The Medici Conspiracy Read Free

first of all confided that the vase could have come from England—or it could have come from Italy. “But it doesn’t make any difference whether it was the 3,198th vase or the 3,199th vase found there.” All that mattered, he said, was whether it was genuine or fake, and how beautiful it was. “Why can’t people look at it simply as archaeologists do, as an art object?” This statement severely damaged von Bothmer’s credit among archaeologists. In a letter to the editor of the New York Times , Margaret Thompson of the American Numismatic Society spoke for many when she wrote: “I am outraged.... [A]ny archaeologist worthy of the name knows that the place and circumstances of discovery are of great significance for the archaeological record.” She was supported by the newsletter of the Association for Field Archaeology, which argued in an editorial that publication of the fantastic price of the krater had “at one stroke” enormously inflated the market for all antiquities. “The purchase cannot fail to encourage speculators whose objectives in acquiring ancient art . . . lie in the tax benefits to be saved by donating the objects to museums or educational institutions at their new market value.... As long as acquisition at any price is to be the credo of our major collections, they
will fail to serve the cause of knowledge and serve only to incite resentment and encourage crime.” And in fact that year, at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), traditionally held between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and called in 1972 in Philadelphia, the scholars delivered a humiliating rebuke to von Bothmer. He was a distinguished man. A German by birth, he had studied at Berlin University and at Oxford with J. D. Beazley, the great historian and connoisseur of Greek vases. Von Bothmer was wounded in World War II, in the Pacific, and awarded the Bronze Star for heroic achievement—all this before joining the Met. That year, 1972, he was one of those slated for the six-strong board of trustees of the AIA—a nomination that is normally tantamount to election. But just before the vote, a seventh nomination was made from the floor. Von Bothmer came bottom of the vote—and out.
    In speaking about the vase, its English provenance was not all that von Bothmer revealed. He also confirmed that he had first seen it in the garden of Fritz Bürki, a restorer who was listed in the Zurich directory as a sitzmoberschreiner , or chair mender. The vase had been broken, von Bothmer said, but had been reassembled and was complete, save for a few slivers. Von Bothmer further volunteered that, at the Met, if they were offered an object without a pedigree, or provenance, their normal policy was to submit a photograph of the object to the authorities in those countries “that might consider the object part of their cultural or artistic patrimony.” That procedure hadn’t been followed with the Euphronios vase, however, because—it now turned out—Hecht had provided a pedigree. He said that the krater had belonged to an Armenian dealer named Dikran A. Sarrafian, who lived in Beirut, Lebanon. Hecht had provided two letters from Sarrafian, one dated July 10, 1971—that is, a few months before the alleged clandestine dig in Etruria. The first letter said, in part, “In view of the worsening situation in the M.E. [Middle East], I have decided to settle in Australia, probably in N.S.W. [New South Wales]. I have been selling off what I have and have decided to sell also my red figured crater which I have had so long and which you have seen with my friends in Switzerland.” It mentioned a price of “one million dollars and over if possible” and a commission of 10 percent for Hecht. The second letter, dated September 1972, confirmed that Sarrafian’s father had acquired the vase in 1920 in London, in exchange for some