The Medici Conspiracy (45 page)

From a detailed examination of the Getty's acquisition of the two vases, it became clear, first, that the average purchase price of a vase fragment was somewhere between $2,500 and $3,600. Obviously, this depended on size and importance, on whether the fragment related to the central theme of a vase or was incidental, for example, part of the rim. On this reckoning, however, the value of von Bothmer's donations to the Getty amount, over the years, to somewhere between 119 x $2,500 = $297,000 and 119 x $3,500 = $416,500. One might ask where von Bothmer found the means to fund these donations. Is this, perhaps, the way he liked to be remembered? According to what we have been told by other archaeologists, by attributing these fragments to known painters (if that is what he was doing), Dietrich von Bothmer would have increased the value of these fragments from 119 x $400 = $47,600 to 119 x $2,500 = $297,000, an increase of $249,900. Was he able to take a tax break on these gifts?

Now we turn to the overall price of the two vases acquired in fragments. This was, in the case of the Douris phiale, $141,300 and, in the case of the Berlin Painter calyx krater, $101,900. These prices would appear to be neither very expensive nor very inexpensive, when compared with other vases acquired by the Getty during that time, prices that ranged from $42,000 to $750,000. But $100,000-plus for a vase is still a lot of money.

On the other hand, in both cases, some of the fragments were donated to the museum. Therefore, we can say that each vase was acquired by the Getty
for less than what it was actually worth
. (We are excluding here the cost of reassembly.)

There are two more things to consider. First, in each case the fragments were acquired from a variety of sources, though with both vases the great majority came from one dealer. For example, in the case of the Douris phiale, the bulk of the fragments came from the Nefer Gallery—from either Frida Tchacos or her husband, Werner Nussberger, or both. A few came from Bürki, and one from Symes. In the case of the Berlin Painter krater, the bulk came from Symes, quite a few came from Dietrich von Bothmer, a few came from the Nefer Gallery, and one from Fred Schultz, a dealer in New York.

What, we may ask, does this pattern mean? Does it mean anything? In both cases, more than half the fragments came from one source, though not all at the same time (the Douris phiale arrived at the Getty on thirteen separate occasions, and the Berlin Painter krater on nine separate occasions). So there was always one primary source. The existence of several subsidiary sources—if we can call them that—perhaps allowed the fiction, for the benefit of naive trustees of a museum, that these fragments were excavated separately, turned up at different moments in time, and came on to the market by different routes.

But there was one other pattern evident from the acquisition of these two vases. They arrived in spurts. In each case, several years might pass without any fragments appearing, then several would come along almost at once. In the case of the Berlin Painter krater, for instance, there was a spurt in December 1984, when fragments were acquired on the third, seventeenth, and twentieth of the month, each time from Dietrich von Bothmer. Nothing arrived in 1985 or 1986, but there was a second spurt in February 1987. Sixteen fragments arrived from von Bothmer on the eleventh of the month, and another sixteen on the seventeenth, this time from Robin Symes. In the case of the Douris phiale, the first acquisitions were made in 1981 and 1982, nothing happened in 1983 and 1984, and then there was a spurt in early 1985 when twelve fragments arrived, all from Nefer. Nothing happened in 1986 or 1987, but then in April 1988, there was another spurt, with twelve fragments arriving on two separate occasions eight days apart, again from Nefer. Nothing happened for another two years, then there was a third spurt in November 1990, when three more fragments arrived, eleven days apart, this time from Robin Symes and from the Bürkis.

Together—the sharp edges of some of the fragments, the possibility of excavation tool marks on some of them, the “outrageous” price asked by Hecht, the small number of mostly familiar names of those who supplied the fragments, Medici's withdrawal of his fragments when the deal over the plates fell through, the admission by True of an “Agreement” involving fragments, the fact that so many fragments arrived from different sources, and the fact that they arrived in spurts—all this does suggest a pattern.

Is it really likely that up to ten years after some original fragments have been discovered, and discovered to be important enough to be worthy of a museum, that tomb robbers will go back to an illicit “dig”—assuming they can remember where it was in the first place—and sift the ground for further fragments, fragments that fetch in the order of $2,500–$3,500 apiece only if they can be attributed to a recognized painter? Is it really likely that, in the case of the Douris phiale, the tomb robbers found fragments while “digging” the same site on
thirteen
separate occasions? It sounds highly improbable. It is much more likely that the fragments left the ground together. There
have
been cases where fragments that fit known vases turn up several years later, but such instances are relatively rare.

If the Douris or Berlin Painter fragments
did
leave the ground together, and fairly recently, as the evidence seems to suggest, why did they reach the Getty by different routes and at different times? How, why, and where did they become separated? We suggest that the answer lies in the fact that they arrived at the Getty in spurts. The fragments are spread around the cordata as another aspect of triangulation. It is a way for dealers in the cordata to do each other—and museums like the Getty—favors, in particular to sugar other, more important deals. This is what Medici was doing when he offered the Getty thirty-five fragments of the Berlin Painter vase
if
it bought the Attic plates. When the museum refused to buy the plates, he withdrew the fragments—the favor, the lure, was taken away. This is what the “Agreement” was about and why True knew she had to return the fragments when the deal over the plates fell through.

What this suggested to Ferri, Rizzo, and Pellegrini, therefore, although they concede that this doesn't amount to firm proof, is that a cozy arrangement is revealed, one that fulfills several functions. The acquisition of vases in fragments—“the sale of the orphans” as Pellegrini put it—enables a museum to acquire a valuable vase, not for nothing exactly, but more cheaply than if the vase were to be acquired whole or intact. The fact that,
as True said, the fragments fit snugly together and were not worn may well mean that vases are broken
deliberately
, at the start of the process, to set up the subterfuge we are identifying. Second, by donating several fragments, dealers can ingratiate themselves with the museum, they can maintain good relations. Third, by publishing its acquisition of fragments, rather than a complete vase, the museum can test the water, to see if the authorities in the country where the fragments were looted from lodge complaints. (This is unlikely, because fragments hardly stir the imagination the way complete vases do. And, if a country—like Italy—has not complained in the ten years or more it can take to acquire a vase in this way, will their complaints be taken seriously at the end of that time, when the vase can be assembled? If the country hasn't complained in the interim, isn't it in a sense at least partly responsible for allowing the situation to deteriorate? And again, with all the delay involved, at some stage the statutes of limitations will kick in.) Finally, fragments can be used to sugar other deals; they are a form of hidden bonus, which the curators and those in the trade are aware of but which perhaps escapes the trustees and the rest of us. Fragments arrive in spurts, when other—bigger—deals are going through.

This scenario could only be proved if the Getty had made available
all
the documentation the Italians had requested, so that important acquisitions could be compared, alongside the arrival of fragments. But that didn't happen. As a result, the full picture regarding the sale of the orphans remains murky.

Although this picture is murky, two pieces of information have been made available since the original publication of this book which render the situation less so. In an interview in New York on November, 17, 2006, Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum, confirmed that our interpretation of the market in fragments is substantially correct—that fragments are used in the way we suggest. And Dr. David Gill, classicist and archaeologist at Swansea University in Wales, whose work is discussed in the conclusion, drew our attention to another vase in the Getty, an Apulian storage jar or
pelike
attributed to the Darius Painter and showing Perseus with Andromeda (see pp. 89–90). An illustration on the Getty's own website shows a pattern of cracks in this vase, in the form of a “starburst” so regular that one is prompted to wonder whether this breakage wasn't deliberate (see the Dossier).

T
HE AMOUNT OF PAPERWORK generated by the prosecution of Giacomo Medici was immense. Ferri had four secretaries working for him in his fourth-floor offices in Piazzale Clodio, and it was sometimes easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer scale of Medici's activities, the vast reams of documentation to be analyzed, the objects to be traced, the numbers of people to be questioned. Keeping track of who had handled what and when; who had covered for whom and when; who had donated what and where; who had told which lies, when, about what, and to whom—it was all daunting. Ferri's office was decorated with colorful posters of archaeological exhibitions but they were an ironical joke. No one had time to visit any museum other than the Villa Giulia, which had become an extension of the prosecutor's office.

And yet, from time to time, the load was lightened. Attitudes, and laws, have been changing across the world in regard to issues of cultural heritage. And this is true not only in the “archaeological countries” but in the market countries, too. Over the ten years since the Carabinieri's first raid on Corridor 17 in Geneva in 1995, new laws governing the trade in antiquities have been passed in Great Britain and Switzerland; and the United States, moving in its own way, has concluded bilateral agreements with several countries—among them Guatemala, Peru, Mali, Canada, and Italy—under which the importation into the United States of certain types of ancient objects is prohibited.

In recent years these new laws and agreements have begun to take effect. On top of that, countries such as Egypt, Greece, Jordan, and China have become more assertive in their attempts to prevent the illicit trade and in this regard they have adopted a common stance: It is, in the long
run, more effective to stem the demand in the market countries—Western Europe, North America, Japan—than try to catch and convict the thousands of tomb robbers, who in any case make far less money than the better-heeled middlemen who are the chief culprits in the eyes of the likes of Paolo Ferri and Roberto Conforti.

This argument is substantiated by a number of other cases, parallel plots—stretching from Bombay to Cairo to Stockholm to London and Oxford to New York and Los Angeles—that have come to light in the last few years, and in each of which the names and “business practices” are only too familiar.

Ferri, Conforti, and the others were reassured by these other episodes that real change was now in the air.

In November 1995, two months after the raid on Corridor 17, a gold phiale of Sicilian origin and dating to the fourth century BC was seized in New York. The provenance of the phiale was largely unknown. It is said that sometime between 1976 and 1980, when an Italian utility company was laying cable in Sicily, workers dug up a golden platter, about the size of a pie plate. This phiale was decorated with acorns, beechnuts, and bees, and it matched one sold to the Met in 1961—by Robert Hecht. The new phiale interests us because although it was first acquired by Vincenzo Pappalardo, a private antiquities collector living in Sicily, he traded it in 1980 to Vincenzo Cammarata for artworks worth about $20,000. Cammarata, it will be remembered, was questioned by Frank di Maio, the Sicilian public prosecutor investigating the provenance of the Morgantina silver.