[CPProt.net] Defendant in Antiquities Case Speaks Up, Angrily. "Why don't they go after Sotheby's?"

[Ton Cremers]

January 14, 2006
Defendant in Antiquities Case Speaks Up, Angrily
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

ROME, Jan. 13 - Robert Hecht, an American art dealer charged in Italy with trafficking in 
illegally excavated antiquities, spoke out indignantly in his defense here on Friday, saying he 
had been unjustly accused.

Citing a Roman bronze figure of the god Pan that he said he had bought from Sotheby's 
auction house before it turned out to have been stolen from the National Roman Museum, 
Mr. Hecht said he had always acquired such objects in good faith. (That object is not at issue 
at the trial and has been removed from the market.)

Prosecutors, Mr. Hecht said, seemed intent on casting him as a villain. "Why don't they go 
after Sotheby's?" he asked. "It's because they want to smack me."

Mr. Hecht, 86, spoke during a recess in a long trial hearing. Inside the courtroom, a Rome 
prosecutor, Paolo Ferri, continued to build his case, detailing a web of connections among 
dealers who he said traded in freshly dug-up artifacts by routing them through Switzerland or 
prominent auction houses and into the collections of museums and private individuals.

Mr. Hecht is on trial with Marion True, the former antiquities curator of the J. Paul Getty 
Museum in Los Angeles, who is also accused of having traded in illegally exported 
antiquities.

On Friday, an expert witness for the state continued to match several artifacts in the Getty's 
collection to photographs of those objects - often in a fragmentary state - found in a Swiss 
warehouse rented by Giacomo Medici, a dealer who was convicted in 2004 on charges of 
trafficking in illegally excavated artifacts.

The expert, Maurizio Pellegrini, a document and photography analyst with the Italian Culture 
Ministry, testified that fractures in ceramic pottery could be smooth or rough. Smooth 
fractures suggest that the broken edge has worn down over time, he said, while jagged or 
rough fractures suggest a new break resulting from a clandestine dig.

On some photographs shown in court, Mr. Medici had scribbled "v. BO" - a shorthand, the 
prosecution contended, for "via Bob," which they said indicated that the works had been 
traded through Mr. Hecht.

"Why can't that mean 'visto Bob'?" ("Bob saw it"), asked Mr. Hecht's lawyer, Alessandro 
Vannucci, pointing out that his client was an expert in ancient art.

The Italian authorities have portrayed the trial of Ms. True and Mr. Hecht as a warning to 
dealers, museums and private collectors that illicit trafficking in antiquities must come to an 
end.

But on Friday, Mr. Vannucci said that his client was a scapegoat and that the wrong 
defendant was on trial. "The real culprit is Italy, which consented for many years to its territory 
being sacked," he said, pointing out that some of the objects cited in the prosecution had 
been sold decades ago.

"What this trial is showing is that Italy was indifferent for years," Mr. Vannucci said. "No one 
cared,"

In addition to the Getty, Mr. Hecht has sold works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
including a set of Hellenistic silver pieces and a fifth-century-B.C. vase by the Greek painter 
Euphronios that Italy contends were clandestinely removed from the country. The Italian 
government has offered the Met a proposal for ending the dispute over works there that it 
says were illegally removed.

Asked during a break what he would do if the Met were obliged to return the Euphronios vase 
and sought compensation from him, Mr. Hecht replied, "I don't know anything - it's out of my 
hands."

For the most part, he ably fended off reporters' questions during recesses, alternately 
humming the Italian national anthem, citing lyrics from Gilbert and Sullivan's "H.M.S. 
Pinafore" and joking in a Roman dialect. (He lived in Italy from 1947 to 1974 and is now 
based in Paris.)

Mr. Hecht did tell reporters after the hearing that he "wouldn't touch" works he suspected 
came from a clandestine dig. But he noted that the issue was not always straightforward. 
"Say someone came to you and had a bag full of fragments from a fresh excavation," he 
said. "I'd tell them I'm not interested.

"But if someone came with a fragment of a vase and that vase was in a museum collection 
somewhere in the world, would it be more profitable to the world to give the fragment back to 
Italy or sell to the museum? He could sell the piece to a thousand other buyers, so what's 
right?"

photo:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/14/arts/design/14gett.html?oref=login