The Medici Conspiracy (26 page)

The acquisition of this vase, and the analysis of its features, convey something of the excitement of classical scholarship—the sense of discovery and of interrelationships. This is also what justified the high price of $800,000 and confirms once more the sheer importance of the objects that Medici and the cordata traded in. But where was this important vase found? We know nothing about that.

The full list of objects acquired by Fleischman—depicted in the Polaroids seized in Geneva, given in the Dossier—shows that he almost invariably acquired his antiquities from either the Bürkis or from Robin Symes. Did he
never
ask himself where Fritz Bürki or Symes got these objects from? Were none of them troubled by the silence surrounding these rare and important antiquities?

There were two final pieces of paper that Pellegrini unearthed at Geneva in relation to Fleischman, but they weren't Polaroids. They were checks. One was dated July 20, 1995, number 116, made out for $100,000 and drawn on the Republic National Bank of New York, 452 Fifth Avenue. The other was dated March 20, 1996, was numbered 4747, made out for $5 50,000, and was drawn on the Chase Manhattan Bank, 11 West 57th Street. But the curious thing about both checks is that although they were found in Corridor 17, on Medici's premises, they weren't made out to him but to “Phoenix Ancient Art SA.” Why would Medici have in his possession at the Freeport in Geneva checks made out to someone else? And why would one of the checks be postdated March 20, 1996, when it was seized during the raid that took place on September 13, 1995? Was it to be honored
after
the sale of the Fleischman Collection to the Getty? This
was all partly explained, and amplified, by other documentation Pellegrini discovered. One was a note, on Phoenix Ancient Art–headed paper, dated Geneva, May 5, 1995, which read:

It was signed “Hischam Aboutaam.”

This seems a clear example of triangulation. This was still further underlined by another document in the same file. It was a “Contrat de Partenariat,” a contract of partnership, between Editions Services and Phoenix Ancient Art. Dated “Genève le 8 Juin 1994,” it outlined an arrangement confirming that at the sale of the Hirschman Collection of Greek vases, held at Sotheby's on December 9, 1993, the two parties spent £1,953,539.39, in the proportions two-thirds by Editions Services and one-third by Phoenix Ancient Art. The two parties agreed that this sum was the equivalent of US$3 million and that in the future resale of the objects, the two partners would be reimbursed in those proportions—two-thirds to Editions Service and one-third to Phoenix.

Still more documents testified to the close association between Medici and Phoenix—transport notes for Editions Services goods, written on Phoenix notepaper, monthly invoices (signed) from Medici to Phoenix for “services” (“expertise, consultation,” and so on), in sums ranging from 9,500 Swiss francs to US$30,000.

Some idea of the overall importance of the objects in the Fleischman Collection may be had from Pellegrini's calculation that the average price of their objects was in excess of $100,000. Nonetheless, the most troubling aspect
is that so many of these unprovenanced objects came from Medici, and therefore out of the ground of Italy illegally. The Getty's own documents make it clear that the museum knew that most of the objects had surfaced via such figures as Robin Symes and Fritz Bürki. The checks show that Fleischman dealt directly with the Aboutaams. Everyone knew what was going on. Yet in the Getty's acquisition documentation, the “Provenance and Exportability” section never queries where these objects come from.

That makes it regrettable—more than regrettable—that the Getty, and Marion True in particular, saw fit to begin acquiring the Fleischman Collection and then had the gall to declare a new acquisitions policy at the museum, affirming that it would only acquire objects that had been in published collections. Marion True was well aware by then that many if not all the modern collections of antiquities have been acquired in exactly the same way as the Fleischman Collection.

The checks were a bonus, a vivid reminder of how close the glitzy world of the collector is to the underworld. But it is Medici's bread-and-butter records that are truly shocking: remember that every object discussed in this chapter is represented in the incriminating Polaroid collection in Corridor 17.

Maurice Tempelsman, the Belgian-born diamond merchant and chairman of the largest diamond cutters in the world, was a visitor to the Classics Department of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and was perhaps best known for being the companion of Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis. During the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Tempelsman acquired a major collection of Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman antiquities, mainly sculpture. According to the documentation, most of the objects were acquired through Robin Symes.

Fairly early on, however, Mr. Tempelsman was seeking to sell his collection, and, in fact, his antiquities were offered to the Getty on no fewer than four occasions beginning in October 1982, when Jiri Frel was curator, and when Tempelsman approached the museum through Robin Symes, who offered
en bloc
twenty-one of his most important objects, including a number of Egyptian and ancient Near Eastern antiquities. The asking
price was $45 million, and it was refused. In the summer of 1985, after two other unsuccessful approaches, Symes made a fourth proposal, this time offering eleven of the most important Greek and Roman objects, for $18 million. On this occasion, the relevant curators recommended acceptance, and the eleven items were officially acquired in 1985.

The documents concerning this matter, which the Getty made available to Dr. Ferri, were redacted to an extent, and they identified only three of the eleven pieces, one a marble sculpture of two griffins attacking a deer, the second a marble bowl, a footbath with painted Nereids on Hippocamps (sea horses), and the third a marble Apollo. As it happened, however, all three of these important marble objects were found depicted in the seized Polaroids in Geneva. There were three Polaroids of each object, “clearly photographed with the same camera and at the same time, so much so that the lot numbers on the back of the photographs are the same (00057703532).” Each object was shown in fragments, encrusted with earth, and photographed on an Italian newspaper lying on a table with a multicolored tablecloth. Because they all shared the same batch number in the photographs, Pellegrini concluded that they were all found on the same site at the same time. And in time they became the subject of an article in the Getty
Journal
, number fourteen, for 1986, where it was hypothesized that in antiquity the objects came originally from the same geographical area “if not from the same site.” The author speculated that the original location was perhaps Macedonia and that they had been shipped to Taranto and then to Etruria. How much did the author know?

To cap it all, Pellegrini found among the documents negatives of a visit Medici had made to Los Angeles. Among these negatives was a photograph of the man himself standing next to the three marble objects from the Tempelsman collection, “almost as if he was claiming their paternity.”

The sheer quality of the Tempelsman material is attested to by Dr. Cornelius Vermeule, curator of the Department of Classical Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: “. . . its condition, quality and aesthetic importance are supreme.” David G. Mitten, Loeb Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at Harvard, said that “the objects in the group are of consistently outstanding quality” and that several “rank among the masterpieces of the art of their period anywhere.” They were, he said, “hallmarks in the history of art.” Jerome J. Pollitt, professor of classics and
classical archaeology at Yale, said that if acquired, “the Tempelsman objects would substantially raise the level of quality of the Museum's antiquities collection and provide it with material which in some areas has no known parallel.” Finally, John G. Pedley, professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan and director of the university's Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, also agreed that some of the objects were without parallel and were of great scholarly importance.

The notes compiled about individual objects amplify this. The marble group of griffins attacking a deer (valued individually at $5.5 million) was “a stunning
tour de force
, unparalleled anywhere in Greek art.... This group is unique; there is simply nothing else known like it . . . this piece also provides one of the finest examples of colored marble sculpture to survive.” Of the marble bowl, with paintings on the inside (valued individually at $2.2 million), “No other such object is known to me. . . . The painted scene and its rich polychromy make the basin unique, a precious example of the almost completely vanished classical Greek monumental painting, the art which was most praised by ancient Greek and Roman writers on art . . . This piece is of the highest possible importance.... As an exquisite example of Greek painting at its finest, as well as its fundamental importance for our understanding of late classical Greek polychromy, pigments, and the techniques used to apply them to marble surfaces, the basin is of unique importance.” And for the statue of Apollo (valued at $2.5 million), “This statue may well be the finest and most accomplished piece of its kind in North America.”

So far as classical art is concerned, these pieces are as important as can be. There can be no more talk in the trade that unprovenanced antiquities are humdrum, ordinary objects. Yet in the acquisition notes, written by Arthur Houghton, under “Provenance and Exportability,” here is the
entire
entry: “The collection represents a selection of objects from a larger collection formed by Maurice Tempelsman, a diamond merchant resident in New York, over the past twenty-five years. The individual pieces come from a variety of sources, although the largest number were provided directly by, or were bought through, Robin Symes of London. All have been legally imported into the U.S. The collection is currently in the Museum.”

And that's it. These were objects of immense importance, yet they had no history before Symes or Tempelsman—
and no one chose to ask questions
. Not the Getty staff or the experts who inspected the material. Did no one ask where such important material came from and why the objects had not previously been published? Did no one ask Robin Symes where he had acquired such wonderful material? Had no one any idea where they probably came from? Were they frightened of the answer? Or, did they already know?