The Medici Conspiracy

by Peter Watson

  Among the documents that Pellegrini highlighted early on was a set of papers that had been drawn up in March 1986 by the legal firm of Piguet in Geneva as part of the court case between Medici and Christian Boursaud, when the two were contesting ownership of the Hydra Gallery. Among the documents listing the objects said to form part of the inventory of Hydra were a number concerning a bronze tripod. Pellegrini recognized this tripod: It was one that had once formed part of the Guglielmi Collection but had been stolen, together with a bronze candelabrum.

  The Guglielmi is one of the most distinguished collections of antiquities ever formed. It was put together in the nineteenth century by the marquises of Guglielmi of Vulci from the fruit of excavations carried out at Sant’Agostino and Camposcala, which were part of the ancient city of Vulci. The collection was displayed at the Palazzo Guglielmi in Civitavecchia until the beginning of the twentieth century, when it was divided into two parts, between the brothers Giulio and Giacinto. The part belonging to Marquis Giulio, inherited by his son, was donated to the Vatican in 1937 and since then has been exhibited in the Gregorian Etruscan Museum. The other part, equally important, remained in the Guglielmi family until 1987, when it was purchased by the Vatican Museums, to be reunited with the other half. The collection consists of 800 objects and is especially strong in bronzes and Etruscan and Greek ceramics. Collections don’t come much more important than the Guglielmi.

  Concerning the tripod and candelabrum, the Medici-Getty papers showed that an Etruscan tripod, fifth century BC, and “an Etruscan candelabrum,” also fifth century BC, had been sent to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles on May 25, 1987. The papers further disclosed that the objects had been sent via TWA and Mat Securitas of Geneva, a company that collected the rents at the Freeport and handled shipments for Medici’s other company, Editions Services. However, in this case, the name on the accompanying documentation—all of which was found in Medici’s offices in the Geneva Freeport—showed that the tripod and candelabrum were, purportedly at least, the property of F. (Fritz) Bürki & Son and that they had been sent to the Getty on the basis that they were a “loan possible purchase.” According to a typed invoice signed by Bürki on May 20, 1987, the price attached to these objects was $130,000. Soon after, on June 2, a Getty Museum receipt was issued. This too was made out to “F. Bürki” for the receipt of the two objects, a bronze tripod and candelabrum. Again, this paperwork was sent to Geneva, to Medici, via Mat Securitas (Bürki lives in Zurich).

  This was fairly transparent, but at that point, for some reason, Marion True, curator of antiquities at the Getty, wrote two letters to Medici, to two separate addresses in Geneva, one letter in Italian, the other in English. On June 10, she wrote to him, care of Mat Securitas, at the Route des Jeunes address. She began “Caro Sig. Giacomo” (Dear Mr. Giacomo), an unusual form of address in Italian. “The bronze tripod and candelabrum have arrived at the Museum. I hope to be able to purchase them within the next year; we shall keep you informed regarding the date of the presentation.” It was signed, “Cordialissimi saluti,” which indicates an excellent personal relationship. Two weeks later, on June 26, she sent Medici another letter, this time written in English and beginning, “Dear Giacomo.” At the end of this letter, sent to the Rue de l’Evéché, she wrote: “The tripod and candelabrum have arrived from Bürki, and they are quite beautiful. Slowly, we will work on John [Walsh, director of the museum] and try to persuade him to change his mind. With all best wishes to you and your son.” In other words, in the less formal letter, she admits that the tripod and candelabrum came in from Bürki. Remember, we are talking here of stolen objects, stolen from a distinguished collection, part of which was already in the Vatican, with the other part about to join it.

  The next move occurred when the Getty Museum wrote to Bürki, asking him to sign two loan agreements for the bronze objects, official documentation for the museum’s files. Bürki did indeed sign these documents and returned them.

  And so, as far as the written record was concerned, to begin with at least, these bronze objects had been sent to the Getty by Fritz Bürki. Unofficially, however, the curator concerned—Marion True—knew that they came from Medici.

  But was this level of triangulation enough? Perhaps not, because the documentation also shows that some time later, Bürki’s name on the shipping sheet was crossed out and instead, written next to it, in longhand, were the words “Atlantis Antiquities—Attn: J[onathan]. Rosen.” According to the public prosecutor’s report, “This [was] because of a letter which F. [ritz] Bürki sent to [the] P. Getty Museum, in which he declares that the objects belong to Atlantis Antiquities.” From then on the annual update loan files were not signed by Bürki, but by Rosen, as president of Atlantis. When the letters were sent out from the Getty they were addressed to Andrea Hecht, daughter of Robert Hecht, who, with Rosen, was the proprietor of Atlantis.

  What was going on? All became clear in February 1988 when the Getty asked Jonathan Rosen, at Atlantis, for permission to restore the objects. This was granted the same day in a fax signed by Andrea Hecht. Almost two years later, on January 17, 1990, the Getty informed Rosen of the museum’s decision to purchase the tripod and candelabrum, for $80,000 and $65,000, respectively. Marion True’s maneuvers had finally triumphed. But this necessitated an invoice, in which it was stated that the tripod’s country of origin was Italy, that it had been bought from a Swiss antiquities dealer in Geneva in 1985 and legally exported “from its country of origin.” Thus, Bürki’s role now was to be the place where the tripod and candelabrum had first been seen, should anyone ask. Having two people between Medici and the Getty was judged safer.

  Eventually, having been bought and restored, the tripod (but not the candelabrum) went on display and was published in the museum’s acquisitions bulletin. Whereupon there was an immediate outcry in Italy, Conforti stepped in, and an archaeologist from the superintendency was dispatched to Los Angeles to inspect the tripod. It was established that the object had indeed been stolen from the Guglielmi Collection and, after a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing, the object was returned to Italy on November 21, 1996. It is interesting that in the wake of the fuss, Marion True was interviewed by Richard E. Robinson, assistant U.S. attorney, and during the course of their conversation, she said that she had first seen the object in Switzerland and that it was owned by Bürki, or Hecht, who had acquired it from Mario Bruno, a dealer in Lugano who had since died. There is no mention of Medici. On the face of it, this seems to be contradicted by her letters of June 10 and 26, 1987, in which she reassured Medici that the tripod and candelabrum had arrived safely at the museum.

  The matter has only recently been resolved. The documentation made it clear that a fifth-century BC bronze Etruscan thymiaterion (candelabrum or incense burner) was sent to the Getty at the same time as the tripod, and acquired in exactly the same way. But it was never displayed by the Getty. Is there a reason only one of these objects was ever displayed? The Getty and Marion True may well not have been aware that the tripod and candelabrum were stolen but instead thought they had been illegally excavated and smuggled out of Italy—like so much else that they handled. Was it safer, more prudent, to put these objects on display one at a time, just in case? In fact, in November 2005, the Getty finally returned the candelabrum to Italy.

  The tripod episode was fairly clear-cut, because the object had been stolen. But more instructive for showing the extent of the clandestine trade in looted objects was a whole series of photographs that were seized at the Freeport and that Pellegrini, despite having to work in Geneva, away from home and the resources of the Villa Giulia library, managed to match up with objects in the Getty.

  In all that follows, the evidence unearthed by Pellegrini has a consistency that he never expected to find. All the photographs, including Medici’s Polaroids, were arranged according to type, date, and location where the objects they depicted had been sold. They were not just a rough assortment but were kept in order. Medici’s name ne
ver appears in the official Getty records concerning the acquisition of objects, though he kept plenty of the correspondence addressed to him, written on the museum’s headed notepaper. And this is the point: Medici, it turned out, was a methodical man who took a misplaced pride in what he did.

  In each of forty-two specific instances, Pellegrini found three sets of photographs in Medici’s albums that were seized in Geneva. In the first set, the objects were shown, photographed by Polaroid, as they had left the ground. The objects were in pieces, in fragments, with soil and other encrustations adhered to them, and sometimes they were shown lying on Italian newspapers. In the second set of photographs—sometimes Polaroids, sometimes regular photographs (prints or negatives)—the objects were shown in various stages of restoration. The fragments were shown having been put together. Usually this was a preliminary restoration, in that the fragments were reassembled, and lightly glued, so that the vase took shape but the arrangement of fragments was still visible, the joins clearly indicated, and in several instances some fragments still missing, leaving gaps. In some ways, the third set of photographs was the most extraordinary of all, and very revealing, not just about the whole process but about Medici the man. In most cases, Pellegrini found photographs of the objects—vases, sculptures, other items—in the Getty acquisition catalogs. This completed the sequence from the ground of Italy, to Switzerland, sometimes to an auction house or a dealer’s catalog, then finally to the museum itself. However—and this was the most vivid evidence of all, the most grotesque illustration of Medici’s misplaced pride—there was also a fourth set of photographs, a small number of images in which Medici himself was shown alongside the totally restored antiquities, on display in this or that museum around the world. It was a form of pride or vanity that Medici wanted to be photographed with “his” objects at the end of their journey, as if this vindicated what he did, showing that he was the true “father” of these pieces that, having been found in the ground of Italy, were now on view all over the world in distinguished museum settings.

  But, at the same time, Medici’s pride or vanity gave the game away. The photographs, and the order in which they were kept, were by far the most psychologically convincing evidence that, by whichever route these objects reached the museums of the world, they had started out with Medici. The documentation showed that antiquities reached the museums via several roundabout routes, but the photographs proved that, in every case, Medici was the beginning of the chain. In all that follows, the reader should remember that a photographic paper trail exists for many objects that Medici handled and that ended up in museums or notable collections. It is as simple and as damning as that.

  The first object of interest was a red-figure Attic neck amphora with triple handles and decorated with athletes. On one side was shown a discobolus (a discus thrower), and on the other side a spear thrower. The Getty’s acquisition notes record that the discus thrower was in fact a famous athlete from classical Greece named Phaulos. The vase had been bought by the Getty in 1984, its manufacture was dated to circa 505 BC, and it was attributed to the Euthymides Painter. Euthymides, as Jiri Frel put it in his description and summary when the vase was being acquired, “is one of the three great masters of Attic r-f [red-figure] drawing, called Pioneers. There is no complete piece by him in the United States.” At that stage, Frel said, the Getty had only fragments by Euphronios and “a controversial piece by Phintias” (the other two of the three great Pioneers). Frel said that the mouth of the vase was missing, but otherwise its condition was “perfect.” He then wrote this: “In the twenties of this century [meaning the twentieth century] the piece belonged to Professor E. Pfuhl, the famous specialist of Greek art in Basel. It was sold last year by his great-granddaughter, Mrs. Lattanzi of Ascona, Switzerland, to the dealer. This information has been confirmed by Pino Donati, dealer in Lugano, Switzerland.” Frel added that he considered the piece superior to the Euphronios cup that had been bought by Nelson Bunker Hunt in 1979, which had cost $750,000, and that therefore it was well worth the $400,000 that the Hydra Gallery in Geneva were asking.

  All of this was most interesting, especially the fulsome details about the vase’s provenance, in view of the fact that among the negatives seized in Geneva, there was one showing the Euthymides amphora broken in pieces and, as Pellegrini’s report dryly comments, “not in an institutional setting.”

  Following the same methodology, Pellegrini next came across a red-figure Apulian pelike, attributed to the Darius Painter, which was acquired by the Getty three years after the Euthymides vase, in 1987. A pelike is a multipurpose amphora with a sagging belly, usually with a wide mouth. Ropes were passed through its handles for lifting. The Darius Painter of the late fourth century BC was active in Apulia, possibly in Tarentum, the modern Taranto, and he was the leading artist of his time. He is named for a monumental krater in the archaeological museum in Naples depicting the Persian king Darius. Instead of always depicting heroes, the Darius Painter was notable for frequently—and unusually—painting myths involving heroines. On this vase, a good example of his work, Andromeda sits on a throne while Cassiopeia kneels before her, entreating her pardon. Perseus stands on the right and Aphrodite looks on.

  Pictures of this pelike were found among the negatives seized in Geneva. Again, in one of these the vase is shown in a showcase in the museum ; it also appears in a Polaroid. The matching documentation, which Pellegrini also found, was particularly revealing. The pelike was apparently acquired from Fritz Bürki, via Atlantis Antiquities, and had never been published before. The paperwork showed that the vase was sent to the Getty together with another red-figure Apulian pelike attributed to the Gravina Painter and a black-figure Attic bowl, attributed to the school of the Lysippides Painter. This portrayed Dionysus and Hercules as revelers with drinking vessels, the latter wearing the skin of the Nemean lion over his shoulders. The presence of the drinking vessels and vines probably alludes to the best-known encounter between Dionysus and Hercules, the drinking contest that Dionysus won with ease. Although the supplier of the pelike was ostensibly Bürki, an error was made in the invoice regarding the price: Bürki had written $45,000, when it should have been $60,000. In order to straighten it out, however, Marion True wrote not to Bürki but directly to Robert Hecht. Much of this documentation, remember, was found in Geneva Freeport, on Medici’s premises: a classic triangulation.

  Still other documents showed that Bürki had “sold” to the Getty a Lucanian red-figure krater, showing Hermes, Apollo, and Artemis, and attributed to the Palermo Painter, plus a terra-cotta alabastron and an ariballos (a small flask for oil, often suspended from the wrist), both of the latter Corinthian. Yet all these objects were among the Polaroids seized from Medici.

  More important still, a red-figure kantharos, with masks (of grotesque faces) attributed to the Foundry Painter and with pottery attributed to Euphronios, was also found among the Geneva Polaroids, showing the object before and after its restoration. This vase is a good example of the very high quality of the objects we are discussing in this book. It was the only known example of its type in North America and has no known parallel anywhere in the world. Curator Arthur Houghton, in his appreciation of this kantharos ahead of its acquisition, described it as showing athletes cleaning themselves after exercise. But on either side the kantharos was embellished, and embossed, with masks, one of Dionysus, the god of wine, and the other of a smiling satyr. These relief masks made drinking from the kantharos difficult (a kantharos is a luxury drinking vessel, but this one was probably never used, being intended instead to serve as a votive offering in a temple or tomb). The cup had been restored from many fragments, some of which were already in the Getty. The Foundry Painter, so named after the scene of a bronze foundry on one of his vases in the Berlin Museum for Classical Antiquities, was the strongest member of the workshop of the Brygos Painter.d The Foundry Painter favored just such scenes as were on this vase—symposia, athletics, or combat.

  Marion True
attributed the pottery of the kantharos to Euphronios for a number of reasons. His signature as potter is known long after he ceased to paint, perhaps after he went blind and instead concentrated on the more tactile potter’s craft. Houghton added:The attribution of the kantharos’ potter is very difficult because there is no known parallel for this vase in any collection in the world except for that of the Getty Museum. We have fragments of at least two, and possibly three other kantharoi of the same type.... The fragmentary Getty vase has been attributed by Dyfri Williams of the British Museum to the painter Onesimos. Since the only potter who is known to link the work of the Foundry Painter and Onesimos is Euphronios, and we know also from other fragments in the Getty collection that he potted a number of hitherto-unknown unusual vase shapes, Marion True has attributed the manufacture of the kantharos to his hand.... As mentioned above, the only known parallels for this vase type are in the collection of the Getty Museum, and some of our fragments actually join this cup . . . In addition to its tremendous importance as a vase of hitherto-unknown shape potted and painted by two of the most respected artists of the late archaic period, this kantharos has a significance for the collection of the Getty Museum that it has for no other collection. We have the only other known vases of this type, and their condition is extremely fragmentary. . . . The Bürki kantharos has provided the key to the identification of the potter of this remarkable group of vases.... The cup presents no problem for export. It was in London from 1982 to 1984 with the dealer Robin Symes, then exported to Switzerland to Fritz Bürki and Son in Zurich. The vase is said to have been purchased originally from the