[MSN] Ancient Art Italy Wants Back From Boston's MFA. First Peek At The Ancient Art Italy Wants Back From Boston's Museum Of Fine Arts -- Plus -- A Chat With Bob Hecht Mfa Pal, Cornelius Vermeule.

Fri Sep 15 10:55:43 CEST 2006

Ancient Art Italy Wants Back From Boston's MFA
Friday, 15 September 2006, 5:35 pm
Opinion: Suzan Mazur  

First Peek At The Ancient Art Italy Wants Back From Boston's Museum Of Fine
Arts -- Plus -- A Chat With Bob Hecht Mfa Pal, Cornelius Vermeule

+++++++++ALL PHOTOS AT: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0609/S00210.htm
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By Suzan Mazur
Medea in Flight - "I'd kill for number 14." -- Cornelius Vermeule, June 1990
Image Source 

Hunt-Sotheby's, lot #14: Calyx krater, Lucania, South Italy, 400 BC. Detail
of the final scene from Euripedes' Medea with Medea fleeing in a chariot
drawn by crested serpents, following the murder of her children. She is
dressed in an ornate robe and Phyrgian tassled helmet, the chariot
surrounded by a "solar mandorla". The vase sold above estimate for $360,000
(before sales tax). But where is it now?With Boston's Museum of Fine Arts
nearing an accord with Italy over its collection of classical art acquired
primarily from Italy both before and after the1983 UNESCO curb on
antiquities trafficking - I thought it might be interesting to revisit a
conversation I had with Cornelius Vermeule III, MFA's "swashbuckling"
curator of classical art for almost 40 years (1957-1996). 

Vermeule has also shared a long friendship with Bob Hecht, the dealer now on
trial in Rome for antiquities trafficking, and he's acquired important
antiquities from him as well -- like the beautiful statue of Sabina -- in
which Hecht acted as "agent" for the November 1979 transaction. Hecht also
sold an oil flask (lekythos) to MFA in November 1989, and in 1991, a South
Italian amphora that he first owned was sold to the museum, depicting the
murder of Atreus. 

Other Hecht MFA sales, are less clear and the museum prefers to be mum about
such acquisitions. 

However, Hecht did tell Walter V. Robinson of the Boston Globe, that in
mid-1997, shortly after Vermeule's retirement, he sold MFA a skyphos, an
ancient silver cup valued at more than $400,000
. Asked its origin, Hecht responded: "What does it matter?" 

ADVERTISEMENT
Vermeule like a good friend wrote an introduction to Hecht's 1988 Atlantis
Antiquities Greek & Roman Archaic art show catalogue of mostly unprovenanced
pieces, recently discussed here. [See
 Add NYT To Bob Hecht Antiquities Ring
Organigram?] 

One of the stars of that show, an Etruscan terracotta votive head of a woman
from 500 BC, Hecht described as "one of the finest pieces to have survived
in clay". Its whereabouts are now anyone's guess. 

Vermeule was also in the middle of the MFA's acquisition of the top half of
the Herakles statue looted from Turkey (the bottom half is still in the
Antalya Museum) and he authenticated priceless Athenian coins looted from
Turkey that were sold to oil magnate/MFA trustee William Koch. 

The coins have all now been recovered by the Turkish government, according
to Larry Kaye, whose law firm has represented the Turkish government on
various disputes involving ancient art, including the Lydian Hoard, which
went back to Turkey in the early 1990s after a quarter century in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art's basement.

Vermeule's late wife, Emily, was a Harvard archaeology professor who taught
former Getty museum curator Marion True. Marion True is now Hecht's
co-defendant in the Rome trial.

Following is the list of ancient art Italy now seeks the return of from
Boston. Most of it was acquired on Vermeule's watch:

Sabina -- Hecht acted as agent for Fritz Burki (restorer of the Sarpedon
Euphronios vase) in the 1979 Sabina sale to MFA.

Amphora depicting Murder of Atreus -- First owned by Bob Hecht.

Vase for Bath Water -- Sold to MFA by dealer Jerry Eisenberg in 1988.

Mixing Bowl -- Hoppin Painter -- Sold to MFA by Jerry Eisenberg in 1988.

Mixing Bowl -- Thracian Hunters

Oil Flask -- Diosphos Painter -- Hecht sold to MFA in 1989. 

Water Jar -- Berlin Painter -- Cornelius & Emily Vermeule gift to MFA, 1978.

Lucania, South Italy vase -- MFA bought from Swiss Collector Leo Mildenberg
in 1971. 

Lekythos -- Gift from Cornelius & Emily Vermeule to MFA in 1977

Pelike 
Hydria 

Candelabrum Support -- Gift of Cornelius & Emily Vermeule to MFA in 1992

Cornelius and Emily Vermeule were also a footnote to the half-century-old
Dorak Treasure mystery - "dreamed up" by British archaeologist James
Mellaart - as reported on this page [ Scoop: Suzan Mazur: The Dorak Affair's
Final Chapter]. 

It seems that in 1970 "bits of Dorak" were actually thought to have
materialized. Jimmie Mellaart still claims the Dorak Treasure is real,
originating from two royal tombs of the Yortan culture in northwest Anatolia
(Turkey) - a culture which doesn't exist, according to Mellaart's former
British Institute of Archaeology colleague David French, who served as BIA's
director in Turkey for three decades and was a co-discoverer with Mellaart
of the celebrated ancient city of Catalhoyuk fifty years ago.

But the myth of the Dorak Treasure was still so powerful in 1970 in the mind
of the public, that pieces of Dorak were thought to have turned up in an MFA
exhibition of unprovenanced ancient Near East art, a "golden hoard".
Cornelius Vermeule was curator at the time. 

Patricia Connor and Kenneth Pearson, authors of the book, Dorak Affair, told
me in London in 1991 that New York Times writer Karl Meyer rang them up
about the coincidence. There was also a buzz in the archaeology community
that the collection was a forgery, but the Vermeules said no way, with
Cornelius remarking that "whatever the origins of the jewellery, wherever it
was found, it is not a forgery." 

An editorial in Antiquity described the Boston collection this way: 

"In January the Boston Museum put on exhibition 137 pieces of 10-carat
jewellery weighing 22 lbs., including a large six-strand necklace of twisted
spirals, and a diadem with ten looped chains and hanging pendants. One of
the most remarkable items in this collection is a gold Egyptian cylinder
seal said to have belonged to an official at the courts of two fifth-dynasty
pharaohs who ruled between 2497 and 2450 BC."The Vermeules decided to make a
statement about the Boston collection in the March 21, 1970 Illustrated
London News: 

"A couple of journalists in London have tried to create "a scandal"over the
acquisition of this group. . . . It would have been far more scandalous for
it to continue its peregrinations, with a prominent American museum bidding
for the cylinder seal alone because the rest was non-Egyptian." But my
interview with Cornelius Vermeule, which follows, was about yet another
scandalous espisode, the Hunt-Sotheby's sale of June 1990, in which an
antiquities collection without provenience which Bunker and Herbert Hunt
purchased from dealer Bruce McNall via Bob Hecht via Italian art dealer
Giacomo Medici, was put on the block with profits going to the Internal
Revenue Service. 

Medici's appeal of a 10-year sentence for antiquities trafficking will be
heard in October in Rome. McNall is no longer in the antiquities business
and he went to jail in the 1990s for "bilking banks" out of $200 million.

At the time of the Hunt-Sotheby's auction, I was especially interested in
Vermeule's comments about the most expensive piece for sale: a 2nd Century
A.D. Roman Bronze figure of a youth estimated at $800,000-$1.2million.
Sotheby's said the piece was "derived from a prototype of the 5th Century
B.C." 

Hecht and his Atlantis gallery financier, Jonathan Rosen, were more blunt.
They told me and Turkish journalist Ozgen Acar that the statue was a fake.
And, indeed, something did seem to be wrong with it since there was very
little bidding. In fact, it sold way below estimate - for $490,000 (plus
sales tax) to a Japanese dealer.

Curiously, the Bronze nude had been previously exhibited in the CINOA in
Amsterdam (1972), at the Met (1974-75), at Andre Emmerich's gallery in New
York (1975) and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1978-1979). It's unclear
exactly when the Hunts acquired it, but the statue appears in the 1983
Kimbell Art Museum catalogue, Wealth of the Ancient World, as part of their
collection. My notes say McNall picked it up in Basel, Switzerland.

Sotheby's describes the piece in its catalogue as:

"[S]imilar in pose to the Idolino of Polykleitos, standing in a graceful
attitude with his weight on the right leg, the head turned to his right, his
hands each open in an expressive gesture, the face with full outlined lips,
straight nose, and large eyes inlaid with silver, the irises engraved and
pupils indented, his thick curly hair radiating from the crown in
overlapping striated locks, and bound in a fillet with engraved borders.
Height 45 ½ in. (115.cm.) . . . The author [of the Wealth of the Ancient
World catalogue] suggests that this bronze, which is of exceptionally large
size, may have once functioned as a lamp-bearer, of a type known from
Pompeii. . . ."Here now are excerpts from my June 1990 interview with
Cornelius Vermeule , who also liked to go by the name of Isao Tsukinabe when
donating to MFA: 

Cornelius Vermeule: Very large [the Roman Bronze]. It's not a very beautiful
work of art in terms of slick green patina kind of sinuous male or female
anatomy sort of bronze that a lot of people like - of which there are others
in the collection. But it's a rather powerful young man of the end of the
Roman Republic/beginning of the Roman Empire slightly traditional style that
goes back to the 5th Century BC. 

It's a splendid eclectic piece of the early Empire and it's just plain. What
you call life-size or nearly life-size - 2/3rds life-size. It's kind of
under life-size for a human, but it's still no sort of piccolo Bronze - no
table top thing. It's, in that respect, very impressive.

Suzan Mazur: It's very much intact, is it?

Cornelius Vermeule: Yes.

Suzan Mazur: It's the most expensive piece that's going to be auctioned, I
believe.

Cornelius Vermeule: Is it? I haven't looked.

Suzan Mazur: The estimate is $800,000 to $1.2 million.

Cornelius Vermeule: It seems quite reasonable by today's market, considering
the $1million to $2million tickets on almost every masterpiece right now and
the price Mr. Herbert Hunt paid for it. The piece was on exhibit at the
Museum of Fine Arts. Andre Emmerich owned it then. . . .

I think to quote Andre Emmerich's famous quote about the market, which goes
back to Winston Churchill - "Certain pieces are or are not the tide which
raises all boats." Well this is going to be right up there surging on the
beach with the best. Appropos to the Cycladic piece that Asher Edelman
bought [through Ed Merrin from Sotheby's for $2.2 million outbidding dealer
Robin Symes shopping for the Getty].

It [the Bronze nude] will fetch more than the estimates and the estimates
are low. So in the forefront of the charge up Lookout Mountain at Gettysburg
- I'm really mixing the metaphors - except I wouldn't want to lead Pickett's
charge wearing what he's wearing.

Suzan Mazur: And what about the Euphronios pieces? Do you think these pieces
are probably from the same group?

Cornelius Vermeule: Somewhat related to the Metropolitan [Museum of Art]
krater, but that was just sort of hearsay, gossip, because they did appear
roughly about the same time. The Euphronios krater in the Hunt collection
came along later. And as I've said and said years ago at the time the
Metropolitan acquired the Euphronios - Euphronios as a major Athenian vase
painter at the end of the 6th Century [BC], one of the great masters
beginning the 5th Century [BC], is found from southern Russia to North
Africa to Spain. 

Euphronios vases are found all over the place. Indeed, at the time the Met
acquired its Euphronios krater - John Hess and Nicolas Gage, who's gone into
books mainly about his mother. . . The coincidence that two
[[Euphronios]pieces turned up in two years is not unusual. If not the
Michelangelo of Greek vase painting, he certainly is on par with the great
Renaissance masters.

Suzan Mazur: But the themes were related [Met's Sarpendon Euphronios vase
and Hunt's Sarpedon Euphronios wine cup on the block at Sotheby's]. The
death of Sarpedon.

Cornelius Vermeule: These artists - once they got onto a good subject, they
would turn out quite a few vases of the same subject. . . . How many vases
were attributed to Euphronios? About 25-50 vases.

Suzan Mazur: Can you comment about Ed Merrin's Anatolian "miniature
masterpieces", which he sold for $1,000 each? According to Bob Hecht's
financier, collector Jonathan Rosen, who donated 500 such animal miniatures
to Boston MFA, the pieces after testing were fake. Rosen said Merrin did not
test his. [ Scoop: Merrin Gallery In Italy's Antiquities Dragnet?] 

Cornelius Vermeule: I don't think he [Merrin] produced a catalogue [about
the Anatolian miniatures]. But he's right there on 57th Street. Call his
secretary Linda.

Suzan Mazur: Which is your favorite piece in the Hunt-Sotheby's auction?

Cornelius Vermeule: The Medea. I'd kill for #14.

Medea in Flight - Image Source 
Suzan Mazur: Will you be attending the auction?

Cornelius Vermeule: We'll be present. We'll be, as the Japanese say, ekking
out a slender existence.

*************
 Suzan Mazur's stories on art and antiquities have been published in The
Economist, Financial Times, Connoisseur, Archaeology (cover) and Newsday.
Some of her other reports have appeared on PBS, CBC and MBC. She has been a
guest on McLaughlin, Charlie Rose and various Fox Television News programs.
Email: sznmzr @ aol.com