[MSN] Prosecutors at the Getty conspiracy trial present photographs of a pair of ancient marble griffins - one of the glories of the Getty's collection - lying in a car trunk, encrusted with grime and loosely wrapped in newspaper.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

June 1, 2006
Photographs of Getty Griffins Shown at Antiquities Trial in Rome 
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

Photos:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/arts/01gett.html

ROME, May 31 - Prosecutors at the conspiracy trial of a former curator at
the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles presented on Wednesday photographs
of a pair of ancient marble griffins - one of the glories of the Getty's
collection - lying in a car trunk, encrusted with grime and loosely wrapped
in newspaper.

Salvatore Morando, an officer with Italy's art theft squad, said experts saw
striking similarities between the fourth-century B.C. griffins and a dozen
or so other ancient marbles - pieces of kraters, amphorae and bases - that
lie in the vaults of the Civic Museum in the town of Foggia, in southeastern
Italy.

"The provenance is from the same important funerary context," Mr. Morando
said of the mythical griffins, who are depicted voraciously devouring a doe.

Prosecutors said that the photographs, seized in a raid on a Swiss warehouse
in 1995, show that the griffins were illegally dug up and removed from
Italy. 

Marion True, the former Getty antiquities curator, and Robert Hecht, an
American dealer who frequently sold artifacts to American museums, have been
jointly on trial here since November on charges of conspiring to traffic in
antiquities looted from Italian soil. Both have pleaded innocent.

Italy is demanding that the Getty return the griffins and dozens of other
objects. For now, the sculpture is on view at the Getty Villa in Pacific
Palisades, Calif., the newly expanded home of the museum's collection of
Greek, Roman and Etruscan artifacts.

According to court documents, the Getty bought the griffins from the New
York diamond magnate Maurice Tempelsman in 1985 in a deal totaling
$6,486,004. The sale was handled through the London dealer Robin Symes, the
documents indicate.

Mr. Tempelsman is better known to the American public as the companion of
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who died in 1994. But in the rarefied world of
ancient antiquities, he is considered an astute and prolific collector. As
of press time on Wednesday, Mr. Tempelsman had not returned phone calls to
his Manhattan offices requesting comment on the Italian case. 

Another photograph presented Wednesday at the trial depicted Giacomo Medici,
a dealer whose files were seized in the raid on the warehouses, standing
proudly next to the griffins at the Getty Villa. The picture was obviously
taken some years ago because Mr. Medici has remained in Italy since he was
convicted of smuggling artifacts out of that country in 2004.

The funerary vessels in Foggia, which experts say were from a tomb, came to
light only last month, Mr. Morando testified, when military police officers
with the Italian art theft squad were poking through the vaults of the
museum there. 

Mr. Morando said the investigators realized that the vessels were made of
Parian marble, a rare, semi-translucent white stone quarried in ancient
times on the Greek island of Paros. They bore faint traces of polychromatic
decoration in specks of red, light blue and pink. 

Mr. Morando said the type of marble and its decoration prompted a leading
expert, the archaeologist Angelo Bottin, to link them directly to the
much-better-known griffins at the Getty Villa.

"They're exceptional objects," Mr. Morando said.

The Foggia vases were recovered in 1978 from Savino Berardi, a tomb robber
well known to investigators. Mr. Berardi was not convicted of any crime in
connection with the vessels. Turned over to the state art authorities, they
were eventually forgotten. 

Mr. Berardi's name is one of several dozen that appear on a lined sheet of
notebook paper that investigators said was found in the possession of an
antiquities trafficker who has since died. Mr. Hecht's name is prominently
marked at the top of the page, towering over a makeshift pyramid of names. 

Mr. Hecht, who attended the proceedings on Wednesday, muttered dismissively
when a slide of the notebook paper was presented. 

Dressed in a fine gray suit and a splashy tie by Bulgari, Mr. Hecht, who
turns 87 on Saturday, was not scheduled to take the stand. But he spoke in
court to respond to accusations made against him in previous hearings. 

In particular, he explained how he had come into possession of a letter sent
by the art theft squad to the director of a museum in Munich inquiring about
a red-figure vase. Mr. Hecht said he had sold the vase to the museum and had
therefore received a copy of the letter from the museum. But he said that as
the vase had "ancient restorations dating from the beginning of the 20th
century," it "could not possibly be from a recent dig in Etruria."

Italian prosecutors contend that over the last century several hundred, if
not thousands, of ancient artifacts dug up illicitly in Italy have made
their way into museum collections abroad, especially in the United States.
Speaking to reporters before the hearing, the sprightly Mr. Hecht - who
joked repeatedly and regaled the assembly with an aria from Verdi's
"Traviata" - defended the practice of not asking many questions about the
provenance of the artifacts he was offered.

"There are always 1,000 other dealers willing to buy," Mr. Hecht said. "At
least if I bought the piece, I was sure that it would be put at the disposal
of the scientific community, in a museum or a private collection. Someone
else might just lock it up in his basement and only allow friends to see
it." 

Asked what he thought would be the outcome of the trial, he said, "I have no
idea, it's in the hands of God, and the judge."

In trial testimony Giuseppe Putrino, an officer with the art theft squad,
described documents recovered in a raid last summer on the offices of
Palladion Ancient and Fine Art in Basel, Switzerland, run by Ursula
Becchina, the wife of the Sicilian antiquities dealer Gianfranco Becchina. 

Mr. Putrino said that one document showed that the dealers had often asked
experts to work from Polaroid photographs in authenticating works. 

"There is no trace of legitimate export documents for any of the artifacts
shown in the Polaroids," he said, adding that the use of Polaroids "should
have been an alarm bell for the experts." 

http://www.nytimes.com/