The Medici Conspiracy

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The Medici Conspiracy Page 51

by Peter Watson


  quality of the antiquities in the inventory of

  release from prison with troubles still looming

  Schinoussa in the life and operations of

  smuggling, collaboration in

  value placed on his holdings by

  wall relief offered for sale to the Met

  Xoilan Trader, Inc. and

  See also Robin Symes Limited (London)

  Syriskos

  Tagliaferri, Francesco

  Tanis Antiquities Ltd.

  Tarquinia (Etruscan city)

  Taubman, A. Alfred

  Tavernier, Edmond

  Tchacos-Nussberger, Frederique “Frida”

  Artemis statue sold by

  association with Medici, paperwork indicating

  on Cottier-Angeli

  Ferri, deal worked out with

  fragments sold by

  Gospel of Judas manuscript acquired by

  Hecht memoir, mentioned in

  the investigation of

  litigation against

  Medici, description of as “monopoliser” of the market

  Medici “cordata,” participant in

  name of in the organigram

  prosecutorial interrogations of others, mentioned in

  sentence received by

  Symes and

  Tecafin

  Tempelsman, Maurice

  Thomas, Sir Keith

  Thompson, Margaret

  Three-Heads Wolf Painter

  Three Lines Group

  Tokely-Parry, Jonathan

  Toledo Museum of Art

  Tolve, Massimo

  Tombaroli (tomb robbers)

  brutality of in dealing with artifacts

  Casasanta

  Cenere, Armando

  collectors, supply of

  conversations of recorded by phone taps

  Evangelisti, Giuseppe

  motivations of, claimed and actual

  prosecutorial interrogations of

  scale of the activities of

  Topic-Mimara, Ante

  Trademarks on Greek Vases (Johnston)

  Treaty of Sèvres

  Trendall, Dale

  Trial of Medici

  deal offered by Medici to the prosecutor

  Medici’s defense

  setting the stage

  the verdict

  Triangulation

  confirmed in True interview

  the Fleischman Collection and

  fragments, sale of as aspect of

  the Getty Museum, used in acquisitions by

  Symes interview, confirmation of in

  Trittolemos Painter

  True, Marion

  acquisitions involving Medici by

  the Fleischman Collection, acquisition of

  fragments, testimony regarding

  on a fresco in the Fleischman Collection

  full curator at the Getty, appointment as

  future of

  Greek charges against

  Greek investigations of (see Operation Eclipse and subsequent Greek investigations)

  Hecht memoir, discussed in

  interrogation of

  interviews of others, discussed in

  investigation of

  judge’s comments regarding in Medici trial

  leaked documents relating to

  Medici, association with

  Medici’s trial, discussed in

  pictures of found on Schinoussa

  proposed fellowship, support of

  public standing of

  reputation in Italy

  resignation of

  Roman funerary relief, misdirected email from regarding

  smuggled statue, observation of

  trial of

  vacation home, purchase of

  Walsh on

  Tsatalis, Georgios

  Tsirogiannis, Christos

  Turkey

  the Lydian Hoard and

  the Morgantina silver and

  police actions regarding stolen antiquities in

  Tyrrhenos

  Tzallas, George

  UNESCO, attempts to control movement of archaeological/cultural property

  UNIDROIT convention

  Union Bank of Switzerland

  United Kingdom

  United States

  Unprovenanced antiquities, extent of trade in. See Antiquities; Chippindale’s Law; Network of trade in unprovenanced antiquities

  Urban II

  Vasari, Giorgio

  Vases, Greek. See Greek vases

  Vatican Painter

  Vermeule, Cornelius

  Vermeule, Emily

  Vickers, Michael

  Vilbert, Serge

  Viterbo, Antonio da

  von Bothmer, Dietrich

  American Institute of Archaeology, failure of election to board of trustees

  attributions for objects in the Fleischman collection provided by

  attributions for objects owned by the Getty provided by

  Becchina, relations with

  the Euphronios krater, acquisition of

  Ferri’s interest in interviewing

  the Fleischman Collection and

  fragments, frequent contribution of

  fragments, skill at identifying

  Frel as employee of

  Hecht memoir, discussed in

  kylix by Euphronios, reference to

  the Lydian Hoard

  Medici, association with

  the Morgantina silver and

  on the poorly drawn and average vase

  proposed fellowship, opposition to

  public standing of

  reputation in Italy

  request to interview

  Tchacos interview, discussed in

  True, close links with

  True interrogation, discussed in

  Walk, Seymour

  Walsh, John

  Warren, E. P.

  Wedgwood, Joshua

  Weintraub, Sy

  White, Shelby. See also Levy-White collection

  Wight, Karol

  Wilkie, Nancy

  Williams, Dyfri

  Williams, Harold

  Wilson, Peter

  Winckelman, Johann Joachim

  Wish fulfillment

  Wood, James N.

  Würzburg Painter

  Xoilan Trader, Inc.

  Zakos, George

  Zavitsianos, Apostolos

  Zbinden Collection

  Zevi, Fausto

  Zicchi, Danilo

  Zirganos, Nikolas

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

  Peter Watson has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the London Times and Sunday Times, the Observer, and Spectator. Since June 1997, he has been a research associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. His books include The Caravaggio Conspiracy, From Manet to Manhattan, and Sotheby’s: The Inside Story.

  Cecilia Todeschini is a researcher and translator who has worked for the BBC, ITV, CBS, ABC, and CBC. For many years she specialized in reporting on the Mafia, covering the great trials in Palermo. Among many other subjects, she has also covered papal conclaves.

  Nikolas Zirganos (Chapter 21) is an investigative reporter based in Athens. He works for Kyriakatiki Eleftheroptypia newspaper and Epsilon magazine.

  PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997. It is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.

  I . F. STONE, proprietor of I. F. Stone’s Weekly, combined a commitment to the First Amendment with entrepreneurial zeal and reporting skill and became one of the great independent journalists in American history. At the age of eighty, Izzy published The Trial of Socrates, which was a national bestseller. He wrote the book after he taught himself ancient Greek.

  BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE was for nearly thirty years the charismatic editorial leader of Th
e Washington Post. It was Ben who gave the Post the range and courage to pursue such historic issues as Watergate. He supported his reporters with a tenacity that made them fearless and it is no accident that so many became authors of influential, best-selling books.

  ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN, the chief executive of Random House for more than a quarter century, guided one of the nation’s premier publishing houses. Bob was personally responsible for many books of political dissent and argument that challenged tyranny around the globe. He is also the founder and longtime chair of Human Rights Watch, one of the most respected human rights organizations in the world.

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  Peter Osnos, Founder and Editor-at-Large

  a From Etruria in Italy, the modern area stretching north of Rome to Grosseto, Siena, and Florence and into Umbria as far as Perugia.

  b This illegal dig had come to light when a building company had been clearing a road, which had collapsed. It turned out that the road had collapsed because tombaroli had built a tunnel under it, to get from a house on one side to a stipe—a room attached to a temple—opposite. Votive objects galore had been smuggled out via this tunnel, but once the road had collapsed, the very distinctive antiquities from Scrimbia had been on the Carabinieri’s watch list ever since. Dozens of objects in Savoca’s mansard room matched the style of objects typically found at Scrimbia.

  c One such object was the sarcophagus stolen from the Church of San Saba in Rome, which had been consigned to Sotheby’s in London by Editions Services (see p. 19).

  d The Brygos Painter flourished in Athens c. 490–470 BC and was a pupil of Onesimos.

  e See p. 73.

  f In the catalog of the Passion for Antiquities exhibition, in relation to catalog number 126, the text of the Hercules reads as follows: “The superb illusionism of Second-Style Roman wall painting is brilliantly in evidence in this fragment from the upper zone of a Pompeian wall.” It continues: “The upper portion of the fresco matches precisely the upper portion of a fresco section in the Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection... and is from the same room as catalogue number 125” (italics added; see the Dossier section). Catalog number 125 was in fact another fresco fragment, consisting of two rectangular panels and showing landscape scenes bathed in a light blue-green hue. The text argues that, based on the right-to-left orientation of the shadows on the columns, “this was part of the right-hand wall upon entering the room.”

  These two items recall the frescoes from the Pompeian villa that Pellegrini first encountered when delving into Medici’s documentation—they too were of the Second-Style (see p. 69).

  We know that three walls were photographed by the tombaroli, but it is not clear if they are from the same villa. Only parts of three walls were recovered in Corridor 17, but if the building had dimensions as hinted at in the diagram on p. 71, many frescoes might still be missing.

  g See the Dossier section.

  h See Note, pp. 384–385.

  i See p. 22.

  j The circumstantial evidence was that the buyer lodged a bid just above the reserve on each item and did not bid on any other items. Furthermore, the commission bid was lodged just minutes before the sale, and afterward, Sotheby’s shipping department was instructed to send the purchases of Arts Franc together with the purchases of Editions Services to Arts Franc’s address in Geneva.

  k See p. 62.

  l See p. 19.

  m See pp. 96–98.

  n See pp. 103–106.

  o See p. 129.

  p See pp. 129–130.

  q See p. 10.

  r See p. 84.

  s See p. 26 and the Notes, p. 386.

  t See p. 82.

  u Again, see p. 99 and 209.

  v See the Prologue, p. xvi.

  w See pp. 103–106.

  x See p. 104.

  y See Chap. 16.

  z See p. 131.

  aa See p. 204 for the circumstances.

  ab The lost palace of King Sennacherib (704–681 BC) was rediscovered in 1847 by the British adventurer Austen Henry Layard. According to Genesis, Nineveh was among the first cities to be built after the Flood.

  ac See p. 104.

  ad See the Prologue.

  ae In an interview with Peter Watson in London on February 6, 2006, Robin Symes said he had contributed $1 million to the Oxford Fellowship.

  af See p. 106.

  ag The Kalmakarra Cave, known as the Western Cave, is located about nine miles northwest of Pol-e Dokhtar in Luristan, near the Iraq border. Several hundred objects are believed to have been looted and are now dispersed in Turkey, Japan, Britain, Switzerland, and the United States. In 1993, Turkish authorities seized a number of objects believed to belong to the treasure. One of the experts who examined the griffin noted its similarities to certain objects in the Miho Museum in Japan.

  ah See pp. 123–126 for a discussion of their quality and probable provenance.

  ai See p. 204.

  aj See pp. 26–27.

  ak By now, Pellegrini had worked out that the organigram must have been written down sometime between 1990 and 1993. The chart showed Mario Bruno, of Lugano, on a secondary level, below Medici and Becchina but above the capi zona. By then, the investigators had established from other interviews and interrogations that Bruno had been a prominent figure in the antiquities underworld in the 1980s, almost on a level with Hecht, but had lost some of his influence since then, though no one knew why. Bruno died in 1993, so it follows that the organigram was compiled between these dates.

  al See pp. 240–242.

  am See pp. 244–245.

  an Nikolas Zirganos is an investigative reporter based in Athens. He works for Kyriakatiki Eleftheroptypia newspaper and Epsilon magazine.

  ao This perhaps also explained something that had puzzled Ludovic de Walden, the London lawyer for the Papadimitriou family. It was known that Christo always made notes using the yellow legal pads favored by American law firms. No notes of any kind by Christo, on yellow paper, were ever found among the archives, save for the one sheet written on in Symes’s distinctive handwriting (see pp. 254–255). Is this what Symes was burning on Schinoussa?

  ap See p. 239.

  aq See p. 103.

  ar See the explanation for this above, p. 373.

  Copyright © 2006, 2007 by Peter F. Watson and Cecilia Todeschini. Copyright © 2007 by Nikolas Zirganos for Chapter 21. Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™, a member of the Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved.

  Paolo Ferri photo © Alberto Cristofari/A3/Contrasto/Redux.

  All other photos courtesy of the authors and the Italian investigators.

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