[MSN] In the coda to a long tug of war, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is bidding goodbye to the Euphronios krater, a 2, 500-year-old vessel that has been a showpiece of its collection for more than three decades. Sunday is the last viewing day.

[Museum Security Network Mailing list]

January 11, 2008
Inside Art
Ciao to a Met Prize Returning to Italy
By CAROL VOGEL

In the coda to a long tug of war, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is bidding
goodbye to the Euphronios krater, a 2,500-year-old vessel that has been a
showpiece of its collection for more than three decades. Sunday is the last
viewing day.

The krater, a Greek bowl for mixing water and wine, will be sent to Italy as
part of an agreement reached nearly two years ago with that country’s
government, which has long contended that the artifact was illegally
excavated from a tomb in Cerveteri, near Rome. The Met bought the krater in
1972 for $1 million from Robert Hecht, an antiquities dealer who is now on
trial in Rome on charges of conspiring to traffic in looted artifacts. (Mr.
Hecht denies the charges.)

Under the terms of the pact, the Met is returning 21 objects that Italy said
were looted, and the Italian government is lending the Met a series of rare
ceramic antiquities. The first arrived in late 2006, and three more are to
be installed by Wednesday in the Met’s Greek and Roman galleries.

Two of the newly lent pieces have direct connections to the krater, which
was painted by the Greek artisan Euphronios. A 26-inch-wide terra-cotta cup
depicting an assembly of the Greek gods on Mount Olympus is signed by
Euxitheos, a potter who also signed the Euphronios krater. A jug shaped like
a woman’s head was made by the potter Charinos, who is believed to have
worked in Euphronios’ workshop.

The third piece of ceramic art going on display next week, a krater made in
southern Italy during the fourth century B.C., is decorated with a spoof of
one of the most serious episodes in Greek drama: Oedipus solving the riddle
of the Sphinx.

The departing krater is to go on view later this month at the Quirinale, the
presidential palace in Rome, where a show of other objects repatriated from
foreign museums opened last month.

In a telephone interview on Thursday, Philippe de Montebello, the Met’s
director, praised the quality of the loan to the Met. “At the time during
which the negotiations were under way, I brought a list prepared by the
curators of the kinds of things we considered equivalents,” he said. “We
expected one object, but got three very beautiful objects. It shows on what
a firm footing our future collaborations with Italy will be.”

Mr. Montebello, who on Tuesday announced his retirement later this year, was
asked whether he felt particularly emotional about the krater’s departure.

Speaking from a cellphone, he said, “I can’t hear you anymore” — a response
he has occasionally deployed by land line to questions he would rather not
answer.

A RARE PRAYER BOOK

The only known copy of the first Book of Hours printed in France, a tiny
volume nearly 5 inches tall and 3 inches wide, has been acquired by the
Morgan Library & Museum. Designed to fit into the palm of a woman’s hand,
the book of prayers and devotional readings is illustrated by more than 40
woodcuts depicting religious figures and the life of Jesus.

“They are less sophisticated illustrations than later examples of Books of
Hours,” John Bidwell, the Morgan’s curator of printed books and bindings,
said.

At the Morgan it joins one of America’s most notable collections of such
prayer books: 240 manuscripts and about 130 printed versions of the Book of
Hours. The title reflects the organization of the devotional readings,
chosen for different times of day.

This volume is the first known book to have been produced by the French
publisher Antoine Vérard, and it helped establish Paris as a leading
publishing center.

“The French eventually made these medieval best sellers,” Mr. Bidwell said.

The Morgan paid $471,304 for the Book of Hours in November at Sotheby’s in
London, where a German library was auctioning it. A grant from the B. H.
Breslauer Foundation, established after the death of the New York
antiquarian bookseller Bernard H. Breslauer in 2004, covered the cost.

Mr. Breslauer once owned this very volume, having discovered it at a
Christie’s auction in 1966. “Breslauer was the first to recognize its
importance,” Mr. Bidwell said. “At the time there had been no scholarship
whatsoever on this Book of Hours.”

Scholars realized it was from 1485, about five decades after Gutenberg
invented movable type. But it was Mr. Breslauer who, by sorting through
bibliographies, determined that it was the first Book of Hours printed in
France.

“Every few months the Morgan rotates its holdings of rare books and
manuscripts,” Mr. Bidwell said, “and this one will be on display in April
for about three months.”

EXTRA ART AT THE ARMORY

When the Art Dealers Association of America sets up its annual Art Show in
February, there will be more to see at the Park Avenue Armory than the
paintings, drawings and sculptures being sold by the organization’s members.

Three site-specific projects by emerging artists are planned for the
historic first-floor rooms of the landmark building, on Park Avenue between
66th and 67th Streets.

The contemporary projects fit in with the armory’s effort to attract a new
and younger audience, and they will be on view to the public at no charge.
(It costs $20 to enter the Art Show, which runs from Feb. 21 to 25 and
benefits the Henry Street Settlement.)

“We thought it would be nice to enhance the initiatives at the armory and
broaden the perspective of the Art Show,” said Roland Augustine, a Chelsea
dealer who is president of the Art Dealers Association of America.

Mr. Augustine is also a trustee of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson,
N.Y., where Tom Eccles, the armory’s artistic adviser, is director of the
Center for Curatorial Studies. The three artists chosen for the armory
project all have Bard affiliations..

Spencer Finch, an artist who explores relationships between light and color,
is collaborating on an installation with Trevor Smith, the center’s curator
in residence. Lisi Raskin, an artist in residence at Bard, plans to create a
militarylike installation, centered on the idea of surveillance. Pietro
Roccasalva, an Italian artist from Milan, is collaborating with a Bard
student to present a performance-based piece.

Art students in Bard’s graduate program will contribute as well, creating a
video installation for the armory’s first-floor hallways.

RECRUITING AUCTION STARS

Spring may seem far away, but the clock is ticking fast for the New York
auction-house experts assembling the May auctions of important fine art.

Christie’s has secured a small collection of Abstract Expressionist works
for its May 13 sale. The top work is a Mark Rothko painting from 1952 with
rich reds and yellows, titled “No. 15” and estimated at around $50 million.

“This is exactly what the market is desperate for,” said Brett Gorvy of
Christie’s postwar and contemporary art department worldwide. Describing
what is most desirable in a Rothko, Mr. Gorvy said, “It’s the best year and
perfect scale: 90 inches by 77 inches.”

Dealers and collectors who follow the Rothko market will recognize the
image. Sotheby’s sold it in November 1999 to an unidentified telephone
bidder for $11 million, then a record price. Christie’s will not name its
current seller, but experts say it is Roger Evans, a San Francisco
collector.

Mr. Evans, a loyal Christie’s client, has sold other works at auction
recently, including Andy Warhol’s “Orange Marilyn,” which he parted with in
November 2006 for $16.2 million. And Christie’s is offering two other works
from Mr. Evans’s collection in May: Sam Francis’s “Black,” from 1955,
expected to bring $4 million to $6 million, and an untitled Adolph Gottlieb
painting from 1960, estimated at $1.5 million to $2 million.

To secure the property, Christie’s gave Mr. Evans a guarantee — an
undisclosed sum that it will pay him regardless of the sale’s outcome — that
is believed to be around $50 million.

The three paintings will be on view at Christie’s Rockefeller Center
galleries on Monday and Tuesday, alongside selected works from the auction
house’s February sales in London. 

http://www.nytimes.com/