The Medici Conspiracy (23 page)

Back in 1993, Bell had applied to the Met for permission to examine the silver, but strangely enough, and contrary to their usual courtesy toward senior scholars, the Met had categorically refused. Now, after Bell's new discoveries, the Italians insisted that the Met allow him to examine the silver. Later, the FBI, as part of a new agreement between the United States and Italy, which guarantees that Americans will not be allowed to import illegally excavated material, said it would put its secure labs at Bell's disposal for the examination. Again the Met refused, describing Bell as “biased” and his arguments as “untrustworthy.” Its spokesman said that it could not be proved that the silver came “exclusively” from Morgantina. Once again, stalemate. The FBI offer was not taken up.

Finally, however, and with the ignominious return of the Lydian treasure to Turkey in mind, the Met relented and in the spring and summer of 1999, Bell was allowed to examine the silver. The occasion produced its own drama. On four of the silver objects he read the name “Eupolemos,” a name already found in Morgantina. The Met's Greek
and Roman expert, Dietrich von Bothmer, had translated these inscriptions rather differently. The inscription, which von Bothmer interpreted as meaning “from the war,” was based on his reading of the relevant part of Greek as “EKIIOΛEMOÎ¥” Instead, in Bell's opinion, the letters read, “EΥΠOΛEMOÎ¥,” one character different, but critically different, because it means the genitive case of the name Eupolemos, which translates as: “Of Eupolemos.”

Although the Met, when it first acquired the silver, announced that the pieces came from Turkey, the Turks have never claimed it, despite their success over the Lydian hoard. Moreover, the Carabinieri Art Squad pieced together the chain of events since the silver left the ground. This information was made available by the Carabinieri at a special conference on the illicit traffic held at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, England, in 2000. The route was as follows: Vincenzo Bozzi and Filippo Baviera, tombaroli in Enna, sold the silver for 110 million lire ($27,000) to Orazio Di Simone, a Sicilian middleman based in Lugano in Switzerland, who sold it for $875,000 to Robert Hecht, who sold the silver to the Metropolitan Museum for $3 million. A not unfamiliar sequence.

Given these antecedents, perhaps we should not be surprised to find that the Metropolitan consorted with Medici almost as often as the Getty did.

There can be little doubt about this, for Maurizio Pellegrini found almost exactly the same kind of paper trail leading from Medici to the Met as he had found with the Getty. The evidence was there, in the Polaroids and other photographs seized in the Geneva Freeport. Antiquities would first be photographed while they were dirty and in fragments, before restoration. Then they would be restored, photographed again, sold to the Met—again through one or other of the various “front” outfits—and, finally, Medici would visit New York and have himself photographed with “his” object on display. Pellegrini isolated this paper trail in seven cases.

The first case concerned a red-figure Attic amphora. This was first shown dirty and unrestored in one of the photographs seized in Geneva. Another seized photograph showed the same object, now restored, on display
in a case in the Met. A second instance relates to a Laconian kylix, which is depicted in the Polaroids as being made up of fragments with many gaps. A separate photograph shows the same object, now restored, in its showcase in the museum on Fifth Avenue. The third case concerns an oinochoe in the shape of a Negro's head. It too is shown in a Polaroid, and in a separate photograph appears in its showcase in the museum. Fourth, a red-figure Apulian
dinos,
attributed to the Darius Painter, was found in the photographs seized in Geneva. A
dinos,
also known as a
lebes,
is a deep bowl, usually rounded at the bottom so that it has to be set on a stand. It was used as a container, or for cooking or, when made of bronze, as a prize in athletic games. One set of photos shows this red-figure dinos in fragments; a second set shows it partially restored—with the fragments reassembled but the joins still visible; a third set shows the dinos, now fully restored, on display in its showcase at the Met.

Photographs of a red-figure psykter with figures on horseback were also among those seized in Geneva. One shows several fragments partially restored, but still with gaps. A separate fragment was photographed on its own. This object, too, was bought by the Met.

Then there were the photographs of a red-figure Attic amphora by the Berlin Painter. Among the photographs seized was one showing this in the early stages of restoration, with the fragments crudely assembled but with many gaps. A second photograph shows the amphora after complete restoration, “in near perfect conservative condition thanks to expert restoration which completely eliminated the traces of breakage.” It too was shown in its showcase in the museum.

The seventh example is, of course, the Euphronios vase, discussed in the Prologue. Among the photographs seized in Geneva was one that appears from a covering note to have been taken in May 1987, when Medici was in New York. This photograph shows Giacomo Medici himself, standing proudly next to a large krater, showing the death of Sarpedon. It is indeed the Euphronios krater, and Medici's proud pose, with chest out, chin thrust forward, depicts him as a victor, as having won some kind of race or contest. There is no mistaking the message. A second photograph shows Robert Hecht on the same occasion next to the same object. Why were these photographs taken? Pellegrini, Conforti, and Ferri all realized that, by themselves, these images didn't constitute
proof
of anything. Taken in
context, however, alongside all the other photographs—at the Met, at the Getty, and at other museums—in which Medici liked to be photographed with “his” objects, it was extremely revealing, and damning.

This does not complete the case against the Met. There were other tantalizing documents found in Geneva that provided more questions than answers. For example, there was an air-mail envelope, stamped December 14, 1990. At top left was the name and address of the Metropolitan, “1000 Fifth Avenue, NY NY 10028-0198,” and typed below, Medici's name and address in Switzerland. Pellegrini never found out what had been in this envelope. As with the Getty, the Metropolitan had a very close relationship with certain antiquities collectors whose holdings were also stuffed with loot. As with the Getty, the Met associated itself with these collectors, adding the institution's considerable prestige to the collection, when it must have known that the objects it was putting on display had been illegally dug up and smuggled out of Italy.

Although the extent of the Getty's acquisitions earned it the title among the initiated of the “Museum of the
Tombaroli,
” and although the Met's acquisition of the Euphronios krater and its behavior over the Lydian hoard and the Morgantina silver earned it the special opprobrium of the Turks and the Italians, these two museums were by no means the only ones that Medici and the rest of his network dealt with. It was impossible for Pellegrini to check all the documentation seized at the Geneva Freeport since many objects acquired and displayed in the world's museums are never published, so that good images, dimensions, and other details are not available for study and comparison. Nevertheless, some incriminating details are in the public domain.

According to Pellegrini, Medici was the origin of quite a few objects in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. Just two give a flavor. The first is made up of two antefixes showing Maenades and Silenus. An antefix was a roof decoration in antiquity, usually an upright ornament, and it was intended
to conceal the joints between rows of tiles and to protect the gaps from the weather. A maenades was a female satyr, and a silenus a male one.
¹
These antefixes, which are now in several museums of the world, not just Copenhagen, are much better than anything in the Villa Giulia, for example, and all appear in the Polaroids seized in the Geneva Freeport. The fact that the antefixes in Copenhagen and the Getty, and in Medici's Polaroids, show the ceramics to have been burned in part, may indicate that the temple was attacked or abandoned, possibly an important event in antiquity that, now, we shall probably never know anything about.

The second set of documents relates to parts of an Etruscan chariot—in particular, some incised bas-relief plates with sleeping lions, together with parts of the bridles and the wheels. The documentation shows that Medici sold these to Robert Hecht, possibly in the 1970s, for $67,000. Hecht then sold them on to the Copenhagen museum for 1.2 million Swiss francs (approximately $900,000).

Pellegrini's detective work also showed that in terms of sheer numbers, the Museum for Classical Antiquities in Berlin was just as bad as the Met. From the photographs found in Medici's possession in Geneva, there was a series of seven vases that originated with him that were acquired by Berlin.
²

Robert Hecht, in highly unusual and revealing circumstances, subsequently admitted to having sold looted material to several other museums besides the ones considered so far. These others include the Glyptotek in Munich, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Cleveland Museum in Ohio, the Harvard Museum system in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Campbell's Soup Museum in Camden, New Jersey, the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, the Louvre in Paris, and (once) the British Museum in London. We do not have the same level of detail for these acquisitions as we do for the acquisitions reported so far, but we see no reason to doubt what Hecht says: Most of the material he placed with these museums came from Medici (or possibly Becchina), in which case it will, almost certainly, consist of loot. At the same time, in the absence of detailed internal documentation from these museums, it is unclear who knew what and at what time in these institutions concerning the origin of these items.