The Medici Conspiracy

by Peter Watson

  2 The source for this statement was Stuart Silver, head of the Design Department at the Met.

  Chapter Two

  1 Here is a little background. In the mid–1980s, one of us (Peter Watson) had been working as a writer on the Observer newspaper in London. A couple of times a year, Watson would have lunch with Brian Cook, the distinguished keeper in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. In 1985, he met Watson in his office overlooking the main gates of the museum on Great Russell Street. That day, he had on his desk the catalog for the forthcoming sale of antiquities at Sotheby’s—then about two weeks off. He pushed the catalog across his desk. “There,” he said softly, “there’s a story for you. Sotheby’s is selling a whole batch of smuggled antiquities.”He explained what he meant, and how he could be so sure. The sale included a dozen Apulian vases. Most people know these vases from museums: They usually have a black background with clear-cut, finely drawn, brownish-red figures on them and white filigree decoration. Apulia, modern Puglia, is a region of southern Italy (the “heel” in Italy’s “boot”), the capital of which is Foggia, which was once part of greater Greece, or Magna Graecia. (The Melfi vases were Apulian vases.) Cook explained that the important point to grasp was that the world of Apulian vases is, in effect, a closed world, in the sense that every legally excavated vase—and some 6,000 are known to scholars—had been listed in a three-volume catalog compiled by Professor Dale Trendall and updated, to 1983, by Professor Alexander Cambitoglou. Between 1983 and the date of Watson’s meeting with Cook, any other legally excavated vase would have been published in one of a small number of professional journals. Cook was familiar with these journals, he said, and none of the vases for sale at Sotheby’s had been published there, or in Trendall-Cambitoglou. By definition, therefore, these vases had been illegally excavated and smuggled out of Italy.

  “One or two might have been missed by Trendall or Cambitoglou,” said Cook, “but not the large numbers we are now seeing in the salesrooms.” Some of the vases in the Sotheby’s sale were very important, he added, and there was one in particular, estimated at £60,000 in the catalog, that the British Museum would dearly have loved to acquire. But the museum considered the sale unethical and so would not be bidding for the vase. Instead, the trustees wanted such sales stopped and after due consideration had authorized Cook to speak to the press.

  As Watson left the museum, Cook accompanied him part of the way, to where the museum’s own Apulian vases were displayed. There he underlined how important these vases are. As general decoration they often show scenes from mythology, theater, the luxurious life of the elite, and some even make general political or sociological points. Besides being sometimes very beautiful, they are therefore valuable historical documents in themselves. Moreover, what they depict is very often related to where they are buried. Thus, if vases are illegally excavated and then smuggled abroad, important details are invariably lost to study. So the clandestine trade is more than a contravention of Italian law; it is a sad and significant loss to scholarship and our understanding of the classical world.

  In addition to the Apulian vases, Hodges had documentation that concerned two specific antiquities. These were, first, a statue of the seventh-century BC Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus. The documents showed that this was already in London when it was offered to Sotheby’s to sell, but that it was in Britain illegally, because it had been smuggled out of Italy, from Rome. It became Hodges’s job to export it to Switzerland and then reimport it—legally, as it were—from there. The reason for this roundabout subterfuge was that, should the statue have become the subject of any action by the Italian authorities, Sotheby’s wanted to show that, so far as it was concerned, the paperwork was in order and showed that the statue had come from Switzerland—quite legally, because there were no restrictions on selling material imported from there. The paperwork that Hodges had, and leaked to us, showed that Sotheby’s staff were well aware that the statue had been illegally exported from Rome and exchanges in the documentation outlined in detail how they set about overcoming this problem.

  The second object for which Hodges provided the paperwork concerned a statue of another Egyptian deity, Sekhmet, the Lion Goddess, which Felicity Nicholson, the director of the Antiquities Department in London, had seen in Genoa and wanted to sell in London, where it would fetch a much higher price. This meant smuggling the statue out of Italy. On this occasion the documentation showed that she had persuaded a close friend and colleague, the London dealer Robin Symes, to actually carry out and oversee the smuggling, in return for a share of the profits when the Lion Goddess was sold. Symes did as she asked but, ironically, when the statue reached London, and then New York, ahead of being auctioned, where it was lit in order to be properly photographed, it was shown up as a fake. Symes’s expenses therefore had to be reimbursed, which is how the matter generated so much internal Sotheby’s documentation, paperwork that Hodges stole. Hodges’ documents also identified a Mr. V. Ghiya, who was operating in much the same way out of India, via intermediary companies in Switzerland, who sold via Sotheby’s.

  Chapter Eight

  1 These objects are important enough to feature in Mario Cristofani’s book Etruria e Lazio arcaico, Atti dell’incontro di studio (Archaic Etruria and Lazio: Documents of the Study Meeting), published in 1986 (p. 155 ff.). Mario Cristofani was a distinguished Etruscologist. In fact, it was Cristofani who excavated the temple dedicated to Hercules at Cerveteri in the early 1990s (see p. 202 and 384).

  2 The first was a skyphos by the Trittolemos Painter, showing Menelaus and Helen at the conquest of Troy, which was sold to the museum in 1970 by Nikolas Koutoulakis. The second was an Attic kylix, showing a blacksmith sitting at the anvil, acquired from Robin Symes in 1980. The third acquisition was the most important and took place in 1983. This involved a group of twenty-one Apulian vases all coming from the same tomb. The photographs in Medici’s warehouse didn’t show all the vases, however, but just four of them in fragments, lying on the floor. In this case there were three series of Polaroids—one of fifteen photographs, another of six, and a third of two—that show the vases in various stages of restoration, the most important of which was a krater by the Darius Painter. Later investigation by Ferri and Pellegrini unveiled the manner in which the Berlin museum had been “tricked” into buying these objects. These maneuvers are described in Chap. 12.

  Chapter Ten

  1 There is further exploration in Chap. 12 of the cumbersome nature of international letters rogatory. This is the mechanism whereby law enforcement authorities in one country can officially pursue investigations in another. At the best of times, they are crude, ponderous instruments. On top of that, however, clever lawyers exploit the sheer slowness of the procedure. Knowing that a rogatory is in the works but may take months to worm its way through the system, the prudent lawyer volunteers to give information. This may seem surprising, but it has one crucial advantage. If a party—such as Sotheby’s or the Getty, say—volunteers information, the other side is likely to accept. An investigating prosecutor, such as Dr. Ferri, will agree because it speeds up the procedure and prevents the investigation from running out of time, going beyond any statutes of limitation that may be looming. The advantage for parties being investigated is that by volunteering information, they do not have to provide all relevant details, nor do they subject themselves to the pre-trial process of “discovery,” under which they can be subpoenaed, compelled to produce all relevant documentation. In other words, by submitting documentation voluntarily, a party can appear to be cooperating willingly with an investigation, while at the same time legally holding back certain sensitive material. This is always difficult to prove, of course, but readers may judge for themselves.

  Chapter Twelve

  1 That Hecht supplied other important museums with illicit material is also indicated: “My friends were loyal during this period and brought me such fine objects as the Attic r/f kylix [now in Munich] by the El
pinidos Painter with Theseus binding the rascal Sinis to a tree.”

  2 In a magazine article published in July 2001, Hoving added that he had bumped into Hecht the previous December, at the opening of the Hermitage Rooms in London’s Somerset House, when he asked him “directly” if he had switched Sarrafian’s documents on to the Met’s vase. “He turned his face to the side after looking at me intently and said, ‘Of course.’”

  3 Perhaps the most interesting client of Summa and NFA was Gordon McLeudon of Dallas, Texas, whose father was the owner of some newspapers and a television station. “Gordon purchased fragments of Greek vases, Greek amber figurines and beads, Roman marble portraits and donated them to the Getty Museum with the connivance of Jiri Frel for an exaggerated appraisal for a tax write off. Some of the amber beads worth $5 to $25 were appraised $150 etc. It is no surprise that the IRA [Internal Revenue Administration] ordered a re-appraisal of Gordon McLeudon’s gifts. Apparently Frel made the appraisal on the stationery of Royal Athena Gallery and forged the signature of J. E. [Jerome Eisenberg], the owner.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  1 The Morgantina Venus is considered to be one of the most important objects in the Getty, and Italy has been trying to get it back for years. It is a life-size statue of Venus/Aphrodite, circa 420 BC, dressed in clinging drapery that both conceals and reveals the form of the body underneath. Opinion on the piece has ranged at various times from characterizing it as very beautiful to “scandalous.” There is also a dispute as to whether the head belongs with the rest of the body. Three heads are known to have been excavated by a tombarolo at Aidone, part of Morgantina. Two of them reached the Getty via the Tempelsman Collection, but the third is missing—unless it is the one atop the body of the Morgantina Venus.

  2 Symes admitted he had seen the Pompeian frescoes seized from Medici. In his opinion they could not be sold. He himself had sold the Griffins, the Tyche, and the Kore acquired from Koutoulakis. These objects went to Koutoulakis, he said, because it was more plausible for Greek objects, originating in Macedonia, to come from a Greek dealer—in other words, the arrangement distanced them from Italy. He said he did not know they came from Medici (as the Polaroid photo of the Griffins proves). He had then sold the Kore to the Getty, the Griffins to Tempelsman, and the Tyche to Fleischman, who then sold them to the Getty (see p. 198).

  Chapter Seventeen

  1 This access was limited but unique.

  2 Other details from the inventory: On December 19, 1998, Symes sold Leon Levy three objects: a Roman marble bust, third century AD, for $230,000; a Hellenistic over-life-size marble head of a woman, third century BC, for $500,000; and three gold vessels, north European, thirteenth century BC, for $750,000, making that day’s takings $1,480,000. There was also mention in the files at that point of a fresco sold to Levy, valued at $1.6 million, which turned out to be fake.More details: an ivory left foot, Roman, first century AD, valued at £15,000; an Egyptian basalt seated male figure, valued at £100,000; an Egyptian blue figure of Shu, valued at £100,000 (these three amounts were Citibank’s valuations for Symes’s loan). A Roman wall fresco of a portico, valued at £25,000.

  Another note, addressed to “Monsieur Jacques,” said that $1.5 million was due to be paid in to Xoilan on February 4 (the year was not specified), but out of that, certain payments had to be made—the note then detailed fourteen banks to which proceeds of between £2,877 and $166,888 were to be paid, banks in New York, Florida, Munich, Geneva, Zurich, London, and Guernsey.

  In March 2000, Nonna Investments, another of Symes’s companies, negotiated a “rolling facility” with Citibank of $14 million, later increased to $17 million. The loan was guaranteed by Despina Papadimitriou, Christo’s sister. A note of June 5, 1990, referred to a Cult Statue of a Goddess, acquired July 22, 1988, with an “unpaid principal balance of $9 million, maturing on July 21 1992, and accruing interest at 5 per cent per annum.” Other documentation said that the draped statue, probably of Aphrodite, was by an unknown Greek, probably south Italy or Sicily, dated to 425–400 BC. It was around seven feet in height and had originally been carved in pieces. It had been damaged when it had toppled, caused either by an earthquake or by vandals. Part of it was encrusted with soil. There were also Polaroid photographs of the statue, showing how it was pinned together.

  Another note, dated 1996, confirmed that Symes had eleven objects on loan to museums, valued in all at $9,095,000. These objects appeared to include three Villanovan, Etruscan, and Greek gold items. There was also a letter, dated July 25, 1991, from Malcolm Bell about Morgantina. It was not clear who this letter was addressed to, but it was in the Symes files alongside much material on the Getty.

  There were two other notes, this time on Robin Symes Limited notepaper, dated March 1987 and March 1989, which listed, in all, nineteen objects that Symes had on consignment with George Ortiz.

  Other material included Cycladic statues, Sardinian marble idols, Greek stone heads (one valued at $80,000), a marble kouros, Greek marble stelae, Greek bronzes (one valued at $65,000), a bronze Kore referred to as Griffins from Olympia, Greek arms and armor, early Greek pottery (one vase valued at $45,000), a life-size bronze head of a ruler valued at $850,000, an Etruscan bronze Hercules of the fifth century BC, Etruscan sculptures, terra-cottas, pottery, and jewelry. There was a letter from the Getty agreeing to buy various objects but setting off these purchases against a Diadoumenos head—part of the Fleischman collection—and a torso of Mithras, which were being returned to Italy. In October 1992, there was paperwork in connection with a Greek statue being sold to the Getty for $18 million.

  Chapter Twenty

  1 This interview took place on July 5, 2003, aboard Mr. Papadimitriou’s boat, Astrape: Mr. Papadimitriou repeated the allegations the following day.

  2 Interview, London, February 6, 2006.

  3 Gill, D. W. J. and C. Chippindale, “From Boston to Rome: reflections on returning antiquities,” International Journal of Cultural Property, Vol. 13, 2006, pp. 311–331.

  INDEX

  Aboutaam, Ali

  Aboutaam, Hischam, Aboutaam, Hischam

  Aboutaam, Noura

  Aboutaam, Sleiman

  Afghanistan

  Africa

  Aitken, Brian

  Albert, Jacques

  Alsdorf, Marilyn

  Alsdorf Collection

  Al-Thani, Sheikh Saoud

  Altman, Benjamin

  Amasis

  Amasis Painter

  American Institute of Archaeology

  Amorelli Falconi, Teresa

  Ancient India and Iran Trust

  Anedda, Alessandro

  Angeli-Cottier, Fiorella

  Antike Kunst Palladion

  Antiquities

  average price at auction of

  changing attitudes regarding the dealing of unprovenanced

  Chippindale’s law regarding illicit activities (see Chippindale’s law)

  clandestine network supplying and dealing unprovenanced (see Network of trade in unprovenanced antiquities)

  conclusions regarding

  destruction of

  fakes, scholarly problems posed by

  Greek (see Operation Eclipse and subsequent Greek investigations)

  impact (archaeological and cultural) of the trade in unprovenanced

  impact of the investigations and prosecutions on the world of

  recent cases of illicit activities

  return of

  worldwide nature of the problem

  Apostolides, Andreas

  Archaeological Institute of America

  Archaeological Museum (Munich)

  Archaeological Superintendency for Enna

  Archaeological Superintendency for Southern Etruria

  Architecture, consequences of the invention of concrete for

  Arcuri, Vincenzo

  Ariss Ancient Art

  Art and Culture of the Cyclades exhibition (Karlsruhe)

  Artemis, statue of


  Artemis Fujita

  Artemis (the goddess)

  Arts Franc

  Asfar, Nabil el

  Asian antiquities

  Asia Society (New York)

  Association for Field Archaeology

  Asteas

  Atlantis Antiquities (New York)

  Auction houses. See also Bonham’s; Christie’s; Sotheby’s

  Bacon, Francis

  Bartoloni, Gilda

  Baviera, Filippo

  Bearded Sphinx Painter

  Beazley, J. D.

  Becchina, Gianfranco

  Frel and

  future of

  the Getty kouros

  golden wreath photos in the archive of

  investigation of

  Japan, dealings in

  judge’s comments regarding in Medici trial

  Medici, comparison to

  Medici, rivalry with

  Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, involvement in sale of objects to

  name of in the organigram

  Ortiz, sale of objects to

  proceedings initiated against

  prosecutorial interrogations of others, mentioned in

  Becchina, Ursula “Rosie,”

  Belize

  Bell, Malcolm

  Bellezza, Aldo

  Bellini, Giovanni

  Berenson, Bernard

  Bergman, Robert P.

  Berlin Painter