Antiques smuggled from dig sites lose their history — and with it much of their value
By Sheila Farr Seattle Times art critic
For archaeologists and scholars, the smuggling of genuine artifacts has more serious consequences than the trade in fakes. When an artwork is stolen from an archaeological site and sold outside the country, experts have no way to trace the history of the piece; its link to the past is lost. For museums and collectors, an object with a provenance — a record of where it was found and who previously owned it — is worth much more. The worldwide market for antiquities has ignited in the past 20 years. The black market for looted artifacts is estimated to be worth billions of dollars, according to The Illicit Antiquities Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, England, which links the growing business to organized crime. The fact that Chinese government officials occasionally crack down hard on smugglers "should not obscure the fact that they have largely tolerated the illegal export of art objects," according to The Art Newspaper, which criticizes corrupt government officials for facilitating the trade. Smugglers routinely decimate temples and archaeological sites in countries without the resources to protect their cultural heritage. Collectors in North America, Europe and Japan eagerly buy up the spoils. China Daily said recently, "Most Chinese grave-robbers' loot usually ends up in expensively decorated living rooms on New York's Upper East Side." Collectors argue that they protect treasures that might otherwise go uncared for.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Digger damage at ancient fort
The hill fort is an ancient monument.
Historians are counting the cost after vandals used a stolen digger to damage an ancient monument in Bedfordshire. Holes have been scraped inside the Iron Age Maiden Bower Fort at Sewell, near Dunstable, to make ramps for off-road motorbikes. Earthworks which surround much of the fort have been damaged in two places. The digger has also been used to scrape holes inside the ancient monument. Whoever did it must be local enough to know that this is an ancient monument and that they weren't just destroying an old bank of earth. The vandals are thought to have struck twice. The first attack was some time over the Christmas break. Now English Heritage has been informed by the police of more damage. Dave Warren, site director with the local Manshead Archaeological Society, said he was disgusted. "Whoever did it must be local enough to know that this is an ancient monument and that they weren't just destroying an old bank of earth," he said. "They must have known exactly what they were damaging. "They must have been hoping there might be something inside the fort. "They weren't in ignorance of what they were damaging."
Substantial fine
Mr Warren said the monument had been eroded over time but had reached a more or less stable state. The damage to the ramparts could be "the tip of the iceberg", he said. History experts are still assessing how much damage has been done inside. The fort is a registered national monument and anyone causing damage to it could face legal proceedings and a substantial fine if found guilty.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Book Review
Missing Masterpieces: Lost Works of Art 1450-1900 by Gert-Rudolf Flick
Where are they now?
By Richard Cork
As a new book reveals, many famous paintings have simply disappeared. Our critic is on the case IN THE VERY first James Bond film, Dr No, Sean Connery finally invades the villain’s luxurious lair. Walking down an elegant staircase, he glances at a painting on the wall. Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, recently stolen from the National Gallery, gazes back at him. “So that’s where it went,” mutters Bond with a sardonic grin. Ever since seeing Dr No as an impression-able teenager in 1962 I have been tempted to imagine that lost masterpieces all end up in similar hide-outs. Goya’s Duke was returned to its owner. But what about all the other paintings and sculpture that remain tantalisingly untraced? Even works prized by their devoted owners have vanished, often in tangled circumstances. Fascinated by their disappearance, Gert-Rudolf Flick, an academic and art collector, has written a diligently researched book about 24 elusive treasures. He hunts down every surviving record of their whereabouts, and explores the identity of the acquisitive monarchs, aristocrats and grandees who once doted on them. Although Flick calls the book Missing Masterpieces, not all of his subjects deserve such an accolade. If Pordenone’s lumbering Hercules and Achelous resurfaced, I doubt whether it would be hailed as a landmark in European painting. Nor would Cariani’s ponderous Christ Carrying the Cross, in which St Veronica offers him a towel miraculously imprinted with the image of the suffering redeemer. But plenty of the images investigated by Flick would certainly be acclaimed if they were tracked down today.
Supreme among them is Michelangelo’s bronze version of David, a statue he worked on while carving his celebrated colossus of the same biblical hero. Not as large as his marble David, the lost bronze figure was still almost life-size. And we do know that it showed the young warrior resting his foot proudly on Goliath’s decapitated head. Michelangelo’s surviving drawing shows how brutally David crushes his victim’s head, pressing down hard on his distended right eye. Commissioned by the city of Florence in 1502, it served a blatantly political purpose, ending up as a gift to Florimond Robertet, the French king’s powerful finance minister. Delighted by this magnificent present, the art-loving Robertet ensured in return that Florence regained its lost control of Pisa. He then took his prize back to France, installing it at the centre of a courtyard in his splendid new chateau at Bury, near Blois. Over two centuries later, a descendant of the statue’s subsequent owner was guillotined during the Terror of the French Revolution. By that time, everyone had forgotten that Michelangelo made the bronze. Confiscated by zealous members of the Monuments Committee, it was listed in official documents and then disappeared from history. Titian’s Portrait of Isabella d’Este in Red must have been a remarkable painting, too. One of the outstanding patrons of the Renaissance, she created jewel-like rooms in her private quarters at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua. There, classical antiquities were displayed alongside commissioned paintings by Mantegna, and Leonardo drew her in 1499. The portrait, now preserved in the Louvre, is almost as beguiling as the Mona Lisa. And Isabella was delighted with Titian’s extant portrait of herself dressed in black. “Titian pleases us so much,” she wrote, “that we doubt that we were ever in that state in which he represents us with the beauty in that picture.” But she is unlikely to have been so gratified by his lost portrait of her. Judging by a copy of the portrait done by Rubens, it was probably painted from life. Flushed and overweight, with a heavy rope of pearls slung from her plump neck, she stares from the canvas with a defensive, even sulky, air. Isabella may have suspected that Titian’s intentions were unflattering, and yet Rubens’s copy also suggests that the vanished portrait was an impressive study of a woman cruelly described by Pietro Aretino as “disgracefully ugly and even more deplorably un- made-up”. In 1628 the Titian was sold to Charles I, and disappeared after his death. Included in the Commonwealth Sale ordered by Oliver Cromwell, it passed to one of Charles’s many creditors. The King’s Silkman, a draper called John Geere, was able to acquire Isabella in Red in partial settlement of his unpaid services. But he is the final recorded owner of this sumptuous painting, which may still be lurking, unrecognised, somewhere in England. The trail runs just as cold for other paintings pursued by Flick with admirable and dogged persistence. Where, now, is Caravaggio’s brooding seated portrait of Alof de Wignacourt, the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta? Whatever happened to Poussin’s Time Saving Truth from Envy and Discord, not to mention an exquisite pair of paintings by Chardin, The Drawing Lesson and A Girl Reciting her Gospel? Must we abandon all hope of recovering Correggio’s haunting altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with St Mary Magdalen and St Lucy? The painting was forcibly removed from its Italian church in 1647, on the orders of the ruthless Francesco d’Este, Duke of Modena. He commissioned a copy and gave it to the church, but Correggio’s irreplaceable original vanished during the many vicissitudes by the duke’s descendants. Its destiny must remain a matter of conjecture, like Rembrandt’s painting of The Circumcision. Executed in 1646 for Prince Frederik Hendrik of Orange, this shadowy scene belonged to a series depicting the Passion of Christ. Most of them survive in Munich, but the glowing Circumcision was lost during the 18th century. Perhaps it had been damaged beyond repair, for the other paintings in the series were restored in 1755. Only a copy now provides us with a notion of how Rembrandt depicted the delicate operation on the Christ child, in a lofty temple where everyone seems overawed by the event. The strangest of all these frustrating stories concerns Jacques-Louis David’s celebrated painting of Lepeletier on his Death Bed. It became an icon of the French Revolution, commemorating the murder of a man who, having been president of the supreme legal court in France, fervently voted for the king’s death in January 1793. Four days later he was stabbed to death by a former royal bodyguard. The killing gave the National Convention a ready- made “Martyr de la Liberté”. At Lepeletier’s state funeral, his half- naked body was placed on a pedestal, posed like Christ in a pietà, with fatal wound and murder weapon fully exposed. David sat at the base of the monument drawing the corpse, which appeared to bleed. And Lepeletier’s 11-year-old daughter, Suzanne-Louise, whose mother had died a decade earlier, was symbolically adopted by the Convention as the first “Orphan of the Nation”. Over the next few months, David painted the cult-hero on his death bed, stretched out beneath a blood- smeared sword impaling a piece of paper inscribed “I vote for the death of the tyrant”. David’s painting was lauded by the Convention, who displayed it in their Assembly building next to the president’s chair. It was joined there by David’s even more uncompromising painting of Marat assassinated in his bath, now preserved in a Brussels museum. Both pictures were eventually returned to the artist. The Lepeletier canvas, however, has vanished. Suzanne-Louise bought it after her father’s death in 1826. Since she had become an ardent royalist, many feared that she might burn the painting. But it was still widely regarded as an outstanding achievement, and before her early death in 1829 she asked a close relative to “keep it for me carefully”. Soon after, rumours of a garden bonfire circulated among people convinced that the painting had been destroyed. But in 1860, according to the art critic Champfleury, it had passed safely into the hands of the Marquis de Boisgelin, who “is concealing the portrait from all eyes”.
He certainly succeeded, for the painting has never been seen since then. Even so, the mystery surrounding its fate means that Lepeletier on his Death Bed may, like the other images investigated by Flick, resurface one day. Anyone who reads this absorbing book is bound to emerge with a determination to be more alert, especially in the dark recesses of grandparents’ attics or obscure shops where dust- smothered old paintings are stacked against the wall. After all, the vanished Rembrandt or Titian might just be there, waiting for you in the gloom.
# Missing Masterpieces: Lost Works of Art 1450-1900 by Gert-Rudolf Flick is published by Merrell at £40
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
Museum of Glass security camera stolen
Vandalism at museum followed by theft of security camera
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TACOMA -- Outside exhibits and displays were the first targets of vandalism and theft at the city's new $48 million Museum of Glass. Now someone has stolen an outside security camera. The roof-mounted camera was taken Saturday night, less than a month after nighttime security patrols were halted to save money, museum Director Josi irene Callan said. The camera will be replaced, but not the patrols, Callan said Sunday night. "The board will have to look at it, but we simply don't have (the money) in the budget," she said. A night security guard costs about $40,000 a year. Guards patrol inside and outside the museum during the day. "We've been open almost seven months, and we've had well over 200,000 people through the building itself and perhaps another 50,000 on the outside," Callan said. "That's pretty amazing that people have really respected the art and the building." The security camera heist was the fourth act of vandalism or theft outside the museum since it was opened in June. Two weeks ago, three red glass apples were taken from an outdoor exhibit. They were later found and returned. In September, a security guard saw two youths push over and shatter one of the 20 glass-and- bronze tubes of Howard Tre's "Water Forest" installation but failed to get their names. City officials and Tre are at odds over who will bear the cost of repairs. In August someone fired at least two gunshots at the neighboring Chihuly Bridge of Glass. Some protective glass panels were splintered but the art work behind them was undamaged. There have been no arrests in those cases, but police may have better luck in the security camera theft.
Before the camera was lifted, officials say, it recorded on videotape an image of the thief, who was wearing a baseball cap with the word "SECURITY" on the front.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/
Top Egyptian antiquities officials arrested, accused of involvement in bid to smuggle antiquities to Spain
Sun Jan 26, 9:46 AM ET
By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt - A top Egyptian official appointed to protect the country's archaeological treasures has been arrested on suspicion of taking a bribe to allow a merchant to try to smuggle 362 of those treasures to Spain, airport officials said Sunday. Sunday's arrests came after airport customs police earlier in the day discovered pieces from Egypt's pharaonic, Roman and Greek eras — 288 icons, 13 bracelets, 60 small statues and the head of a large statue — packed in a box for air shipping to a private dealer in Spain. The airport officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the merchant, Mohamed al-Shaaer, had a certificate from the government's Supreme Council of Antiquities identifying the items as modern fakes made in Cairo's main tourist bazaar. Customs police arrested al-Shaaer; Abdel Karim Abu Shanab, the top Supreme Council of Antiquities official in charge of tracking stolen artifacts; and Mohamed Abdel Rahman Fahmy, an antiquities council inspector. Police said Al-Shaaer had paid a bribe of 25,000 pounds (about US$5,000) to Abu Shanab and Fahmy in exchange for the fake certificate. The two officials and the merchant were ordered held for questioning for four days, after which the prosecutor will decide whether to release them, renew their imprisonment or charge them. Supreme Council of Antiquities spokesman Hassan Saadallah said he had no information about the arrests. Zahi Hawass, director of the council, did not respond to repeated phone calls seeking comment. Messages were left at Hawass's office and home. A woman who identified herself only as Abu Shanab's daughter and answered his mobile phone would say only: "My dad is away and is coming back soon." Soon after taking over last year as director, Hawass created Abu Shanab's position as part of a stepped-up campaign to bring back treasures stolen from Egypt. Hawass sent letters to museums around the world informing them he was establishing Abu Shanab's central office to track missing antiquities, encouraging them to work with the office, and adding sternly: "We expect that your museum will be most circumspect when acquiring any new ancient Egyptian pieces." Abu Shanab's duties including issuing certificates confirming pieces leaving the country are replicas. A 1983 Egyptian law declared all antiquities not in private collections then to be the property of the government and banned their sale or export.
The maximum sentence for receiving bribes is 15 years with hard labor and the sentence for smuggling antiquities is five years. Efforts are being made to increase to 25 years the maximum sentence for smuggling antiquities.
Fake antiques are a tradition in China
By Sheila Farr Seattle Times art critic
Every year, a flashy array of fake Chinese antiquities enters the global marketplace — from tawdry souvenir-shop reproductions to brilliantly executed masterpieces that curators call "scary." Most of those fakes come through Hong Kong, China's wildly capitalistic gateway to the world. Trying to quantify the trade in fakes is like trying to get your hands around an octopus. No one keeps records of the illegal trade. Authorities rarely enforce the laws against fraud. And most people agree corrupt officials look the other way, or even participate in the trade. The business in fake ceramic, jade and bronze objects is worth untold millions of dollars each year. In Hong Kong itself, the best estimates say that three-fourths of the "antique" ceramics for sale are fake. The reason is simple: Collectors are eager to buy the real thing. After a string of stunning archaeological finds in recent decades and the opening of China to private enterprise, museums and collectors in the West, Japan and China are clamoring to buy Chinese art. Auction prices are soaring: Last year, a bronze wine vessel from the Shang Dynasty (1766- 1122 B.C.) brought a record $9.2 million at a New York auction. Officially, the Chinese government prohibits the export of antiquities and takes dramatic steps to keep its cultural treasures from leaving the country. In the past 10 years, China has executed more than 20 people for stealing archaeological relics.
Yet China does little to control fakes.
For art dealers, then, "it requires absolutely constant vigilance," says Julian Thompson, Chinese art expert for Sotheby's. Forgeries aren't exclusive to the trade of Chinese artifacts. Anyone who collects art knows that fakes abound, even in contemporary art. But Chinese art comes with particular issues. With a 7,000-year-old culture, the Chinese have a reverence for antiquity and a long tradition of making and selling reproductions. "The idea of originality is a modern concept," says Cary Liu, associate curator of Asian art at Princeton University Art Museum. "If you are learning from a master, you're copying the master. The idea isn't to produce an exact duplicate. You end up with a product completely different. The hand of the artist is there." Yet even in ancient times, some Chinese reproductions were meant to deceive. "It's been going on at least 1,000 years," said Michael Knight, curator of Chinese art at San Francisco's Museum of Asian Art and a former Seattle Art Museum curator. "There are notes about it: 'How to make a jade look old — bury it in the belly of a rabbit for umpteen years,' et cetera." A few rare objects are so amazing they not only baffle the experts but retain their value despite disagreements about their origin. A recent controversy over a Chinese painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York illustrates the point. The painting, "Riverbank," was attributed to the great 10th century painter, Dong Yuan. It was purchased from renowned collector C.C. Wang by a Met trustee, who donated it to the museum. Some consider the piece one of the great Chinese paintings of all time. Yet two of the world's top experts — scholar and author James Cahill and Sherman Lee, a former SAM curator — believe it may have been painted by the 20th century artist, collector and known forger Zhang Daqian, who died 20 years ago. In fact, Wang acquired the painting from Zhang. The controversy is far from solved, but most scholars now agree the painting is neither by Dong or Zhang, but some other artist between the 10th and 13th centuries. Liu of the Princeton museum believes the whole controversy was overblown. He says the main thing to remember is the amazing quality of the painting. "Regardless of whether it's Song Dynasty or some other period," says Liu, "you can't escape the fact that it's a great object. That's a level (of artistry) where the scholars may argue, but they still value the piece."
The bargain trade
On the other end of the scale are low-quality reproductions sold as souvenirs or fraudulently marketed as antiques. Thesaurus Fine Arts in Seattle, like its counterparts in Hong Kong and other cities, caters to an odd niche market of tourists, unsophisticated art buyers and what one dealer calls "bottom feeders" — people looking for bargains that they might be able to quickly resell for a profit. Its location among established galleries gives Thesaurus an air of legitimacy, an impression the gallery promotes. In a handout on "Ceramics Dating" signed by "advisor" Steven Cheung, it says: "There are no articles at Thesaurus that are knowingly fake; although some of them I am not certain. However, I have given most of the articles only quick examinations. An article TL tested positive typically commands a considerably higher price, because if an auction house takes it, with a little luck it may bring a very high price. Generally, therefore, the better buy is the untested articles." That kind of sales pitch appeals to the speculative buyer who has replaced a genuine appreciation for fine objects with a gambling mentality. " 'Antiques Roadshow' misleads people," says Cheney Cowles, owner of the Crane Gallery in Seattle and past president of SAM's Asian Arts Council. "People don't sell things for $5,000 if they're worth $20,000." William Rathbun, SAM's curator emeritus of Asian art, says he browsed through Thesaurus when it first opened. "I went in once and even without my questioning, there were these assurances that it was museum-quality stuff," Rathbun said. "I didn't want to argue, so I just left." One of the first rules for art collectors is to know the reputation of the dealer. Thesaurus sells a lot through the Internet auction site eBay, a process that's inherently more perilous for the buyer. It's hard to get information on the seller, and photographs of the objects can be deceiving. "I wouldn't buy anything on the Internet," says Seattle collector Robert Dootson, a SAM trustee. Even after years of collecting, he still gets expert advice on antiquities, usually from a museum curator, before he makes a major purchase.
Most dealers and collectors talk about the money they lost on fakes as "tuition" — an unavoidable price of learning. "It's one of the most costly doctorates you can ever buy," says Robert Ellsworth, an outspoken New York dealer and collector who has donated major works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other institutions. Yet they all agree that the knowledge gained is worth it and the pleasures of living with extraordinary works of art are ample reward. The trick is to do your homework. Ellsworth says it's buyer beware. "That's why I have very little patience with these people who are buying things they don't know about," he said. "They deserve what they get. It's like stocks."
Seattle Times reporter Duff Wilson contributed to this report.
Sheila Farr: 206-464-2270 or sfarr@seattletimes.com
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Science reunites Elgin Marbles
The display gives an idea of how the New Acropolis Musuem will look.
A virtual reality exhibition showing how the Elgin Marbles would look if they were reunited goes on display at the Houses of Parliament on Monday. The latest technology is being used to simulate how the 5th Century BC sculptures will appear if they are reunited with the rest of the Parthenon Marbles in Athens. The Marbles are displayed in London's British Museum, but the Greek Government and a number of British MPs and celebrities are campaigning for the artefacts to be returned to Greece. Among the campaign's supporters is actress Vanessa Redgrave, who is due to attend the opening of the exhibition in the Macmillan Room of Portcullis House from 1900 GMT. Richard Allan MP, a former archaeological student who is leading the British campaign, said: "The clock is ticking towards 2004 when the whole world's eyes will be on Athens as the Olympic Games are held there. "We believe that it is more important than ever that the UK engages in the debate about the future display of the Parthenon Marbles." The Greek Government is currently building the New Acropolis Museum - a £29m showcase for the marbles - which it hopes to complete in time for the Olympic Games. The exhibition, entitled Marbles United, includes a computer simulated walk through the museum, showing the reunited marbles displayed in glass cases. It features alongside a presentation of how the various elements from the Parthenon, currently divided between Athens and London, will come together. The virtual exhibition was first presented to the UK by the architect of the new museum, Bernard Tschumi, during a visit by Greek culture minister Evangelos Venizelos. The marbles, ancient sculptures which once adorned the Parthenon in Athens, have been held in the British Museum since 1811.
photos: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2697307.stm