[CPProt.net] Confrontation With Italy Looms at the Met

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

November 21, 2005
Confrontation With Italy Looms at the Met 
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

In its pristine glass case at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a small black
terra-cotta vase with red figures depicting Zeus cradling Dionysus says
little to the casual viewer about its origins. As string music filtered into
the Greek and Roman galleries on Friday night, tour groups who stopped to
glance at its label saw only that the vase, known as an amphora, is
attributed to a painter from the fifth century B.C. and that it arrived at
the Met in 1982.

But for Italian investigators tracking looted antiquities, the amphora is of
keen interest. They say that Polaroid photographs obtained in a 1995 raid on
a warehouse in Geneva show that the vessel was among thousands of artifacts
illegally excavated from Italian soil. At a meeting tomorrow in Rome, they
plan to question the Met's director about the provenance of that object and
about 30 others that they assert were clandestinely excavated before making
their way into the museum's collection or the private trove of Shelby White,
a Met trustee.

Their hope is to bring about a day of reckoning for American museums and
collectors, requiring them to explain how they came into possession of such
objects and even to return some of them.

"We're going to say, these pieces have emerged as evidence in the trial of a
convicted art dealer, they were illegally excavated and taken from Italy,
and we would like them back," said Maurizio Fiorilli, the lawyer
representing the Italian government.

A spokesman for the Met, Harold Holzer, said the museum would not comment on
any specific item cited by the Italians in advance of the meeting between
Philippe de Montebello, the Met's director, and Italian cultural officials.
Ms. White, who amassed a vast antiquities collection with her husband, Leon
Levy, who died in 2003, also declined to comment on the Italians'
allegations.

Mr. de Montebello faces a careful balancing act as he fields questions from
Mr. Fiorilli on those Greek and other ancient artifacts. While Italy's
culture minister, Rocco Buttiglione, has emphasized that his government is
not out to "destroy the cultural potential of American museums," the
ministry has threatened to deny loans to museums that refuse to cooperate.
And in a powerful reminder of the Italians' determination, a former curator
from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles went on trial in Rome last week
on criminal charges of conspiring to import looted antiquities for that
museum's collection. 

Much of the evidence in that case relates to the 1995 raid, in which
investigators uncovered thousands of photographs and negatives of
archaeological pieces neatly arranged in albums. Many photographs showed
ancient vases and pots still encrusted with dirt, in some cases photographed
in the open countryside, surrounded by weeds. Others showed fragments of
ancient artifacts wrapped in local newspapers, to prove their Italian
provenance, and still others depicted recently discovered tombs, their crude
openings sealed with makeshift covers.

According to Italian court documents, seven important vases of
"extraordinary artistic quality" in the Met's collection have been
identified in photographs found in that warehouse, rented by the Italian
dealer Giacomo Medici. The documents assert that Mr. Medici received and
restored those pieces in Switzerland and then sold them through dealers like
Robert Hecht, an American who is currently on trial in Rome with Marion
True, the former Getty curator. 

In addition to that amphora, attributed to the so-called Eucharides Painter,
the Italians cite Polaroid photographs of a red-figured amphora lying in
pieces on a nondescript gray carpet. One depicts a cloaked young male figure
on the back of the amphora; another shows its base, photographed as it lay
in a suitcase. 

Attributed to the artist widely referred to as the Berlin Painter, this
red-figure amphora, now expertly restored, is on display in the Met's Greek
and Roman galleries. Other objects cited in the documents that reside in the
Met's collection also include a kylix, or drinking cup, from the sixth
century B.C.; an oinochoe, or pitcher, in the shape of a head for which the
Italian government did not give a date; and a red-figured dinos, or bowl for
mixing wine and water, from the first century B.C. that depicts Herakles and
Busiris and is attributed to the so-called Darius Painter. 

Also on the Italians' list of Met artifacts are a red-figured psykter, or
vase for cooling wine, decorated with horsemen; the Euphronios krater, a
renowned red-figured vase from the sixth century B.C. ; and 15 pieces of
silver from the third century B.C. 

The items that Italy plans to discuss with Mr. de Montebello include eight
objects in the Levy-White collection. Mr. Holzer declined to say whether any
of those items are on loan to the Met, but one of them - a vessel attributed
to Eucharides Painter - was visible in the Greek and Roman galleries Friday
night along with more than a dozen other items lent by the Levy-White
collection.

Mr. Holzer said that as of Friday, Italy had "not submitted a list or
supplied supporting information to the Metropolitan Museum" for discussion
at tomorrow's meeting. 

But Mr. Fiorilli said the delegation from the Culture Ministry would be
reiterating what Italy has told the Met in earlier rogatories, or formal
requests for information as part a legal discovery process - that they
believe these specific works were illegally excavated and exported from
Italy. He said he wanted the Met to clarify the channels through which it
obtained them. 

The Met's Euphronius krater and the 15 pieces in its Morgantina silver
collection have long been a source of contention between the museum and the
Italian government. 

In both cases, the Italians say that over the years they have produced
plenty of evidence to the museum indicating that the artifacts were stolen
by tomb robbers and whisked out of the country. But the Met has repeatedly
replied that the evidence is inconclusive, the Italians said.

To bolster Italy's claims, however, court records show that Italian
prosecutors have recovered a handwritten memoir by Mr. Hecht that recounts
the story of the acqusition of the Euphronius krater, beginning with a
morning in December 1971 when Mr. Medici approached him with a Polaroid
photograph of the piece. 

Court records in the case against Ms. True, the former Getty curator, show
that both she and her predecessor at the Getty, Jiri Frel, have testified
that Dietrich von Bothmer, who was the Met's antiquities curator in 1972,
had informed them them of the exact location of the tomb where the krater
was found, in an Etruscan site just north of Rome. 

Mr. von Bothmer could not be reached for comment. But he has been quoted in
The Los Angeles Times as denying that this incident occurred.

In the case of the silver pieces, which Italians claim were stolen from
Morgantina, Sicily, negotiations have already begun. According to an Italian
cultural official involved in the matter, who declined to be identified
publicly, the Met has told the Italians that it would acknowledge the
Sicilian provenance as long as they could keep half of the silver on loan
for 25 years. 

Sensing a shift in public opinion and emboldened by the evidence that has
emerged during the 10-year investigation of Mr. Medici and his associates,
the Italian authorities clearly feel they have strengthened their hand. The
Getty Museum has already returned several pieces to Italy, including three
artifacts it described as "donations" on the eve of Ms. True's trial this
month.

In exchange for cooperation from museums, Italy has promised that it will
review its policies for art loans, which currently run for up to four years,
and consider extending that to eight or even 12 years. But it has made clear
that it will deny loans to museums that refuse to cooperate. 

Among the objects shown in photos found in Mr. Medici's archives, court
records show, eight have been identified as pieces in Ms. White's collection
and will be broached at tomorrow's meeting. 

Ms. White, an occasional freelance contributor to The New York Times, and
her husband have donated millions of dollars to the Met for the creation of
new Greek and Roman galleries in their name that are to open in 2007. Many
in the art world have long speculated that their prized antiquities
collection will one day go to the museum.

But Mr. Holzer said, "No promise of a gift of the Levy-White collection has
been made." 

Elisabetta Povoledo reported from Rome for this article and Randy Kennedy
contributed reporting from New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/