The Medici Conspiracy

by Peter Watson

  Later in the trial, Dr. True asked the court to admit as evidence a letter she had sent on December 18, 2006, addressed to Deborah Marrow, the Getty Trust’s acting chief executive, Michael Brand, and Ron Hartwig, the trust’s spokesman. In the letter, which was read in court, she accused the Getty Trust of having left her to “carry the burden” of the institution’s collecting practices, even though her superiors at the museum and the trust had “approved all the acquisitions made during my tenure.” She faulted the museum for a “lack of courage and integrity” and added that her Getty superiors “were fully aware of the risks involved in buying antiquities” and had still approved her decisions. She argued that the Getty Trust’s failure to throw its weight behind her (though it was paying for her defense) had allowed prosecutors in Rome and Greece (see next chapter) to “place squarely on my shoulder the blame for all American collecting institutions and the illicit market.”

  Commenting afterward to reporters, Ferri said he thought that, on a first reading, the letter “worked against” Dr. True by suggesting that she had knowingly taken part in the acquisition of illicit artifacts. “She accuses the Getty of having been aware of all her decisions,” he said, adding that she did not avoid dubious purchases. “She did not pop up out of nowhere,” he said, but was “continuing an established practice.”

  At much the same time, in early January 2007, the Los Angeles Times returned to the attack. Frammolino and Felch reported on a four-month investigation into the so-called Morgantina Aphrodite. This had been, ostensibly, the Getty’s most sensational acquisition. More than seven feet high, with a serene marble face and a swirling limestone gown, this, the Greek goddess of love, was acquired by the Getty for a reputed $18 million in 1986. The statue, larger than life-size, is a rare example of an almost-complete cult statue. Some idea of its importance may be gleaned from the wording of Marion True’s report to the board when it was being considered for acquisition: “The proposed statue of Aphrodite would not only become the single greatest piece of ancient art in our collection; it would be the greatest piece of classical sculpture in this country and any country outside of Greece and Great Britain.”

  But there were early signs of trouble. Luis Monreal, a former director of the Getty Conservation Institute, now working in Geneva as general manager of the Aga Khan’s Trust for Culture, said there was dirt in the folds of the gown when it arrived at the museum, and the torso had what appeared to be new fractures, “suggesting that the statue had been recently unearthed and broken apart for easy smuggling.”

  The reporters traced other experts who had raised doubts early on and re-created the statue’s clandestine route out of Italy. This chain allegedly involved a certain Renzo Canavesi who, according to a receipt found by a Sicilian investigation, sold the statue to Robin Symes in March 1986, for $400,000.

  The chances are the Aphrodite will go back to Italy. The Getty has announced that as their intention. However, should there remain any doubt in the matter, we can quote here from extracts in the Symes’ archive, which we have seen and which confirm and amplify various aspects of the matter. The Symes archive shows, for example, that Symes did indeed pay $400,000 for the statue and that it was sold to the Getty for $18 million, with the first installment due in “summer 1992.” A further note added that the sale “coincided with the appointment of a friend . . . as the curator of the museum.” The note also says that the statue was “probably Aphrodite . . . probably from south Italy or Sicily,” and that it was carved originally in pieces but had been damaged when it had been toppled either by an earthquake or vandals. The note added that the statue showed “encrustations” and deposits of “soil.” Most interesting of all, however, is the fact that this file also contained photocopies of Polaroid photographs of the statue, showing how it had originally been pinned together.

  One other development since the hardcover version of this book remains to be mentioned. On March 29, 2006, one of the authors, Peter Watson, gave evidence in the trial of Marion True. He recounted an unusual incident that had taken place at a conference on the trade in illicit antiquities, which had been held at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California in Los Angeles, in Spring 2001. The conference dinner had been held at the Getty Museum and during the course of a conversation on Medici and his tradings, Dr.True had referred to him as “Giacomo.” At least two of the fellow diners who heard this reference were disconcerted by Dr. True’s familiar tone.

  But a much more notable event took place shortly afterward. The authors were standing outside the court room, after that day’s proceedings were over, talking to Prosecutor Ferri when his cellphone rang. He listened intently and then looked up. “Marion True’s house in Paros was raided today by Greek police.”

  21

  OPERATION ECLIPSE

  Nikolas Zirganosan

  IN SOUTHERN GREECE, spring comes early. Although it was still March 2006, on the island of Paros in the Cyclades the first daisies of the year had broken through and, in the morning sunshine, their white and yellow colors lined the narrow road that snaked from the port of Paroikia up the hill toward the brilliant white village of Glyssidia. Shortly after 11:00 A.M., three cars left the port and quickly reached the point where the tarmac stopped and the dirt road began, sending clouds of dust billowing into the air.

  Just short of Glyssidia the cars reached a plateau where there was a high stone wall with a house hidden behind it, and stopped. Eight men got out. Six were policemen, in plainclothes. One was an archaeologist and the last was the local prosecutor. Nobody had a moment to savour the view, which was breathtaking—the islands of Antiparos and Despotico were closest, the latter with its remains of a Doric temple, beautiful but uninhabited. Beyond them the smaller islands of the Cyclades receded into the blue distance.

  Captain George Gligoris, head of the Greek Art Squad, had his mind on other things. A witty, handsome man in his mid-forties, Gligoris looks—and dresses—more Italian than Greek. He always wears sunglasses and in fifteen years as an undercover agent hasn’t ever worn a uniform. He was anxious that the morning’s operation would go well. He approached the gate in the wall, rang the bell, and waited for the housekeeper. Beyond the wall were a number of olive trees and in among them was the house, a house that—he knew—belonged to Marion True, an American woman, and, until very recently, a curator at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

  The housekeeper let them in. As it happened, there were plenty of people in the house that day because Dr. True had phoned that very morning to tell her staff that she would be arriving in a few days to spend her Easter vacation on the island. The staff were preparing the house for her. “As we entered the living room,” Glirogis recalled later, “I spotted part of an Hellenistic idol placed on a stone windowsill. Surrounding the fireplace I saw that architectural fragments taken from ancient temples or monuments had been ‘built in’ to the walls as ornament while a Byzantine icon was resting on a table. The moment I saw them I took a deep breath of relief.”

  Gligoris was acting on a tip-off that Dr. True’s villa contained unregistered antiquities. Greek law is very severe, but clear. Individuals can possess antiquities only if they are registered collectors, with special permission, or if they declare the antiquities to the authorities. Otherwise they are breaking the law. Paros is a hundred miles from Athens but most of that is the Aegean Sea so it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t cheap, for Gligoris to fly his team over. But as soon as he saw the first undeclared objects in the living room, he knew his trip hadn’t been wasted.

  Then, inside the house, a most extraordinary thing happened. Everything went dark. The sky turned gray, a wind began, the temperature dropped sharply, and all the animals within earshot began making panicky noises. Sheep and goats bleated, turkeys cackled, hens clucked.

  It was an eclipse of the sun.

  “I took it as a good omen,” said Gligoris. “As if someone was leading me on, as if the twelve gods were on our side, giving me the ‘go-ahe
ad.’ As the sun came out again, and we resumed the investigation, one of my men suggested we now had a name for our raid—‘Operation Eclipse.’ Yes, but we have a saying in Greece: ‘In addition to Athena’s help, you must throw in a hand yourself.’”

  They did. They searched the house for many hours. Paros is famous for its beaches, its traditional architecture, and its rich and ancient past, with many archaeological sites dating back to the fifth millennium BC. It is also famous for the snow-white semi-transparent marble that it carries in its bowels—Parian marble was one of the types of stone used in the construction of the sanctuaries at Delos, Olympia, and Delphi. The Venus de Milo, the Praxitilean Hermes, and the Victory of Samothrace are all hewn from Parian marble. No wonder that the house at Glyssidia—built in the traditional Cycladic style, single-story with interlocking stone, painted white—was Marion True’s favorite retreat. She would spend most of her summers there, making frequent visits to the nearby island of Schinoussa to visit Robin Symes, Christo Michaelides, and his family.

  A total of seventeen unregistered antiquities were discovered in her house that day of the eclipse, plus the Byzantine icon. There was a poster on display in the living room for the exhibition of the Fleischman Collection, which had been displayed at both the Cleveland Museum and the Getty Museum, under the title, “A Passion for Antiquities” (see pp. 115–118). As one of Gligoris’s men remarked, “That’s the passion that will lead all these people to their downfall.”

  None of the antiquities found in the Glyssidia residence was of particular archaeological significance. But as a curator of antiquities, with so many archaeologists—Greek and non-Greek—passing through her house every year, it is surprising that none of her friends and guests advised Dr. True to take the appropriate steps to make her possessions legal. As it was, the eighteen ancient objects were confiscated and the case referred to the district attorney’s office.

  The raid was more important than that, however. For the truth of the matter is that the Greek authorities had had Marion True in their sights “for decades,” hoping for a reason to look more closely at her activities. Since the 1980s, reports had started coming into the offices of the Greek art squad suggesting that she had been buying, on behalf of the Getty Museum, whole consignments of Greek antiquities of mysterious provenance—perhaps without any provenance at all. In the years before the Paros raid the Greek law enforcement agencies had twice come close to prosecuting her, but both times their investigations had foundered.

  In the early months of 1997, fisherman off the coast of Preveza, a small port on the Ionian coast of Greece, south of Corfu, netted a most unusual catch. It was a bronze statue of an adolescent boy, five feet high, weighing 150 pounds. It was badly corroded and covered with sea shells but even so, its quality was obvious. It was subsequently identified as coming from the workshop of Polycleitus, who, with Myron and Praxitiles, is one of the most admired sculptors of the fifth century BC. This wasn’t just any sculpture, but the fishermen didn’t know it.

  They brought the statue ashore secretly and put out feelers among the antiquities underworld, looking for a buyer. Unfortunately for them, they approached the wrong people. When they met the middlemen with whom they thought they had arranged a sale, they were held up at gunpoint and forced to give up the statue—for nothing.

  Subsequently, the bronze was hidden under boxes of grapes in a fruit truck and driven north to Germany. (These details were pieced together later by Christos Kotlidas, who was serving in the Greek Art Squad at the time.) The statue changed hands before its journey across Yugoslavia so that it was several weeks before it arrived at the town of Saarbrücken, in Saarland, on the border with France and Luxembourg. The Greek smugglers then contacted the Austrian archaeologist-turned-dealer Christoph Leon, who was operating out of Basel in Switzerland (see pp. 199–200 and 287–289 for Leon’s other activities).

  Nothing more was heard for several months, not until George Tzallas, the acting chief of the police department that investigates illicit antiquities, received a tip-off. It was May 21, 1998, and Tzallas learned from his informant that Christoph Leon was about to sell the bronze statue to Marion True. True, he was told, was offering $7 million on behalf of the Getty Museum, though there was believed to be another customer in the wings, a Japanese individual who had offered $6 million. Tzallas was told by his informant that Dr. True had viewed the statue “lying on a carpet at Leon’s house.”

  Tzallas and Kotlidas immediately left for Germany, where they managed to persuade the Saarbrücken police to help them raid a hotel room occupied by a Greek immigrant, Michael Kotsarides. There was nothing incriminating in the room but, in the open-air parking lot of the hotel, they found his car, and, in the trunk, a wooden crate. Across the crate were stenciled the words, in English, “FOR EXPORT TO USA.” Inside, when they opened it, were 115 small archaeological items of ancient Greek origin, 312 ancient coins—and the bronze boy from Preveza.

  So far, so good. The follow-up to the raid, however, was—to say the least—unsatisfactory. The Greek government never at any point asked for a statement from either Christoph Leon or Marion True. But, at the request of the German police, the FBI did question Dr. True. According to this report, she confirmed that she had indeed “seen the statue, displayed on a carpet in Leon’s residence, but turned down the sale when she realized he was acting on behalf of a third party. Having serious doubts concerning the legal status of Leon’s dealings, she became suspicious as to the artwork’s provenance. She never went so far as to make an offer, refusing to buy it.”

  Interpol sent the FBI report to the Germans, who passed it on to the Greeks, adding a note of their own: “Please inform us if further investigations are deemed necessary.” They never got an answer from Athens.

  Nonetheless, Kotsarides was extradited from Germany, tried, convicted, and sentenced to twelve years in prison. The statue of the youth was repatriated in 1998, restored at the National Archaeological Museum of Greece, and went on public display for the first time in an exhibition helping to celebrate the Olympic Games in Athens in the summer of 2004.

  So the bronze boy did not get away. A very different story, also involving Marion True and Christoph Leon, had its beginning elsewhere in Germany in February 1992. On the twentieth of that month, the small “OHM” Gallery in Munich was packed with people. It was the opening night, the “vernissage,” of an exhibition by a promising young Greek painter, Athanassios Seliachas. The son of an Orthodox priest, “Celia,” as he was known in artistic circles, had finally managed to hold his first one-man show.

  During the evening, and when his mind was obviously on other things, Celia was approached by three strangers—two Greeks and a Serb, people who appeared to have invited themselves to his show. Fourteen years later, he described what happened next.

  They enquired about my connections in artistic circles. They told me they had something for sale and were looking for someone who might be interested. There, on the spot, they showed me photographs of what they wanted to sell. Then, on another day, again in the gallery, they brought me the object itself, concealed in one of those boxes they give you to carry away cakes at a pastry shop. The kind that are tied up with ribbon. They took the object out of the box and unraveled the paper it was wrapped in. And there was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. It was a Macedonian wreath made of solid gold. Solid gold. I was so impressed, so shocked I could hardly breath.

  They asked if I could suggest someone who might buy the wreath. The first name that came into my head was Christoph Leon. I had never met him, but I had heard about him and I knew he was in the antiquities business. Later, I found out that they did indeed go to see Leon in Basel but the meeting, I understand, was not a success.

  Apparently, Leon was willing to buy the wreath but the amount he offered—200,000 marks, according to Tzallas—was much too low. Celia continued:So they came back to me in Munich and asked me a second time if I knew anyone else who might be interested. I
thought about it and answered that for such a beautiful and important antiquity it was probable that the Getty Museum in Los Angeles might be interested. Again, I found out later that they contacted Marion True.

  Marion True was sent photos of the wreath that depicted it in the condition it was found. “I have kept copies of these photographs to this day,” Seliachas said. And he showed them to me.

  It appears, on this account, and in view of what happened later, that True would not buy from strangers. Did she prefer the security of trading with an established name, an intermediary who could distance her and the museum from the smugglers and/or the tomb robbers? At any rate, the two Greeks and the Serb went back to Christoph Leon who this time doubled his initial offer—to 400,000 marks.

  What happened next isn’t clear but we do know that Marion True traveled to Switzerland to inspect the wreath, where it was being held in the vault of an unknown bank in Zurich. She saw the wreath in the company of Leon and the Serbian member of the trio who had approached Seliachas. He showed these photographs to me.

  Nothing was settled then. True returned to Malibu and wrote to Leon that she refused to buy the golden wreath. Yet the wreath was to prove overpoweringly enticing. Six months later, True changed her mind and decided to propose the wreath’s acquisition.

  Before she could do that, however, there were certain preliminaries to be complied with. In March 1993, the Getty formally notified the Greek and the Italian authorities of the museum’s intention to acquire two objects, a golden wreath and an incomplete archaic kore. They sent photocopies of photographs of both pieces.

  The Greek Ministry of Culture responded, saying that it disagreed with the museum’s intention to acquire the two artifacts since, in its view, they could only have originated in an illicit excavation. But it added that it was unable to provide any specific details to expand and support its claim. For Greek archaeologists, it was obvious—as it had been obvious to Daniela Rizzo, Gilda Bartoloni, and other Italian archaeologists in regard to their antiquities—that such an important and beautiful object, had it been legally excavated, would have been widely published and known to everyone. It followed that the two acquisitions the Getty was planning to make must be dubious.