[MSN] 'The Medici Conspiracy' co-author discusses art looting in Italy

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'The Medici Conspiracy' co-author discusses art looting in Italy     
By Patricia Arrigon    Saturday, June 02 2007, 12:41 AM EDT    Views: 64  
 
MEDICI CONSPIRACY Italian journalist Cecilia Todeschini became involved in
the question of art looting when she was asked to do some research for a
television documentary about Peter Watson's work on the subject. Eventually
the two co-authored "The Medici Conspiracy: the Illicit Journey of Looted
Antiquities From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Great Museums" (Public
Affairs).

In a recent conversation with Todeschini, she talked first about Giacomo
Medici, an Italian already convicted in 2004 for smuggling and selling
ancient antiquities. He has been sentenced to 10 years in prison plus given
a 10 million euro fine, but he is still waiting for his court appeal to be
resolved. He declares himself innocent on all charges. 

"He served, I believe, six days in 1995 or '96," Todeschini said. "There are
some legal problems over a law passed by the former Berlusconi government
which shortens the statute of limitations and has been challenged as being
unconstitutional if applied unequally. He can't leave the country, though." 

 
EXPOSED IT ALL She also discussed the ongoing trial in Rome of Marion True,
former curator of antiquities of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, Calif.,
and Robert Hecht Jr., another American who lives in Europe, for conspiracy
to traffic in illegal antiquities. In November 2006, the government of
Greece added their charges against True of knowingly buying a stolen ancient
artifact, a golden wreath, which was sold to the Getty for $1.15 million in
1993. 

"The situation involves me personally," Todeschini said, "because anybody
who cares about history and culture and the knowledge that our past can give
us finds it unacceptable that curators of great museums have bought objects
they could not have not known were looted. They should be the ones to
protect archaeology. 

"For decades they were the buyers who could pay millions of dollars and by
doing so encouraged looters to destroy tomb after tomb. I find this very
difficult to forgive, even more than the tomb robbers. I hold them less
responsible than a great collector or archaeologist who considers himself a
protector of art. 

"I have seen dozens of looted tombs in Puglia (Apulia in ancient times), and
it makes your hair stand on end. There is total destruction. There are tooth
marks of mechanical diggers in the structures. These structures could have
told us so much if they had not been brutally emptied of sizable artifacts.
Only broken vases are sometimes found. 

"Archaeologists know this. How could they have allowed it to happen?" 

She credits some museums with doing the right thing, however. 

"The Boston Museum of Fine Arts returned 13 objects to Italy, amongst which
were three Apulian vases and six magnificent Attic vases. There was also a
statue of Vibia Sabina, Emperor Hadrian's wife, over 2 meters high. 

"I was there when the artifacts were shown to the press in Rome on Sept. 28,
2006. Malcolm Rogers, director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, who
returned them said, 'This is the beginning of a new era.' He meant that
looted art would no longer be bought and stolen artifacts would be returned
to their origin. I thanked him as an Italian. 

"'That era is finished,' he said. Now the Boston Museum has signed an
agreement for loans of archaeological artifacts from Italy to be shown in
their museum. The Italian minister of culture went to Boston and brought
objects for a long-term loan." 

Other situations have increased the hope that the selling of looted
artifacts has become more difficult. 

"A couple of months ago it was made public that 12 slabs of marble from a
first century B.C. funerary monument with carvings in bas-relief of
gladiators had been discovered," she said. "These were terribly important.
It turned out that the slabs had been on the market for four years and had
found no buyers. Fifteen years ago there would have been a race to buy them
up. 

"They were found by chance by an Italian man digging a road in Fiano Romano
near Rome. He was not a professional tomb robber, but he did not notify
authorities because he thought this could make him a fortune. He
photographed and then reburied 11 of the slabs and left one to show to
prospective buyers. They turned out to be too important to be sold. The man
was caught red-handed and finally took authorities to the site when he had
dug them up. 

"The fact that there was not a single buyer, I believe, is the result of the
court cases now going on. It has become very clear that no museum will buy
looted archaeological artifacts from Greece or Italy, but will they still
purchase unprovenanced items from places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Peru,
Mexico, Egypt or Syria?" 

Todeschini is encouraged by current Italian inquiries. 

"Gen. Roberto Conforti, when he was the head of the Italian Carabinieri Art
Unit, was an extraordinary driving force in these investigations. His
suggestion of establishing a legal international market for antiquities in
which all items for sale would first be registered with appropriate
governments, could be effective. It might not be easy to do this. If we aim
sky high, we might reach something halfway up. Each object would be approved
by the country of origin." 

As to the famous pottery fragments of vases sold to the Getty museum: "They
are what the tombaroli (tomb raiders) call 'little orphans.' I can't say if
they were deliberately broken. Most vases are found in fragments. If any are
found intact, they would probably be found in Italy in a chamber tomb. 

"I grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. When I returned to Italy over 40
years ago, I was in Southern Italy, in Calabria, and working in an entirely
different field. One night at a dinner party the conversation turned to
plowing fields and sometimes finding artifacts or tombs. A man said, 'We
break the vases, then number the pieces. It makes it easier to send them to
Switzerland.' 

"These pieces that are found may have been deliberately broken or broken
during an unscientific dig. Often if they are fragments of a very important
vase, when the vase is put together, several pieces are held back. The buyer
is then shown a Polaroid photo of a missing piece. There are several known
cases of this. The owner of the vase would pay anything to get the missing
fragment and complete the vase. 

"According to Getty documents, that museum purchased fragments of the
priceless Euphronious/Onesimos red-figured Attic kylix depicting scenes of
the Trojan War (a drinking vessel that was returned to Italy in 1999) over a
period of 10 years. It is difficult to maintain they were not aware that the
fragments were looted. The dealer would not put all the fragments onto the
market, but they would photograph the missing pieces. They would be used as
a hook - 'You buy this vase and I will give you this fragment.' 

"The fragments were split among the dealers, such as Robert Hecht, Giacomo
Medici and others. Although they were rivals, they worked together. They
would say, 'You can sell it on my behalf.' 

Todeschini acknowledges that she has not heard back from any of the museum
curators or trustees to whom she and co-author Watson sent "The Medici
Conspiracy." 

"The book has not gone down very well with the museum curators and
directors, but we see the beginning of the end to this disgraceful epic. An
object is beautiful, it tells a story, but it tells us nothing about the
family in whose tomb it was found or about other objects in the tomb. 

"Some years ago I visited the Etruscan Museum in Rome to see an exhibit.
Among the objects on display was a simple silver earring like kids wear
today, one of many on an ear. Because the dig was done scientifically, they
went in with a pathologist who examined the bones and found they were male.
So it was determined that the earring was worn by a man clear back then. If
that dig had been done by a looter, he would have gotten nothing for the
earring, so he would probably have discarded it and we would not have known
that." 

A paperback edition of "The Medici Conspiracy" that will be released June 11
contains a new chapter on Greece written by Nikolas Zirganos, a Greek
investigative journalist, that parallels the looting of tombs in Italy,
smuggling and selling the stolen ancient artifacts. 

Patricia Arrigoni is a freelance travel and arts writer.  

http://www.paramuspost.com/