[CPProt.net] Italy Lacks Proof Met's Antique Pots Were Looted, Papers Show

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Italy Lacks Proof Met's Antique Pots Were Looted, Papers Show 

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- As Italy presses the Metropolitan Museum of Art to
return allegedly looted antiquities, it has little direct evidence that some
disputed ancient pots in the museum's collection were excavated in Italy,
court records show. 

The New York museum said it will return antiquities if presented with proof
the objects were looted from Italian soil, making the strength of Italy's
evidence crucial to winning repatriation. 

The Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, will brief the museum's board of
trustees on the case later this week or early next, after he returns from a
European trip that included talks with Italian officials, museum spokesman
Harold Holzer said. The trustees would need to approve any settlement with
Italy. 

``He and the board truly want this looming embarrassment and continuing
hassle to go away,'' said Thomas Hoving, who as the Met's director from 1967
to 1977 helped buy the disputed objects. Even without proof, a compromise is
likely, he said. 

The lack of direct links between some pots and Italian excavations is a
sticking point in Italy's talks with de Montebello, said Maurizio Fiorilli,
a Culture Ministry lawyer. Italy is pressing the Met and other museums about
looted antiquities as part of an effort to end collecting practices that
encourage illegal excavation, he said. 

The objects at the Met under discussion are seven Greek-style vases and a
15-piece set of Hellenistic silver that Italian officials say was looted at
Morgantina in Sicily. 

A compromise being considered by the Met and Italy would include the museum
surrendering some items, Italy lending new ones back and the Met
transferring ownership of other items to Italy while keeping them in New
York as long-term loans, Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione said on Nov. 22.


Smuggling 

For six of the seven pots, Italian evidence doesn't tie them to any
clandestine digs or tomb robbers, according to a judge's conviction of Roman
art dealer Giacomo Medici, who was charged with smuggling the pots. Italian
negotiators are using evidence from his trial in their negotiations with the
Met. 

For the seventh vase, a 2,500-year-old pot painted by the artist Euphronios,
an allegedly incriminating journal found in an American art dealer's Paris
apartment makes no mention of the object ever being in Italy. Instead, it
surfaces in Switzerland. However, other evidence in the case does place the
pot in Italy. 

For the silver, proof that it came from Italy includes an excavation site
and conversations between police and clandestine diggers, said Malcolm Bell,
an archaeologist at the University of Virginia who heads the official
Morgantina digs. 

``In the case of the silver, there is evidence,'' said Bell, who has pressed
the Met to return the pieces. 

Italian Soil 

Italian officials said it should be assumed that the disputed pots came from
Italy, even without direct evidence, as scholarship shows such pots could
only have originated there. 

``The proof is scientific,'' rather than legal, said Giuseppe Proietti, 60,
head of the Culture Ministry's department of research, innovation and
organization. 

The Italian evidence indicates the pots -- some unrestored and covered with
dirt -- were unearthed in recent decades. Under Italian law, antiquities dug
up in the country since 1939 are property of the state. 

To argue whether there's proof one of these pots came from Italy misses the
point, said Colin Renfrew, 68, a Cambridge University archaeology professor
and member of the U.K. House of Lords. 

``It doesn't matter which country it came from, the Met has no business
financing looting,'' he said. ``It's a bureaucratic question which country
it gives it back to.'' 

Prison Sentence 

Medici, the accused smuggler, disagreed. He said that there's no proof of
crime and that the Met should keep its pots. 

``The Metropolitan Museum needs to hear the other side of the story,'' said
Medici, 57, who in December 2004 was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in
prison for conspiracy, and handling and illegal export of stolen
antiquities, including the seven disputed pots. 

He says he's innocent, and is free while appealing the verdict, which isn't
considered final until he exhausts two levels of appeals. 

Over a lunch of seafood salad, sliced steak and a pitcher of red wine at a
Rome trattoria, Medici dissected the evidence for each vase, which is listed
in a Rome judge's written sentence in the case. 

The first object Medici tackled was an amphora with red figures on a black
background, the evidence for which is photos seized in a 1995 raid of his
Geneva warehouse. 

Polaroids 

One set of photos, taken by Medici on a trip to New York, showed the amphora
behind a glass display case at the Met. Another set, of three Polaroids,
showed the same jar, dirty and unrestored. 

Medici said he photographed scores of objects in many museums, and doing so
doesn't mean he smuggled them from Italy, as prosecutors charge. 

As for the Polaroids of the dirty pot, Medici said he couldn't recall ever
handing the amphora. He also said he didn't know whether he shot the photos
or if someone else did and then sent them to him to get an appraisal of the
pot. 

``I don't have an elephant's memory,'' he said. 

And, Medici added, nothing about the photos indicated the pot came from
Italy. ``What does it prove?'' he asked. 

The evidence for the other pots is similar. 

Polaroids seized at Medici's warehouse show fragments of a psykter vase for
cooling wine, painted with horsemen. The same vase is shown, restored, in
photos Medici took at the Met. 

Other before-and-after photos are listed for a kylix wine cup, an oinochoe
pitcher, a 2,300-year-old dinos mixing bowl by the so- called Darius painter
and a 2,500-year-old amphora by the so-called Painter of Berlin. 

None of the evidence listed for those pots in Medici's conviction directly
links them back to Italy. 



To contact the reporter on this story:
Vernon Silver in Rome at  vtsilver at bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 29, 2005 21:21 EST