The Medici Conspiracy (34 page)

And so, vignette by vignette, the years elapse in Hecht's narrative, before Medici (“GM”) is introduced. It was early 1967 and Hecht was out of Italy, when his wife told him on the phone that a middle-man called Franco Luzzi (mentioned in the organigram) had been offered a good-quality kylix but his suppliers, the tombaroli, wanted what was then a high price. His appetite whetted, Hecht returned quickly to Rome and met with Luzzi near the Campidoglio [Rome's capital, today the seat of the municipality]. Hecht is usually very coy in his memoir about these meetings, and he makes it clear that he went to considerable lengths to avoid being seen with such middlemen by anyone in authority. At the rendezvous, he had Luzzi make a pencil drawing of the kylix, which showed that on each outside surface there was an owl between olive branches
.
In the central round part, the tondo, there was a youth with a vase. Hecht must have liked what he saw for he told Luzzi to buy the cup, whatever it took. Luzzi complained that the tombaroli were asking 1,800,000 lire
(then equivalent to $3,000). Hecht said that he would guarantee Luzzi at least 2,500,000 lire, ensuring a tidy profit. However, when Luzzi went back to his tombaroli suppliers they countered by saying that Medici had already told them he would beat any offer Luzzi made. And in fact, on that occasion, Medici bought the kylix and sold it on to the man he then mainly supplied. According to Hecht, this was Eli Borowsky.

But Hecht wouldn't be beaten. Medici had bought the kylix for 1,500,000 and sold it to Borowsky for only a hundred thousand lire more. So Hecht told Luzzi to go back to “GM” and offer him 2,000,000 lire. Although these sums are paltry by today's standards, at that time such differences in price were significant and as a result of Luzzi's improved offer, Medici got back the kylix from Borowsky and sold it to Hecht.

Hecht was obviously a bit of a show-off, who liked people to know how clever he was and how readily he could read character. He certainly seems to have understood Medici very well, right from the beginning. In a passage which, as the judge noted in Medici's trial, was confirmed by other tombaroli, Hecht wrote:

This proved to be an understatement. As we shall see, this episode had pivotal consequences for Medici's career. From now on the objects he provided to Hecht began to rise markedly in value. Moreover, in Hecht's text the prices of their deals are from now on recorded in dollars, not lire. The sums involved rise over the years from $1,600, to $6,000, to $63,000. In each case, Hecht is careful to tell us what happened to these objects, which collectors or museum they ended up with and, of course, what handsome profits he made. For example, a set of Etruscan silver chariot fixtures, which he says he bought from Medici for $63,000, he sold on to Mogens Giddesen at the Copenhagen Museum for $240,000.

“G.M. soon became a faithful purveyor,” he records, and indeed the list of objects Medici provided Hecht with is impressive. But of course, this background, though very vivid, is also very incriminating. And then, without any preamble or any other sort of warning or change of pace, halfway down page fourteen of this section of the memoir, Hecht broaches the subject of the infamous Euphronios krater.

In preparation for that, however, we need to consider one other matter.

In 1993, just before the investigations that are the subject of this book began, Thomas Hoving published his own memoirs. Since he had left the Met, he had become a journalist, among other things editor-in-chief of the magazine
Connoisseur
(now defunct), and had written at least one art book and a novel. His 1993 memoirs were entitled
Making the Mummies Dance
, a reference to his brand of showmanship when he was director of the Metropolitan, and chapter 17 was titled, characteristically, “The Hot Pot.” It began typically enough. “I have fallen in love more often with works of art than with women,” and it concerned the Met's acquisition of the Euphronios krater. This version differed in some interesting ways from the earlier version, as given here in the Prologue.

His most important revelations this time were:

Hoving also said that in July 1976, he had received an unsolicited letter from Muriel Silberstein, in Chicago, in which she claimed that she had met Dikran Sarrafian in Beirut in 1964, when he had shown her some cylinder seals and a box containing shards of an ancient Greek vase by the artist Euphronios. Hoving never explained why it had taken her so long to come forward, but she stuck to her story, which she had independently told to several others.

For Hoving this didn't clear up the matter—he was too experienced and canny for that. But, putting all he knew alongside Mrs. Silberstein's information, Hoving in his 1993 memoirs came up with a new theory—that there were
two
kraters and one cup, all by Euphronios and all on the market in the early 1970s. The second krater, Hoving said, was the fragmentary one owned subsequently by the Hunt brothers, sold in their sale in 1990 and acquired by Leon Levy and Shelby White.
^o
Both this second krater and the kylix, Hoving said, were acquired by the Hunts from Bruce McNall. Again according to Hoving's new theory, the whole business had begun when Hecht had sold to Munich's Antikensammlung in 1970 (actually 1968) a fragmentary Euphronios krater (a third one) for $250,000. Where this came from Hoving didn't say, but he added that “it seems likely” that Hecht, in concluding this deal, recalled Sarrafian's fragmentary krater, which he claimed to have seen in Beirut in 1965, and persuaded him to sell. And it was
this
that Hecht originally intended to offer to the Met.

“Then a miracle took place.” An Etruscan tomb near San Antonio di Cerveteri was found by tomb robbers and the complete krater was discovered
in December 1971. According to Hoving, Hecht simply switched the two kraters, in the sense that he attached the Sarrafian provenance to the Cerveteri krater. This, Hoving says, would explain the various mix-ups: in the dates, the mix-up over whether Sarrafian's krater was complete or not, the mix-up over when the Sarrafian's krater left Lebanon, the mix-up in regard to the chronology of the invoices, the mix-up over when the krater reached Bürki for restoration. It would explain what Mrs. Silberstein saw in Beirut in 1964 and why Sarrafian did not receive all the monies he should have.
²

So much for Hoving's updated account. We return to Hecht's memoir. The judge at Medici's trial, in announcing his verdict, compared this “true story” with Hecht's later “sweetened” version (see below, this chapter). Both accounts give key insights into the operating methods of these antiquities dealers.

Hecht told them—cheekily—that the price would be at the same level as an impressionist painting, because the draftsmanship on the vase was the equal of the Monet that the Met had itself just bought, for $1.4 million. Hecht waited for Fritz Bürki to complete the restoration of the vase, which he did but still left the jumble of joins showing in red glue, so that the people at the Met could see what was old and what was new. Then Hecht flew to New York with some good-quality photographs. Von Bothmer, who lived on Center Island, had invited him to stay for part of the weekend. On the Sunday morning, Hecht was picked up by von Bothmer's car, but on the way to Center Island the driver hit a dog and Hecht was forced to cradle the animal—bleeding and whimpering—as they sought out a vet. The vet told Hecht the dog would live but the delay meant that Hecht, covered in blood, didn't arrive at von Bothmer's until well after he had planned.

Von Bothmer was very impressed by the photographs and so everyone relaxed. Hecht played some tennis with the curator's “beautiful stepdaughter,” they all swam in the family pool and ate dinner. The next morning, the two men were driven into Manhattan together and showed the photographs to Tom Hoving and Ted Rousseau, curator of paintings and Hoving's deputy. They were no less impressed than von Bothmer and the four men agreed to reconvene in late June, at Fritz Bürki's in Zurich, to view the vase itself.

Some time before, Hecht had been told by von Bothmer that the museum was intending to sell its collections of ancient coins and that the curators had been conferring with a bank and a particular coin dealer to hold a joint auction.

Hecht suggested at the meeting that the Met might get a better deal on the coins with Sotheby's, and Hoving quickly made some calls to Peter Wilson, chief executive of the auction house, and flew off immediately to London. Sotheby's did offer a higher estimate, cheaper terms,
and
advanced the museum some money.

Rousseau paid a second visit to Bürki's for another look at the vase, at which time he suggested that the restorer cover over the red joins with black paint. The Met was obviously moving toward a deal and, sure enough, in mid-August, Hoving called Hecht in Rome and offered exactly $1 million for the vase. Hecht accepted.

The following day he traveled to Zurich, where he found that Fritz Bürki had almost completed his restoration, covering over the red joins.