The Medici Conspiracy

by Peter Watson

  Having dealt comprehensively with the falsehoods surrounding the provenance of so many of these objects, Chippindale and Gill next turned their spotlight on a number of prestigious museums and other institutions that have exhibited large collections of antiquities in recent years that they must have known had been looted. These institutions were: the Royal Academy in London, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

  Chippindale and Gill are explicit in their charges. Unlike the British Museum, for example, which is (now) fairly scrupulous in avoiding any association with illicit material of whatever kind, they say that these museums are more concerned with flattering collectors who help them stage glitzy shows and who might bequeath objects to them than they are with upholding the standards of disinterested scholarship. And in so doing, they allow collectors to legitimize their (mainly looted) collections. Scholarship, they insist, is corrupted by curatorial ambition and commercialism.

  Let us take the earliest exhibition first. The Glories of the Past show, held at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1990, was the title given to an exhibition based on the Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection. Chippindale and Gill found that only 4 percent of this collection had any known provenance. Ninety percent had no provenance whatsoever, and the remaining 6 percent fell into the notorious “said to be” or “probably” categories.

  The Crossroads of Asia exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in 1992, included a collection belonging to a mysterious organization, “A.I.C.,” which was never explained but is thought to have been linked to Mr. Neil Kreitman of California, who certainly owned one of the more important objects in the collection in the early 1980s and who took part in the preparation of the show. In this collection, 88 percent of the objects had no history before the exhibition but were legitimized, say Chippindale and Gill, because the Fitzwilliam show also featured artifacts from the British Museum, the Ashmolean, and the Louvre in Paris.

  And in the George Ortiz Collection exhibition, In Pursuit of the Absolute, shown at the Royal Academy in London in 1994, 23 percent had no provenance at all, with a further 62 percent made up of “said to be’s,” “possibly’s,” and “allegedly’s.” That left just 15 percent with some sort of provenance, however euphemistic.

  The point here is not that there were one or two objects in each of these collections that were illicit but that the vast majority were. They had surfaced recently and had no secure provenance. And in none of these usually prestigious institutions did the scholars turn a hair.

  Another aspect of the trade that Chippindale and Gill highlight is the close link between illegally excavated and smuggled goods, on the one hand, and widespread faking, on the other. According to the thermoluminescence laboratory in Oxford, some 40 percent of antiquities sent in for testing “are found to be of modern manufacture.” (Fake Cycladic statues can be expertly aged, the story goes, by wrapping in cooked spaghetti.)

  In the first place, few collectors appear willing to acknowledge even the possibility that some of the objects in their possession are fake. Much more important, however, is the fact that several unusual categories of Cycladic antiquities are known only from unprovenanced objects. Since it is very difficult to tell forged and real Cycladic figures apart (because the available scientific tests don’t work with stone), it is entirely possible that whole areas of this field are forged.

  Intellectually, this is a very serious problem. To begin with, in the early years when Cycladic figures became fashionable to collect, all of them were about the length of a forearm. After they became popular in the salesrooms, however, bigger statues began to turn up on the market—which fetched higher prices. But because only two of these have a secure provenance and both were discovered before 1900 (now in the National Museum in Athens), and because science can’t tell the fake from the real thing, how can we be sure that any of these more recently acquired larger and more expensive statues are real? The answer is: We cannot. The same argument applies to male figures. Where Cycladic figures can be gendered, they are female—no male figure has ever been found with a secure provenance. So once again the entire category of male Cycladic figures may be fake.

  The high proportion of unprovenanced and recently surfaced antiquities in a collection is one measure of the damage done by the commercially minded salesrooms and unthinking collectors. But Chippindale and Gill are more sophisticated than that. They have studied the unprovenanced objects that have been offered for sale, and acquired by modern collectors, and they have identified at least five ways in which the archaeological contexts of these artifacts are “lost.” Taken together, these five forms of loss amount to a powerful indictment of collecting. For without an adequate grounding in knowledge, such collections have no point and may do more harm than good.

  One form of loss has already been referred to—that the wide spread of unprovenanced antiquities, allied to the massive jumble of fakes, means that whole categories of object may be spurious. That apart, potentially the most damaging loss to archaeology is the large number of objects that are, or are supposed to be, found in groups. Chippindale and Gill give endless examples of this, but again, two will suffice.

  For example, in the George Ortiz Collection, two Corinthian terracottas, a hare and a comast (a dancer), are “said to have been found in the same tomb,” allegedly in Etruria. In secure circumstances, this might tell us something about the tomb, or the person buried there. The find spot might help explain the juxtaposition of hare and comast, which on the face of it is not at all an obvious pairing and may have an unusual meaning. But without such knowledge, the whole exercise is futile. In another case, two bronze statuettes of Heracles in the Crossroads of Asia collection shown at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge are said to have been found together in Afghanistan. They are more valuable if they have been found together, because this is rare. But who can tell if it is true, and in any case what was the significance of two Heracleses being found together? We may never know. There are many examples in auction catalogs of objects said to be found together, but who can prove this? We only have the salesroom’s word to go on, and behind them dealers and looters with a commercial interest in these things being found together, so that they fetch more.

  The sheer futility of all this is underlined by yet another phenomenon identified by Chippindale and Gill, which they term “wish fulfilment.” They give three telling examples in this category. The first is a marble “egg” in the Ortiz Collection that, allegedly, comes from the Cyclades. A date for this is given as 3200–2100 BC. But without any knowledge of its provenance, or the context in which it was found, this object is actually no more than an egg-shaped pebble that may have been picked up on any of the Greek islands. To call it an “egg,” thereby implying intention on the part of the artist and a role for the object, perhaps, in religious practices, is entirely unwarranted, archaeologically speaking. It is no more than a collector’s conceit.

  Similarly, the Ortiz Collection also contains several clay three-legged chairs that are described as “thrones”—the basis for this being that the objects are Mycenaean and Mycenaeans are known to have constructed objects “that accompanied the deceased to their tombs.” But without the context, who is to say they are Mycenaean in the first place and who is to say they are not something entirely different—milking stools, for example? Here again, the wishes of the collector may have taken over from disinterested scholarship.

  A third common effect of wish fulfillment is to see all clay and marble figures as “idols,” interesting statuettes that played a part in mysterious cults. Usually we do not know that: They may just as easily have been toys—“less interesting,” and therefore less valuable. In addition, the very word “idol” is an interpretation; we have no idea whether the figure represents a deity or the deceased, or served some other function. “Idol” is really a vague descriptive term, and no more should be read into it.

  In t
hese varied ways, scholarship is devalued and the wishes of the collector—which may have no basis in fact—take precedence over the work of disinterested and better-informed scholars. Bluntly, these may be considered forms of intellectual corruption.

  But far and away the best example of the way our understanding of the past has been distorted by the values of the auction houses and by the activities of rich and not-very-knowledgeable collectors (who nonetheless often like to pose as scholars) is the whole concept of Cycladic figures. Already plagued by fakes and copies, the collecting and salesroom framework of “art” is being imposed on an archaeology that may simply have no relation whatsoever to that structure.

  The most ludicrous and revealing example of this is the practice, now widespread, of attributing this or that Cycladic figure to this or that “Master.” Already we have, for example, sculptures alleged to be by the “Doumas Master,” the “Berlin Master,” the “Fitzwilliam Master,” and the “Copenhagen Master.” In one of Christie’s catalogs there is even a reference to a statue as being “in the style of the Schuster Master.” Yet “Master” is a concept that was invented to cope with Renaissance art and in so doing contains two important ingredients that simply do not apply to Cycladic art and many other types of antiquities. First, it implies—as was true of the Renaissance—that there were masters, artists capable of producing masterpieces in their own distinctive style and good enough to be followed by other, lesser artists. Second, as traditionally used, the qualification of the master was confined to something distinctive about his style when his name wasn’t known. As referred to earlier, it was based on the ideas of the Italian connoisseur, Giovanni Morrelli, taken up and developed by Bernard Berenson, who argued that authorship in an unsigned work could be identified by little, unconscious flourishes—the way the drapery was painted, for example, or the treatment of the ears. Thus, in painting we have the “Master of S. Bartholomew,” named from a series of panels in Cologne and Munich and where the style suggests the painter was from Utrecht, or the “Master of the Aix Annunciation,” named for a triptych now in three places—Aix, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam—in which the style suggests a Flemish artist.

  In the case of Cycladic art, however, this academic tradition is corrupted. In the first place, the “Masters” are named not after the defining characteristic of the artist, which sets his work apart, or after an important work by him, which epitomizes his particular skills—instead, they are named after the owner of the object, the collection of which it forms a part, or the museum where the collection is held, the aim being either a commercial one (to suggest how good the sculptor was) or to flatter the owner. Once again, scholarly aims have been corrupted by commercialism. This is not to deny that study of the artistic variations between Cycladic figures is not possible or desirable, or that there are “subgroups” among them, just that the concept of “Master,” given the evidence we have (or rather don’t have), is intellectually meaningless.

  Nor does it make sense, again on the available evidence, to speak of regional styles of Cycladic art, according to the islands (Naxos, Paros, Ios, and so on), since most of the provenances attributing objects to these islands are so flimsy as to be meaningless.

  Some statues are said to have “canonical” proportions, presuming Cycladic artists had such a canon in mind, and others are described as “postcanonical,” implying a development over time. Again, these ideas are based as much on unprovenanced—and therefore possibly fake—material as on objects that are “archaeologically secure.” They imply an understanding of mathematics, in order to achieve these complex canonical proportions, for which there is as yet little evidence. Under the circumstances, any concept of a “canon,” or implication of development, is premature, though that might change if more hard evidence about the circumstances of excavation became available.

  On top of it all, some of the figures have been discovered with traces of blue or red paint on them, so that we are not even sure what color they originally were and how they were decorated. In such circumstances, how on earth can we judge who was a master and who was not? We do not even know if the current fashion for displaying Cycladic figures—in museums as well as in auction catalogs—in an upright vertical position is correct. They are decorated with elaborate toes pointing down—which suggests the toes were designed to be seen, but this means that the figures could never have stood by themselves. Probably, they should be displayed horizontally, not vertically.

  In amassing and collating such detailed evidence, Chippindale and Gill have taken archaeologists’ arguments about the damage done by looters much further than they have ever gone before. In particular, and without letting the salesrooms off the hook, they have brought collectors and museums under the spotlight, putting them on notice that their actions are no less to blame than are those of the looters themselves in causing so much damage to our understanding of the past. Collectors such as George Ortiz have often argued that even if their collections contain loot, then at least those objects are better looked after in collections like his and are available for study. Chippindale and Gill expose that for the nonsense it is. In theory, they say, the objects may be available to study; in practice, there is little that can be done when the most interesting aspects of the objects have been lost—in the looting.

  The results of their investigation also showed that the loss to knowledge is in fact already far advanced, that far more damage to archaeology has already been done than anyone thought, and that in several areas— Cycladic objects, Etruscan objects, and West African objects, together with the mixture of looted antiquities, fakes, and convenient fictions abounding—the mess is now completely unacceptable. According to Chippindale and Gill, Cycladic figures tend to be found “in about every tenth grave.” This may mean that as many as 12,000 graves have been destroyed to provide the corpus of 1,600 objects currently known (140 figures have been recovered scientifically, at least 1,400 illicitly). This total, they say, represents around sixteen entire cemeteries and 85 percent of the funerary record. In the case of Cycladic art, there may now be nothing left to discover—legally or illegally.

  Chippindale and Gill reserve special criticism for the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. They reveal that before the opening of the Fitzwilliam’s exhibition Crossroads of Asia, in 1992, they wrote to its director, Simon Jervis, requesting assurances that the objects in the show were “archaeologically secure.” This they felt entitled to do, because although the idea for the show had been mooted before Mr. Jervis took over, the guidelines of the Museums and Galleries Commission of England and Wales state in part: “A museum should not acquire, whether by purchase, gift, bequest or exchange, any work of art or object unless the governing body or responsible officer is satisfied that the museum can acquire a valid title to the specimen in question, and that in particular it has not been acquired in, or exported from, its country of origin (or any intermediate country in which it may have been legally owned) in violation of that country’s laws.”

  No reply was ever received from the Fitzwilliam in answer to this query, or from the Ancient India and Iran Trust that sponsored the exhibition. Later, it emerged from the minutes of various meetings within the Fitzwilliam, when government indemnity was being sought, that the idea for the exhibition had actually been proposed by Neil Kreitman of California, who had put together the collection that was to form the core of the exhibition. This was disingenuous. Everyone in the antiquities field knew by that time that Gandharan sculpture was being looted on a widespread scale. It was unprofessional and irresponsible of the Fitzwilliam to ignore the provenance of this material.

  Christopher Chippindale therefore wrote an editorial in Antiquity in which he pointed out that the bulk of the objects in that part of the forthcoming exhibition owned by A.I.C. were not secure archaeologically and that 88 percent of them had no provenance whatsoever before the show. The matter was then raised with the ethical committee of the Museums Association, the professional “union” to which most B
ritish curators belong, but the committee failed effectively to address the issue. Chippindale and Gill continue: “It seems to us that in allowing the [Crossroads of Asia] exhibition to proceed, the Fitzwilliam has publicly endorsed the display of antiquities which can reasonably be expected to have been looted. They seem to be taking the view that so long as the objects are beautiful it does not matter that the original archaeological context has been lost and can never be recovered. Such a view merely serves to encourage the market and private collectors to continue the destruction.” This is another way of saying that collectors are the real looters.

  When Chippindale and Gill began their research, they suspected that the proportion of unprovenanced (and therefore, almost certainly looted) antiquities sold at auction—at Bonhams, Christie’s, and Sotheby’s—was very high. As they delved deeper, however, they found much more than they had bargained for. In particular, they were distressed by the way provenances had been invented, the way museums and collectors “join together” objects, for which there is no evidence that they were ever an ensemble, and the way purpose is attributed to objects for which there is no context. These maneuvers were breathtaking in their audacity. The attribution of “Master” to objects that are in no way deserving of the accolade was another surprise. This intellectual vandalism and indifference to the truth was, to be blunt, shocking.

  It was this distress that gave rise to “Chippindale’s Law.” To begin with, this was intended merely as a wry comment, a despairing joke about the naked cynicism of the trade and certain collectors and rogue museums. Chippindale’s Law says, “However bad you feared it would be [so far as antiquities looting and smuggling are concerned], it always turns out worse.” It was true about Chippindale and Gill’s article in the American Archaeological Journal, and as is only too evident from this book, it is true about the world surrounding Giacomo Medici, about the world’s rogue museums, the coterie of shameless collectors, leading auction houses, and the raft of deceitful and conspiratorial dealers. The more one discovers about their activities, over the years, the worse the picture revealed becomes. Layers and layers of outer evidence have been peeled away, to excavate a rotten core within, a core that not even its worst critics imagined. It is now time to sum up this core in all its stinking glory.