanced vases and gave them attributions. As the experts point out, the fact that Medici had in his possession vases that fall under the aegis of Beazley’s publications but are not in it invites the conclusion that they were excavated subsequent to the appearance of Beazley’s books—books that were published well after Italy’s anti-looting and anti-smuggling laws came into effect.
This by no means completes the evidence amassed by the three experts. Their lengthy report contained many other cases in which they could, for example, recognize the hand of a particular painter or the style of a particular bottega, or workshop, whose work is known only from sites in Italy, and there were plenty of other cases where graffiti in the Etruscan alphabet had been scratched on to the vases. The evidence that the vast bulk of Medici’s material came illicitly out of Italy was as varied as it was overwhelming.
“Medici had so many important things,” says Professor Bartoloni, with a mixture of sadness and anger. “In any archaeologist’s career, he or she can hope to come across, perhaps, one or two important tombs. There was material in Geneva from at least fifty important tombs. To know that Medici had been distributing all this material around the world . . . it was heartbreaking.”
It is often said by those who oppose any restrictions on the trade in unprovenanced antiquities that the bulk of the material on the market is relatively unimportant and that therefore the world need not be too concerned, because the loss to knowledge from this international, illicit traffic is, in effect, incidental, inconsequential. There will be many opportunities to address—and to contradict—this point throughout the rest of the book, but here we confine ourselves to three preliminary observations. The first has already been alluded to in making mention of a number of published reports about the trading patterns of ancient Greece—for example, Alan Johnston’s study of the export patterns of vases with and without “hallmarks.” This report provides a great deal of information about trading patterns in antiquity, about economic activity in both the country of origin and the country of reception, and of the relations between the two. It also throws light on matters of taste—that is, wh
ich artists and designs were popular where. Then there was the case of the Nolane vases, Greek amphorae made exclusively in Greece for export to Etruria, a survey of 800 of which, in 1991, showed that only one specimen has ever been found in Greece. Medici had several. Think how our understanding would be changed if any of these did not come from Italy. “Ordinary” vases—the “poorly drawn and average,” to repeat Dietrich von Bothmer’s phrase—can still tell us a great deal about history.
Second, there is the fact that the sheer scale of plunder of “ordinary” material has very serious consequences. One small bronze dagger among the Medici material dated from the fifteenth century BC. This period was characterized by the deposition of arms in water or near the summit of high places. But the meaning of these cult places is still obscure: Who can say if the exact location where this particular dagger was found might not have told archaeologists a great deal about this mysterious cult? Again, a small bronze boat, of slightly later date and seized in Geneva, was of a type always associated with Sardinian clan chiefs. This was likely to have been found with other belongings of the clan chief, all of which are lost. Medici also had five couplings from horses’ bits: This means a chariot would have been part of the excavation, much more interesting and much more valuable (a bronze chariot was found on an authorized dig in Vulci). A number of eighth-century BC axes were found together. These, in all probability, were not found in a tomb but had been buried in accordance with a cultish ritual. Who knows how interesting and important the cult was, or what the ritual consisted of and meant? This potential knowledge has all been lost. The same argument also applies to six semicircular razors found among the Medici material. The kantharoi with cusped handles, which fit with material from known illegal digs in the Monte del Bufalo area in Crustumerium, are the fruit of an illicit network that has, over the years, plundered more than 1,000 tombs. How can anyone say that the plundering of 1,000 tombs does no damage to our knowledge?
Also among the Medici material were 153 Etrusco-Corinthian balm containers, the fruit, say the experts, of the plundering of about twenty to thirty room tombs of southern Etruria. Such looting must have uncovered much other important material—all missing. By the same token, the 118 intact Bucchero vases also indicate the looting of many room tombs, all coming from one “bottega,” about which, in all probability, we shall now never know anything. A number of geometric ceramics found in Medici’s warehouse, though not everyone’s favorite—as they are rather plain—have nonetheless been of great scientific interest over the last thirty years, because of the light they may throw on the early Greek colonization of Italy and the possibility of pre-colonial frequenting, by the Greeks, of the Tyrrhenian and Sicilian coasts, while they suggest at the same time the possible early settlement of Greek artisans transplanted into Italy. The exact excavation locations and the accurate dating this permits are thus of crucial importance. Once again, “ordinary” objects are very important.
But it is also true that much of the Medici material wasn’t “ordinary” at all. On the contrary, as the experts went through the objects in the Freeport, and as their report makes clear, they found much of it “important,” “noteworthy,” “unique,” “rare,” and “magnificent.” As well as vases by Euphronios and Exekias and the Villanovan fibula with a twisted gold thread, there was a rare Etruscan bacellata (bas relief), of particular interest because it had a double inscription of ownership on both the interior and exterior of the base, giving both the first and last name, and this was very unusual. There was a very rare and important triple-handled bronze cauldron of the kind found in the antechamber of the Regolini Galassi tomb at Cerveteri and a tubular askos (a smaller vase, perhaps three inches long, used for oils or perfume and often fashioned in the shape of an animal) in laminated bronze decorated with small chains, only found elsewhere in the rich tomb of the Bronze Chariot at Vulci. There was a rare pilgrim’s ceramic flask, of the kind that comes from Veio, two magnificent amphorae attributed to the Painter of the Cranes, active in Caere during the second quarter of the seventh century BC, plus a rare askos by the same artist. A red-and-white painted biconic vase from Cerveteri was equally impressive, together with a rare oinochoe with a frieze of ibexes attributable to the Swallows Painter, who was active in Vulci. Another Vulci figure was by the Feoli Painter, and Medici had a polychrome oinochoe by him—of which only one other example is known, say the experts. A large alabastron from Tarquinia was in a style similar to that of the so-called Three-Heads Wolf Painter but sufficiently different that this must have been by someone else, an unknown painter, possibly a pupil. There were also two large Etruscanized Campanian amphorae from a very rare bottega. Buccheri decorated with “fan” graffiti were unique so far as the experts were concerned, and there were many Cerveteri vases, goblets, ladles, and female-caryatid stands that were sufficiently rare or valuable as to be singled out—seventy-five in all. The same argument applied to the Etruscan archaic period bronze objects in Medici’s possession and the seven pairs of rare Etruscan gold earrings and two house-shaped funeral stelae from Cerveteri “of which there is nothing similar known.” Other rare items included a late proto-Corinthian figured vase shaped like an owl, a single-handled Laconian pitcher, and a krater with stirrup handles with meander decorations. One goblet by the entourage of the painter Naukratis and in the manner of the Painter of the Hunt was similar to only one other known, which appeared on the Swiss antiquities market in the late 1980s and disappeared. Various lekythoi were rare or noteworthy, as was a red-figure hydria (a water-storage vase), “the only known work in this technique by the Rycroft painter.”
Medici’s material was, therefore, as notable for its important objects as for its sheer size and variety. Not even these examples do full justice to the most significant artifacts he brought out of Italy—all of it looted.
That the experts found it relatively easy to link so many objects to specific cultures, necropolises, workshops, painters, and even individual tombs may seem odd until one realizes how unique this exercise was. Normally, archaeologists are able to examine only the photographs of objects in the catalog ahead of an auction; or via a brief examination on viewing days, when several or many others are doing the same, jostling for elbow room; or when an object is already on display in the museum or collection where it ends up. One might ask whether the fact that the photographs in auction house catalogs never show, for instance, the Etruscan “hallmarks” on many objects means that the salesrooms are complicit to this extent.
The experts’ report clearly demonstrates that the vast majority of Medici’s material, excavated by tomb raiders and fed to him by regional middlemen, comes illegally from Italy. By one route or another, it had reached the Freeport in Geneva, Switzerland. In this one warehouse there was enough to satisfy the international antiquities market for two years. The question its discovery inevitably raised was this: Where—until this discovery took place—was Giacomo Medici’s treasure headed next?
6
THE PAPER TRAIL , THE POLAROIDS, AND THE “CORDATA”
ALTHOUGH THE ANTIQUITIES themselves formed the most vivid and moving aspect of the seizure in Geneva, there was no less interest—for Conforti and for Ferri—in the documentation found in the back office behind Medici’s showroom. While the three archaeologists concentrated on the objects, the paperwork became the responsibility of Maurizio Pellegrini, a photographic and document expert who had one foot in the public prosecutor’s office and the other in the Villa Giulia. Pellegrini was not an officially trained archaeologist, but he had a great deal of knowledge in that field and his examination of the documentation was an exercise in detective work that was no less complex than the archaeologists’ daunting task.
Of medium build, with wavy salt-and-pepper hair, spectacles, and a slightly academic temperament, Pellegrini was, on the surface, a gentle, reserved soft-spoken man, but he proved to be tenacious and strongwilled. He revealed the type of obsessive personality that provides the exacting attention to detail
required to trace the hidden links among letters, invoices, and photographs, which did so much to reveal the clever subterfuges in Medici’s business and in his relationships with others. On their trips to Geneva, Pellegrini worked shoulder to shoulder with Bartoloni, Colonna, and Zevi. He shared dinners with them and mainly listened in as Bartoloni and Zevi aired their academic disagreements.
The size of the task facing Pellegrini may be gauged from the fact that there were in Medici’s warehouse thirty albums of Polaroids, fifteen envelopes with photographs, and twelve envelopes with rolls of film. Besides the albums of photographs, Pellegrini calculated that some 100 full rolls of exposed film were seized, making a total of 3,600 images. In addition there was enough paper to fill 173 faldoni, white legal binders, each about six inches thick and tied with white laces. In all, there were close to 35,000 sheets of paper.
His job was not made any easier by the fact that, to begin with at least, he could only consult the documents in Switzerland. He wasn’t allowed to photocopy anything, so he was confined to taking notes and using his memory for matters that were of special interest to him. Then, when he returned to Rome, he would cross town and compare his notes with, for example, exhibition catalogs in museum libraries, or in auction catalogs at Sotheby’s. It was arduous, but after he began to make progress and understand more fully Medici’s business arrangements, he initiated through Ferri a formal request for some of the documentation from the Swiss authorities. This request was granted, and toward the end of 1998, he made a special trip, on his own, to photocopy what he needed.
Just as the three archaeologists had been in an historically unprecedented situation in their examination of the objects under seizure at the Geneva Freeport, so Pellegrini was also in a unique position, for in addition to the documentation seized from Medici, he also had access to the documentation from James Hodges and official Sotheby’s records, both of which showed who bought and sold what at a number of Sotheby’s sales in London. Pellegrini furthermore had access to scientific publications and to the public prosecutor’s files for other ongoing cases in Italy. He therefore had an unrivaled vantage point from which to view the interconnections of the antiquities underworld in an unvarnished way.