The Medici Conspiracy (14 page)

The most vivid evidence, leaning against the walls of the warehouse, and in one case lying on the floor, was a number of frescoes, wall paintings in red, green, blue, and gray. Some of the paintings showed women, horses, vases of flowers, architectural features of one kind or another. To Zevi, it was obvious from the style of painting that these frescoes came from Pompeii or Herculaneum, or somewhere similar—but where exactly? It would take them a few weeks to find the answer.

No less vivid was the fact that in Medici's warehouse, 300 fragments were found, consisting among other things of architectural roof elements, decorated terra-cotta tiles, and small heads that fitted on the outside of buildings, all of which were discovered—still dirty with earth—roughly packed in Italian newspapers dating to between December 1993 and October 1994. Furthermore, they were kept together in a large wooden crate and in some red-and-gray plastic boxes, bearing the writing, “ORTO FR. CERVETERI,” which stands for “Orto Frutticola Cerveteri,” a well-known fruit and vegetable cooperative, from the town of Cerveteri, north of Rome, near the coast.

No less incriminating—when you think about it—was the fact that so many of the photographs in Medici's warehouse, showing archaeological objects, often with dirt on them, were taken using a Polaroid camera, in particular the popular SX-70 model (two Polaroid cameras were seized, plus a regular camera). Polaroid photography was not invented until 1948, nine years after the relevant Italian law restricting the export of antiquities came into force, and the SX-70 was not introduced until much later, in October 1972 in the United States and in Europe later still. By definition, therefore, Polaroid photographs of dirty, unprovenanced antiquities are themselves evidence of a kind that these objects left the ground illegally. Furthermore, the state of many antiquities as shown in the Polaroids is such that, as any reputable and experienced archaeologist could confirm, these objects were obviously
not
excavated scientifically or professionally. Objects excavated professionally (and legally) have a very different appearance; they are photographed in situ, showing their context, with a measuring tool to indicate size, and are properly dated.

The professional analysis that Professors Bartoloni, Colonna, and Zevi brought to Medici's objects was detailed and cumulatively devastating, remorselessly linking specific objects to specific localities inside Italy, artifacts found in Geneva twinned with those known either from legal excavations at a specific tomb or villa, or from seizures of illicit material in the recent past, as part of Carabinieri undercover “sting” operations.

Only with such a huge find were such telling comparisons possible. For example, among the objects seized in the Geneva Freeport was an Iron Age
fibula
of the ninth century BC. The fibula is aptly described as the “grandmother” of the safety pin, but its use was rather more dramatic in antiquity, being employed to hold together the drapes in clothing. It became a decorative object in its own right and often identified the social and economic status of the wearer. Part of this particular fibula was made from a twisted gold thread, which is very rare. The experts pointed out that this fibula was very similar to one legally found in Tarquinia in the necropolis of Poggio dell'Impiccato, which dates from the second half of the ninth century BC. Another fibula, decorated with a feline figure, was very similar to one found in the Tomb of the Warrior at Tarquinia. In hundreds of cases the experts were able to make specific matches (see the Dossier at the end of the book for a fuller list).

In another example, thirty-two miniature cups and twenty miniature
olle
(wine pitchers with fat handles) were “very similar” to a series of miniature vases (especially olle) found on an official dig at Bandinella, Canino, in 1992, after the discovery of an illegal dig.

In yet another example, five
kantharoi
(wide drinking vessels with high handles, like big ears) and three amphorae had what are known as “cusped handles.” This is a highly unusual (and therefore valuable) design, in which the handles are embossed with small cones in a row. According to the experts, these “can be easily recognised as coming from Crustumerium,” where cups and amphorae “became famously cusped.” But more than that, they observe that Francesco di Gennaro, inspector of the Archaeological Superintendency for Rome, has reported widespread illegal digging in the Marcigliana or Monte del Bufalo area, where the necropolis of Crustumerium is located. In other words, the material in Medici's warehouse and the illegal digging reported by di Gennaro are an exact match. This plunder is heartbreaking in that the Crustumerium necropolis has proved
very important in providing knowledge about Etruscan funereal customs and the development of architectural styles, and for the study of production techniques for vases. Yet its largest sepulchre complex, southeast of Monte del Bufalo, has suffered clandestine digging on such a scale that the experts calculate that

The experts were thus able to use the cusped handles of the vases seized in Geneva to link Medici to some of the worst plundering of recent times.

Then there were 153 Etrusco-Corinthian aryballoi and alabastra. This number of objects, the experts say, can only have come “from the plundering of about 20–30 room-tombs of southern Etruria.” And in this particular case the evidence for recent plunder was vivid. One of the small vases still had the remains of a dirt-encrusted iron nail with which it was attached to a wall of the room.

Other aspects of the experts' great learning were applied to the methods of manufacture. For example, Bucchero ceramics are a form of vessel invented by the Etruscans and are black inside and out. They are made by firing in an oven with no oxygen. “As is known,” wrote the experts, “they were the ‘national' ceramic of the Etruscans,” being continually produced throughout Etruria and Campania from the mid-seventh to the beginning of the fifth century BC, with an early start in Caere around 675 BC. Bucchero have been widely studied, and the minute differences in the mineral composition of the clay have been associated with different specific sites. In Geneva, Medici had 118
intact
vases. “With the knowledge we have today, the vast majority of the vases can be judged as coming from the ‘botteghe' [workshops], active between 675 and 575 BC, of Caere or its cultural area.”

The three scholars employed a different type of evidence in the case of ceramics produced in mainland Greece. As their report makes clear, the Greek colonies of southern Italy and Sicily, together with Etruscan cities, were primary commercial destinations for vases made in Greece—in Athens, Sparta, Euboea, and Corinth. Amphorae and perfume flacons in particular were traded. However, Etruria was obviously a special area for some reason, because only in Etruria “have objects of exceptional quality been found.” Scholars believe that these exceptional objects were sent as examples, as “commercial propaganda,” to show what various “botteghe” were capable of, to encourage international trade. For example, it is known that certain shapes of vase were produced in Greece
but solely for export to Italy or Sicily
. The so-called Nolane vases are a case in point: They have an Attic shape, but their most important excavation sites have been at Nola, northeast of Naples; Gela, a city founded in the eighth century BC on the southern coast of Sicily by ancient Greek colonists; Capua, situated north of Naples; and Vulci. In fact, statistical studies have shown that out of more than 800 objects known,
only one
has ever been found in Greece itself. As the experts conclude, “One can without doubt say that the material of the Medici seizure includes an almost complete exemplification of the above-mentioned workshops.”

In addition, there was in the Medici warehouse at the Freeport another kind of evidence that the experts' scholarship was able to expose: Even on vases of a type that
could
have come from Greece, some had “hallmarks.” These were inscriptions scratched on the vases
after
their arrival at their destination, for some as yet unknown commercial reason. The scholars referred in their report to a seminal study by Alan W. Johnston,
Trademarks on Greek Vases
(1979), which examined 3,500 vases of this type and concluded, “[U]p till now no vase found in continental Greece . . . bears hallmarks of this kind,” which are “basically limited to vases travelling toward the west . . . Etruria, Campania or Sicily.” Moreover, the hallmarks are scratched exclusively in the Etruscan alphabet. Some of these vases were those found wrapped in Italian newspapers.

Yet more support for an Italian provenance comes from the fact that many of these vases were intact. This all-important detail may not mean much to most of us, but to archaeologists and Etruscologists the fact that the vases were
not
broken is almost certainly due to the circumstance that
in the Etruscan necropolises there were entities known as room tombs, which didn't exist in ancient Greece. Almost all vases that have been found intact on legitimate digs have been found in room tombs.

Not unnaturally, in view of the events described in the Prologue concerning the vase by Euphronios, the experts devoted no little attention to objects by famous artists that were found on Medici's premises in Geneva. In particular, they concentrated on Exekias and Euphronios.

As Bartoloni and her colleagues point out, J. D. Beazley, in his 1956 publication,
Attic Black-Figure Vase Painters
—still today a reference book for black-figure ceramics—identified sixteen vases by Exekias for which the provenance was known and another six for which the provenance was not known. According to Beazley, thirteen of the vases whose provenance was known came from Etruria—five from Vulci, five from Orvieto, one each from other places in Italy—whereas only three came from other countries (two from Athens, one from France). In the case of Euphronios, in a similar publication drawn up in 1963,
Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters
, also by Beazley, there were thirteen vases for which the provenance was known and nine for which it was not known. For those vases of known provenance, nine came from Etruria (two from Cerveteri, two from Vulci, one each from other places), three from Greece, and one from Olbia on the Black Sea.

The experts then added that, in the case of Euphronios, there was an exhibition held in 1990–1991, in Arezzo, Paris, and Berlin, in which eighteen vases, or fragments of vases, not known to Beazley, had come to light (this is not counting the Euphronios vase at the Metropolitan Museum in New York).
Not one of these new vases, or fragments, had any provenance at all
. Of these eighteen, eleven were in American collections or museums, five in Switzerland, and two in Germany. As the experts drily remark, “Paradoxically, objects which are part of old collections yield far more scientific data than objects of recent purchase.”

The role of J. D. Beazley was important in another way, too. His prestige and eye were such that, after he produced his books, even people with unprovenanced vases sought him out, because an attribution by Beazley was commercially valuable. At the back of subsequent editions of his book, therefore, Beazley illustrated these unprovenanced vases and gave them attributions. As the experts point out, the fact that Medici had in his
possession vases that fall under the aegis of Beazley's publications but are not
in
it invites the conclusion that they were excavated
subsequent
to the appearance of Beazley's books—books that were published well after Italy's anti-looting and anti-smuggling laws came into effect.

This by no means completes the evidence amassed by the three experts. Their lengthy report contained many other cases in which they could, for example, recognize the hand of a particular painter or the style of a particular
bottega,
or workshop, whose work is known only from sites in Italy, and there were plenty of other cases where graffiti in the Etruscan alphabet had been scratched on to the vases. The evidence that the vast bulk of Medici's material came illicitly out of Italy was as varied as it was overwhelming.

“Medici had so many important things,” says Professor Bartoloni, with a mixture of sadness and anger. “In any archaeologist's career, he or she can hope to come across, perhaps, one or two important tombs. There was material in Geneva from at least
fifty
important tombs. To know that Medici had been distributing all this material around the world . . . it was heartbreaking.”