The Medici Conspiracy (70 page)

Consider, briefly, first, the following evidence surrounding the acquisition of the Euphronios krater:

Does this
sound
like someone buying a “Hot Pot” in good faith? There was a lot of laughing all around. In an interview with us, Hoving denied that he had laughed when Hecht had mentioned Dikran Sarrafian's name, and
that he had said “I bet he doesn't exist.” He pointed out that it was a little late in the proceedings to say such a thing. He added some new information—that about six-to-seven months after the acquisition of the vase was announced, and because the
New York Times
was asking so many questions, the Met sent a private detective to Zurich to talk to dealers and find out as much as they could about the vase. The museum also sent its in-house attorney, Ashton Hawkins, to interview Sarrafian in Beirut. According to Hoving, Hawkins was shown “documentary evidence” that Sarrafian had been paid $900,000 for the vase ($1 million less 10 percent commission). “But of course,” said Hoving, “the money could have gone into his account—and then straight out again, back to Bob Hecht for all I know.”

This was all very laudable, but it was action
after
the krater had been bought. Hoving's own memoirs, referred to above, and published twenty-one years after the event, seem to confirm that the director, a swashbuckling showman, enjoyed the—shall we say—less straightforward side of his job. Does this aspect of Hoving's personality help explain, at least in part, his reaction to, and treatment of, Oscar Muscarella? This, too, is relevant to the Met's “good faith” in the Euphronios affair.

In early 2006, Muscarella was—like the Krater—still at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. As was mentioned earlier, since his court case with the Metropolitan Museum in the mid–1970s, when he was dismissed three times (despite having tenure) but reinstated, Muscarella has never received a promotion, never received a raise, other than a cost of living increment, and even that stopped in 2000. During that time, he has continued to excavate and has published several monographs and scientific papers.

His latest book, released in 2000, was called
The Lie Became Great: The Forgery of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures
. It is a detailed, scholarly examination of the many fake antiquities that Muscarella believes—controversially—are far more thickly spread around the world's museums than the world's museum authorities are willing to acknowledge (this is what the title of his book means—that museums are reluctant to acknowledge publicly what everyone inside the museum establishment knows to be true). Among the fakes he identified in his book were forty-three in the Metropolitan Museum itself, including two Anatolian figurines, two Sumerian stone statuettes, and a bronze Assyrian charioteer.
He also identified seventeen fakes in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, seven in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, twelve in the Cleveland Museum of Arts, thirty-one in the Louvre, eleven in the British Museum, four in Copenhagen, thirty at Christie's, forty-five at Sotheby's, and two in the Levy-White Collection.

Not everyone agrees with Muscarella in his judgments about what is and is not counterfeit. But his scholarship, his attention to detail, his sheer resoluteness, has a certain magnificence. Scholarship is nothing if it is not rigorous.

Except in passing, this is a not a book about Oscar Muscarella. But his status at the Metropolitan Museum in New York does interest us, insofar as his past and continuing misfortunes at that institution are—at least in part—bound up with the Euphronios krater. For what is abundantly clear now, after the discovery of Hecht's memoir, after Conforti's phone taps and raids, after Ferri's interrogations, after Pellegrini's tracking of the paper trail, and after the discovery of so many objects—and fragments of objects—and their inspection by Professors Bartoloni, Colonna, and Zevi in Medici's warehouse, is that Muscarella was absolutely correct to say, in 1973, that the krater had been excavated illegally in Italy. The administration that has been so at odds with him has now come around to his view. It may well be, therefore, that in the aftermath of these revelations, he has a case for damages against the museum because of its treatment of him.

Now consider the Metropolitan Museum's behavior over the other objects they have agreed to return to Italy—the Morgantina silver.

After its acquisition of these items, in the early 1980s, and when the objects first came under scrutiny, the museum said that the silver came originally from Turkey and had been legally imported from Switzerland. But of course the museum had bought the items from Hecht, whose very identity should have been a red flag, even then, given the earlier controversy over the krater. Moreover, after the Met was forced to return the Lydian hoard to Turkey, the Turks did not immediately turn around and demand the Morgantina silver—where, therefore, did the Metropolitan's directors think the silver had originated? For years afterwards, the Met resisted efforts by the Italians to have the silver returned, even going so far, as we have shown, to send Hecht copies of their correspondence with General Conforti. And though the Met eventually allowed Professor Malcolm Bell
to examine the silver, it at first refused him access, describing Bell (an internationally recognized and acclaimed archaeologist—like Muscarella) as “biased” and his arguments as “untrustworthy.” When he did examine the objects, of course, he discovered what he later said was a mistranslation of one Greek inscription, a name (Eupolemos) that had already been found at Morgantina, and the Met's relevant curators must surely have known this. Once again, one is prompted to ask: does this
sound
like a museum acting in good faith?

Then there is the question of the museum's new antiquities galleries, due to open in Spring 2007. The Met has accepted $20 million from Shelby White for help with these galleries. They are to be called “The Leon Levy and Shelby White Court,” according to the museum's internet website. But, as we have shown, the Italians claim that at least nine of the objects in the Levy-White collection were acquired via Medici and, moreover, that the documentation associated with some of these objects reveals that Shelby White and Leon Levy must have known that a good number of their antiquities have left the ground recently and been recently restored (see above, Chapter 9 and the Dossier section). It needs to be shown, therefore, that Leon Levy and Shelby White always acted in good faith. Is it fitting for the Metropolitan's new galleries to be named for them?

The Metropolitan's acquisition of the Euphronios krater remains crucial for one final, basic reason, and here again Hecht's memoir is the starting point. Remember that the “Medici version” of the krater affair was independently corroborated by others, who were not aware of what was in the memoir—such as the fact that a bronze eagle was sold to help provide funds for Medici, confirmed by Robin Symes, and the fact that Peter Wilson at Sotheby's was shown the krater—also confirmed by Symes. Buried in the pages of Hecht's memoir where he is discussing Medici is a phrase he used when speaking about “G.M.” at the time that he had bought from him the kylix by Skythos (the one showing an owl between olive branches, and with a youth in the tondo). Hecht said that this deal had been an “eye-opener” for Medici and then added: “He saw that quality had a high premium.”

It was a lesson that Medici learned well. During his testimony before Judge Muntoni he conceded: “[U]nfortunately people don't know how to do this business well, Your Honour, believe me, and this has provoked much envy against me. When an object is beautiful, beauty pays . . . Medici Giacomo has understood these things.” Medici did indeed learn that quality has a high premium, and he never forgot that “beauty pays.”

As Judge Muntoni emphasized, it was only after the Met's acquisition of the Euphronios krater—at what everyone agreed was a sensational price—that the Medici-Hecht cordata took off. It would be going too far to blame the Metropolitan Museum for all of Hecht's and Medici's crimes and misdemeanors, but there is a real sense that in paying so much over the odds for the krater, as many people remarked at the time, the Metropolitan Museum did help establish the climate in which people like Hecht, Medici, and Becchina could flourish, and so it did contribute—without question—toward the creation of the underground network that has been revealed in this book. We are told that the tombaroli of Italy “went crazy” when they heard the price that had been paid for the Euphronios krater and redoubled their efforts to search out whatever loot they could find—just in case. As we now know, several other Euphronios vases surfaced around then. Vinnie Nørskov's study of the postwar market in Greek and south Italian vases supports this. She quotes from an article by the German art critic Christian Herchenröder, titled “Der Antikensammler—von Kenner zum Investor” (The Antiquities Collector—from Connoisseur to Investor). He showed that investment funds specializing in antiquities were first founded in the early 1970s—and Nørskov says this was all due to the high price paid for the Euphronios vase.

One final thought. If the Metropolitan Museum really did acquire the Euphronios vase in good faith, then its current trustees have a fiduciary duty to reclaim the sum spent from the man who misled them and duped them into buying such a flamboyant piece of loot those many years ago. One million dollars, the all-too famous price of the krater, had it been invested instead on the stock market in 1972, would now be worth just under $15 million. Robert Hecht is well into his eighties and, under Italian law, even if found guilty in Rome, is too old to be sent to prison. That may be the least of his worries.

THE MAIN PROTAGONISTS IN THIS STORY—Giacomo Medici, Robert Hecht, and Marion True—were each approached by the authors ahead of publication of the hardcover edition. They, and several others who feature in the narrative, either refused cooperation or failed to respond to our approach. The same individuals were contacted again, ahead of publication of this paperback edition. All the above-mentioned names refused cooperation once more, in each case through their attorneys, though other individuals—named at appropriate points in the text—did agree to be interviewed.

This paperback edition contains an additional chapter (Chapter 21: Operation Eclipse) on developments in Greece. In 2004, Nikolas Zirganos, the author, worked with Peter Watson on a Greek television documentary about classical antiquities being smuggled abroad. Watson shared some of his documentation on Symes and Michaelides with Zirganos, who then continued the investigation in Athens.

We would like to thank all those individuals involved in the investigations—in Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Britain, and the United States—who have helped in the research for this book, and without whom it could not have been written. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the help of those who preferred to remain anonymous. This includes the two guards at Melfi Castle, mentioned in Chapter 1, whose names were changed to protect the identity of their families. These are the only names that have been changed.

One individual we can thank by name is General Roberto Conforti, who retired during the course of the investigation. During his career as head of the Carabinieri Art Squad, he built its strength from sixty to 250. This book is dedicated to him.