The Medici Conspiracy

by Peter Watson

  IF GIACOMO MEDICI WAS enemy number one in the eyes of Conforti and Ferri, and if Hecht was number two, it was debatable who was number three. There was no shortage of candidates: Becchina, Fritz Bürki, Symes. And then there was Marion True. Medici referred to Symes and Christo as his “diaspora,” meaning that as Hecht began to age, they were the main conduit in spreading his objects around the world. In reality, of course, they were all part of a much bigger diaspora—the spread of antiquities out of Italy and throughout the world—to the United States, to Britain, to Germany, to Japan, to Denmark: all of it illicit.

  It was inevitable that Conforti’s and Ferri’s investigation should lead to the United States. No sooner had the Swiss decided not to proceed against Medici—and the documentary and photographic evidence, together with the 4,000 or so antiquities, had been transferred to Italian soil—that True’s lawyer proposed a meeting with Ferri. This interview was not as quickly accomplished as Hecht’s but still occurred a great deal earlier than some of the others. Ferri, Rizzo, Pellegrini, two of Conforti’s men, and an official—an archaeologist from the Italian Ministry of Culture—flew to Los Angeles in June 2001 to interview her. The Alitalia 747 landed at Los Angeles Airport on a baking hot day, the smog haze over the downtown skyscrapers visible from the aircraft’s final approach.

  The Italian team was staying at a hotel in Santa Monica, a pretty town on the coast just south of where the new Getty is located. They had no chance to enjoy its amenities, however. After the long, twelve-hour flight they were all tired, and Ferri had ordered a meeting at eight the next morning, before they boarded their people-carrier for the rendezvous at the museum. The reason for Ferri’s strict regime was a response to the way those on the American side had conducted themselves. Eleven months earlier, the Italian public prosecutor had issued letters rogatory, asking for several documents, to interview True, Dietrich von Bothmer, and Ashton Hawkins. Ferri had been told that von Bothmer was “not available” unless the Italians decided to bring charges against True, and he never received any response at all to his request to interrogate Hawkins. In addition, the U.S. attorney involved, Daniel Goodman, had argued that Ferri’s original request to the Getty was “too vague, too wide” and that unless he could be more specific, the museum could offer no assistance.

  Then, ten days later, a knock was heard on Ferri’s door at the Palazzo di Giustizia in Rome—and there stood Richard Martin, the Getty’s lawyer. He had with him a bunch of documents.

  By handing over some of the paperwork voluntarily, the Getty was not compelled to provide all of the pertinent documents, and it faced no penalty for what looked like cooperation. The Getty knew that letters rogatory are cumbersome instruments and Ferri would have little choice but to accept what was offered. The Getty also knew that its voluntary gesture would avoid the formal process of discovery, which would have compelled it to reveal all.

  And so, that morning in Santa Monica, Ferri wanted one last meeting to make sure his people were all on their toes ahead of a crucial encounter. They would get only one bite from this particular apple. It was June 20.

  The meeting began at 9:30 AM in the conference room of the museum, which rests on the top of a hill overlooking the Sepulveda Pass and Highway 405, the San Diego Freeway. The meeting room is large, with windows along one side and a long, oval-shaped, blond-wood table. The Italians sat down one side, the Getty people down the other, with Ferri directly opposite Marion True. On the American team, besides True herself, there were ranged: Daniel Goodman, the U.S. attorney, representing the U.S. Department of Justice; Deborah Gribbon, then director of the Getty, representing the museum; Richard Martin, the Getty’s lawyer; Lodovico Isolabella, True’s elegant Italian lawyer; and interpreters and official stenographers, there to record proceedings.

  True is a handsome woman who, over the years, has been both brunette and blond. She spent her early career at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in the Greek and Roman Department. She transferred to the Getty Museum in 1983 and became curator two years later.

  The interrogation lasted for two whole days, and at first, the meeting was tense. True was being interviewed on serious charges in front of her colleagues and superiors; there was bound to be a fraught atmosphere.

  Ferri’s aim was to relax True, and to get her talking—at least to begin with—about others. If she would incriminate others, he could use that against them, perhaps to get back at True. It was a classic fencing match, but carried out via the unwieldy form of translation. Ferri had mixed feelings: He was angry at what True had done, but he was also fascinated by a woman who was undoubtedly strong, was well versed in her subject, and had, he felt, been led astray.

  During the course of her questioning, True said she had first met Giacomo Medici in 1984 in Basel, Switzerland, at the sale of the Bolla Collection of Greek amphorae. (The Bolla family lived in Lugano.) They had been introduced by Robert Hecht and Dietrich von Bothmer. Later, she said, she saw Medici in Geneva, Rome, and Malibu, California. In Geneva in 1988, she saw him together with Robert Hecht, at the Freeport. On that occasion, she was offered a bronze Etruscan tripod and a candelabrum, and at the same time Medici showed her some photographs of a collection of red-figure Attic plates attributed to the Bryn Mawr Painter. They were intact and not in fragments, she remembered, though one plate had an edge missing. She met Medici again one or two years later in a bank in Geneva where he showed her, among other things, a late-Hellenistic sculpture of the Goddess Tyche, already cleaned. (This was the statue eventually sold by Symes to the Fleischmans, who then sold it on to the Getty.) Later still, Medici came to see her in Malibu, when again he was with Hecht. It was a courtesy visit and Medici had his son with him. True, crucially, contradicted Symes, insisting that she did not consider Medici an expert.

  True said she knew that certain things purchased by her predecessor, Jiri Frel, had been acquired from the Hydra Gallery, and she knew that both that gallery and Editions Services were owned by Medici. Through Frel she had also met Gianfranco Becchina, in his case at the Getty in 1983—1984, “when there was beginning to be talk of the statue that was to become known as the Getty Kouros.” She confirmed that, so far as she knew, Becchina and Medici hated each other. Becchina, she said, had at that time already sold the Getty a dinos krater and some fragments of frescoes.

  She had known Robert Hecht since 1972 or 1973 when she worked at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. “He was a good friend of the curator of the museum, Cornelius Vermeule and his wife, Emily.” (Emily Vermeule had been Marion True’s professor.) True confirmed that Hecht was in partnership with Bruce McNall in the Summa Gallery but that he had also been in partnership with Fritz Bürki in Zurich and kept various objects in Bürki’s shop. This contradicted Bürki’s testimony.

  She was, she said, good friends with Dietrich von Bothmer at the Metropolitan. He too had been her professor. True’s nerves seemed to intensify when the subject of von Bothmer was raised, and she asked for a break. Daniela Rizzo noticed that the heel on one of True’s sandals was broken and, after the break, she had changed her shoes.

  The interrogation proceeded, and Ferri returned to the matter of Dietrich von Bothmer.

  FERRI: Did he ever confide—Did he ever confide in you? I’m insisting on this particular point.

  TRUE: Yes, I think it’s fair to say he did.

  FERRI: When?

  TRUE: In terms of important confidences, sort of at the end of his position when he was retiring around, say, must have been 1990, that time.

  FERRI: He confided in you in a major way, and I have the same information, I have information about a major—that he confided with you in a major way. Can you tell me what that is?

  TRUE: Just to put it in perspective, Mr.—Professor von Bothmer wanted me to be his successor at the Met. And at one point I was in his office, and he had a photograph, an aerial photograph, which showed the necropolis of Cerveteri. And looking at the necropolis, he pointed to a certain spot on the photograph and said
this is the place where the Euphronios krater was found.

  FERRI: Did he show particular tombs?

  TRUE: Yes.

  FERRI: Where was that tomb, was it Sant’Angelo?

  TRUE: I don’t know. I honestly—It was just this photograph and I—

  FERRI: Did he tell you why he was able to point out that tomb?

  TRUE: No. Just said he’d been given the information that that was where the krater had come from.

  This was sensational testimony, of course, and Ferri would dearly have loved to take a break there and then, to savor what Marion True had admitted. But, for the moment, he kept going. He then read the relevant extract from Hecht’s memoir, the “Medici version” that related how Medici had turned up one day at Hecht’s Rome house with photographs, how they had flown to Milan and taken a train to Lugano, and so forth. But Marion True said she knew nothing of this. She was aware of the Dikran Sarrafian version she said, and that was all.

  She described Hecht as a very intelligent and fascinating man, but an “incurable gambler” and a “chronic alcoholic.” She confirmed that Robin Symes had confided to her Hecht’s threats to libel his rivals in a book after his death.

  She agreed that Hecht specialized in selling fragments of vases that had already been bought by museums. Hecht was still active, she thought. She had bumped into him in Athens about two years before, when they were staying in the same hotel, and he was trying to sell something to the Benaki Museum (a museum of Greek culture, from antiquity to the present day, part of which is in the Kerameikos district). She confirmed that although he could be charming, he “could also turn, be very hostile, very sarcastic, very sinister. He was a person who had a very peculiar personality.”

  FERRI: Do you know if Hecht—Did Hecht ever threaten to slander against anybody if you didn’t go along with what he wanted or you rebelled against what he wanted to do?

  TRUE: I have heard threats of that kind reported.

  FERRI: Who told you this?

  TRUE: I think it was Robin Symes.

  Later:FERRI: . . . What were the threats that Symes referred to from Hecht?

  TRUE: Just—I just remember something, and I can’t tell you specifically what it was, but it was a suggestion that Robin made—I mean that he—Just trying to reconstruct what happened. It may have been at the anniversary party that Robin had in London. And it was like a—I think the 25th anniversary of his gallery and he had a big party. And I wasn’t there, but he told me that Bob got very drunk and made some statements like, you know, I can destroy you all, or—Something very unpleasant but not specific.

  She confirmed—and this was important—that when objects were offered to the museum, Polaroid photographs were never sent by the vendor, since they lacked the precision to show the real quality of the object on offer. This did not fit with the claim by Robin Symes that Polaroids were used, routinely, to show prospective clients the original state of an object.

  She also confirmed that she knew all the key figures in the cordata. She said she had met Bürki many times in Zurich (Fritz Bürki, remember, could not recall having many dealings with the Getty.) Then came this exchange:FERRI: Fritz Bürki is a restorer of art objects. Did he—Has he sold any objects directly to the J. Paul Getty?

  TRUE: I think he is represented as the owner of objects that we bought. And this was a situation, as I told you, I knew that he worked together with Bob. And either one or the other of them owned the object. And sometimes an object would come under Bürki’s name.

  FERRI: I see. So they would exchange—One was an intermediary for the other?

  TRUE: Yes. I mean one had the feeling with Bob Hecht that he—he worked with various people, depending on people who were really able to provide funds.

  She said she could not really explain why she had written the letter she did, on June 10, 1987, to Medici, telling him that the two objects would be bought by the museum, since according to her, she knew that the bronzes belonged to Bürki and then Hecht.

  FERRI: So you knew that the owner was Medici?

  TRUE: Medici was the person who had showed them to me. As I told you, whether the objects were owned by Bürki or Medici, I couldn’t tell you.

  FERRI: Why did you accept documentation coming from Bürki?

  TRUE: Because, as I told you, Bürki frequently worked together with Bob and Bob worked together with Giacomo.

  The museum bought several objects directly from Medici, she said, including fragments of the Onesimos kylix and the Caeretan Hydria, “so there was no reason why Medici’s name should not appear in the museum’s documents.” Challenged with the fact that, despite this statement, Medici’s name does not appear in Getty documents, she answered that some objects were in the name of the Hydra Gallery, though she admitted that the words “Editions Services” do not appear in the Getty archives. Asked about the letter she wrote to Bürki, concerning the ongoing investigation, in which she said she had seen the tripod in Geneva at Medici’s, and not in Zurich at Bürki’s, she answered that her memory was faulty and that she had only remembered the true course of events when prompted by Hecht. When the museum returned the tripod, it did so on the basis that it would not be returned to Guglielmi because he “had probably smuggled it out only to then report the theft once it had been discovered.” She admitted sending verbal guarantees to Medici concerning the arrival of the tripod even though he didn’t appear to be the owner. She said that the confidential, intimate tone of her letters to Medici was due to the fact that she and the museum needed him because of the case of the kouros, the fake they had bought from Becchina, after Medici sent proof of its falsity. In addition, letters exchanged with Medici concerning three olpai were indicated by Medici as coming from Monte Abatone in Cerveteri. Medici had told her whence the objects came. She said, “Evidently he was in relation with whoever had excavated them.”

  True said she was present at an argument between Robin Symes and Robert Guy, in which the latter, while examining objects of Symes’s collection, had pretended not to have ever seen them before, whereas she knew that he had seen them at Medici’s and kept this fact secret. “It was therefore obvious that Symes’ objects came from Medici.”

  Regarding the Onesimos kylix, the initial purchase was made by Jiri Frel from the Galerie Nefer (Frida Tchacos’s gallery). Then the fragments of the central tondo were bought by Arthur Houghton (the museum did not ascertain its provenance, but True agreed that the fragments came from the Hydra Gallery), and one fragment was donated in 1986 or 1987 by von Bothmer—it was a fragment that Dyfri Williams had recognized among those of von Bothmer’s collection. The fragment had a sticker on it, which read “RH’68,” which she understood to mean “Robert Hecht 1968.” She recognized among the photos seized from Medici—including a Polaroid—the fragments of the tondo of the kylix, and she confirmed that, in 1991, Williams published this object, reporting that he had seen a fragment of the border that, she confirmed, was in Medici’s possession. She had received from Christo Michaelides a photocopy of a photograph that showed the fragment. Michaelides said that the piece was on the market (more triangulation), but she was never offered it. (It was this fragment, indicated by Dyfri Williams, that had been handed over by Medici when he knew that the game was up.)

  True said that she knew at least some of the Levy-White collection came from Tchacos, Hecht, Symes, the Aboutaams, and Becchina because several objects had first been offered to her by these people. She admitted that the Hunt Collection was gathered through Hecht, McNall, and the Summa Gallery—and she confirmed moreover that when she first went to the Getty, Jiri Frel had told her about “the sodality between Hecht, Bürki and the Hunts.”

  She described Ortiz as “an exceptionally unpleasant human being. He—he lives outside of Geneva, has his collection in a vault underground. I think his closest connection is with Becchina and with—He was close with Nikolas Koutoulakis. He seemed to have a love-hate relationship with Robin Symes, who threw him down the stairs once.”
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  Regarding the Attic plates, she said that when the museum decided not to buy them, Medici refused to sell the accompanying fragments, which had been offered for about $125,000.

  Shown the photographs of the Pompeian frescoes, she confirmed that she had seen the real things in Zurich—where she remembered there were three walls (which means that at least one is still missing). In her opinion they would be impossible to sell, and in fact she said she was so worried by the offer that she had someone accompany her—professor Michael Strocka, an expert in frescoes from Freiberg University—as a witness. She added that there was “part of the cornice” that reminded her of a fragment in the Levy-White Collection and that there was a fragment in the Fleischman Collection that “could be part of the same” and, if so, perhaps it should be returned. She said she was shocked by the frescoes: “It is impossible to remove architectural objects like these without destroying the structure.”

  This was an important moment. During the lunch break on the second day, Maurizio Pellegrini had been shown around the museum by True herself. He found her much more sympathetic than he had expected and far more so than anyone else on the opposing team. They stopped in front of the Griffins and Pellegrini looked from the beautifully displayed loot toward True. “I felt that, in that moment, True was ‘dispiaciuta’” (sorry). Not so much sorry for being guilty, which he felt she was, but because she was an archaeologist and was betraying her profession.

  Ferri was tougher. His heart had begun to harden against True when he had heard what Tchacos had to say about the Fleischmans and the way the Getty curator had used—and abused, as he saw it—her relationship with them. As True talked about being “shocked” by the frescoes she had seen in the Bürkis’ workshop, he also recalled the fact that it was written in the catalog to the Fleischman Collection that their fresco, the lunette of Hercules, “came from the same room” as one in the Levy-White Collection and, as Ferri now knew, had its twin in Corridor 17. He felt that Marion True was appealing for sympathy here when she didn’t deserve it. It is fair to say that, from that moment, Ferri was determined to bring True to trial.