Italy Cops Recover Stolen Art

Peru Cardinal Pleads for Relics

LOOTERS have raided the site of a Roman temple in Surrey, carting off lorryloads of soil in the search for valuable items.
Local archaeologists have been threatened with violence, according to officials of the Surrey Archaeological Society, which issued a warning that the site at Wanborough, near Guildford, may have been damaged irretrievably by the looters.
Ten years ago, the same site was robbed by a group of people with metal detectors, who carried off more than 5,000 coins with an estimated value of £2 million. Nine people were convicted, but the total fines levied were only £2,000.
This time, the robbers were not content with visiting the site and taking away objects, but have dug large holes and removed the soil for examination elsewhere. The holes are up to 10 ft across and 4 ft deep, the society says. The looters cut through the temple's foundations, strewing tiles and masonry across the field.
"This attack appears to have been carried out by an organised gang of 'nighthawks' working under cover of darkness," a society official said. Because of the threats that have been made, The Times has been asked not to identify any member of the society.
The Romano-Celtic temple at the isolated site was built in the first or second century AD to worship an unknown deity. Many fine objects have been found there, among them the ritual regalia of the priest, which include a sceptre and an elaborate chain headdress.
Most of the coins found at the site date from before the Roman conquest, and were struck by the Iron Age rulers of the Atrebates and Catuvellauni tribes, from Commius to Verica. Most are the size of a 5p piece and of silver but some gold coins have been among the 500 recovered by the society.
Even if the looters are caught, magistrates tend to take a lenient view. "Few magistrates tend to see 'night hawks' as major criminals," the metal-detecting magazine, The Searcher, reported. "Certainly it is theft but theft of objects unknown until they are unearthed, and therefore nobody is personally robbed." The society disagrees, arguing that everybody is robbed by the destruction of their history.
A new law, the Treasure Act, recently completed its passage through Parliament. Its first draft included a clause making deliberate trespass with a metal detector a criminal offence, but lobbying by metal-detecting hobbyists led to its removal.

WASHINGTON (AP) Despite spending more than $12 million and hiring a tough new security chief, the Library of Congress recently got a fresh reminder of what it's up against in trying to guard its priceless collection.
An antique book dealer in Boston called to say someone had tried to sell him a literary collection that appeared to be handpicked from the library's shelves. The FBI questioned a library employee, then turned the case over to federal prosecutors for more investigation.
Such risks will only increase this May, when the nation's library reopens its 100-year-old Jefferson Building to tourists after a decade of renovations during which only researchers had access.
Kenneth E. Lopez, who became the first director of security a month after the Boston incident, knows how to mount a guard. A former Army intelligence officer, he has tightened security for NASA space shuttle launches and the offices of the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
But keeping the Library of Congress safe is another story.
"At other federal agencies ... you don't have the public in there," Lopez said. "The biggest challenge here is trying to strike a balance between public access to these buildings because it is a public library and the need for protection."
The Library of Congress, housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill, is home to 17 million books, 48 million original manuscripts, 4.4 million maps, 2.3 million tapes, records and audio discs and 13.7 million photographs, films, prints and drawings.
In 1978, library staff began an inventory of the 10 million books just in the least-valuable general collection. With 10 people working full time, the count won't be finished until next year.
On average, the inventory has found 2 percent of the general collections missing or damaged though "lost" books often turn up as counters move through the stacks, said spokeswoman Jill Brett.
In 1992, library counters found $1.8 million worth of damage to the oversized illustrated books known as folios. No one can say when during the library's 178-year history the folios were mutilated.
Also in 1992, three men a doctor, a government lawyer and a book dealer were convicted of stealing from the library.
Congressional and public outrage forced Librarian of Congress James H. Billington to close the stacks even to professionals who do research for Congress, and all but a tenth of the library staff, who now fetch books for others' use in supervised reading rooms. The stacks will remain closed when the Jefferson Building reading rooms open to tourists.
"This upset many readers who had enjoyed the privilege of browsing," said Billington. "It was clear, however, that the cost of this luxury was too great."
Since then, security has been further tightened.
Visitors' bags are inspected, and personal items must be left in lockers outside reading rooms. Police patrols of the library's 530 miles of shelves have increased. New cameras record most happenings.
And magnetic strips that sound alarms at exits are being placed in millions of books.
Missing items are now reported to the FBI, which can help alert antique dealers, booksellers and auction houses a worthwhile step even if it's unclear when thefts occurred, since valuables can remain in circulation for years.
In 1995, for example, four of poet Walt Whitman's notebooks, missing since World War II, showed up at Sotheby's auction house in New York.
Lopez was brought on to consolidate the three offices that had been responsible for security. He will ask Congress for $1.3 million to keep the library safe in 1998.
He'd like to have $15 million for more staff to watch and inventory the stacks, and to safeguard from the start the 7,000 items the library receives each day.
Instead, he'll be introducing "`risk management" a never-ending review to ensure limited money is spent efficiently to protect against the most devastating losses.
Yet, the nation's most prestigious library has to accept its vulnerability, said Roger Stoddard, rare books curator for the Harvard College Library.
"They'll probably be subject to theft again in two years or five years," Stoddard said. "You're really up against it if you're a librarian with millions of books."
(25 Mar 1997 14:28 EST)

A storage room at the Art Institute of Chicago has become a hunting ground for property allegedly stolen from Holocaust victims.
The heirs of a Dutch art collector who perished in a Nazi concentration camp are suing to recover a pastel monotype by Edgar Degas, "Landscape with Smokestacks," which has been available to scholars at the museum for some time.
Pharmaceutical magnate Daniel C. Searle, the defendant in that lawsuit, bought the work in 1987 for $850,000 through a New York art dealer. A trustee of the Art Institute, Searle placed his acquisition in the museum for study by specialists. Once the legal papers started flowing, the Art Institute placed the Degas in storage.
Lili Vera Collas Gutmann and her nephews Nick and Simon Goodman want the work returned, pronto. Gutmann, who lives in Florence, Italy, has vivid prewar memories of the Degas monotype--a cross between a painting and a print--done in the 1890s.
"I remember it hanging in my mother's drawing room in our home in Holland in happier times," said Gutmann, 78. "My mother died in Auschwitz."
Searle declined to comment on the suit, which was originally filed in federal court in New York in 1996 and subsequently transferred to Chicago, where it is scheduled for trial in November. But in legal papers filed by his lawyers, Searle denies that he failed to make sure that the seller was, in fact, the legitimate owner of the Degas.
It is a case filled with equal measures of tragedy and irony. The Gutmann family converted to Christianity in the early years of the 20th Century. Yet that did not save Lili Gutmann's parents from the concentration camps. The Gestapo operated on a once-a-Jew-always-a-Jew rule of thumb.
Degas, meanwhile, was not only a founding father of modern art but became an anti-Semite toward the end of his life. He once threw a model out of his studio, thinking she was Jewish; she was not. He eventually broke with his friend Camille Pissarro, the only Jew among the Impressionist painters. Yet that did not endear Degas to the Nazis, who considered modern art "degenerate."
Generally, they swapped modernist works they seized for Old Masters, which might explain how "Landscape with Smokestacks" started on its journey from Europe to America.
The Gutmanns' saga goes back to the 19th Century when they were bankers in Germany who, over several generations, married into the famed Rothschild family of Jewish financiers. Lili's parents, Frederick and Louise Gutmann, continued the family's banking enterprises, first in England, where her late brother Bernard Goodman (the English form of the family name) was born. After World War I, Frederick and Louise settled in Holland, where Lili was born into a household eased by money and culture.
"My father was a big collector," Lili recalled. "He started with 16th Century Dutch painters and Renaissance artists. Finally, he began acquiring French Impressionists."
By 1939, though, Frederick and Louise Gutmann were concerned about the fate of their collection, given the growing power of the Nazis. So they sent several works--including "Landscape with Smokestacks," a second Degas, and a work by Auguste Renoir--to a Paris antiques dealer for safekeeping. In 1943, the Gutmanns tried to escape from occupied Holland to Italy, where their daughter Lili lived. But, captured by the Nazis, they perished in the concentration camps.
After the war, Lili and her brother Bernard tried to track down their family's possessions--which, including those sent to Paris, had vanished during the conflict. In the 1960s, they say, they located and recovered several of their parents' artworks.
Lili's nephews, Nick and Simon Goodman, were born in the 1940s in England and came to America as adults. Nick is an art director for Hollywood studios; fellow Californian Simon is in the import business.
Nick has childhood memories of seeing his father go off on expeditions for the family's lost possessions.
Upon Bernard Goodman's death in 1994, his records of his attempts to track down the missing paintings came to Nick and Simon, who took up the search. Eventually they discovered that those paintings entrusted to the Parisian antique dealer had been seized by the Einsatzsab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, a German unit that looted artworks. They wound up in the hands of Hans Wendland, a German art dealer who operated in Paris during World War II as the Nazis' principal conduit for confiscated artworks. Also, a Washington-based expert in stolen art told Nick and Simon that at war's end, most of Wendland's holdings had gone West to the U.S.
Finally, Simon Goodman came across a book "Degas Landscapes" that included a reproduction of "Landscape with Smokestacks," noting that it was in the collection of Daniel C. Searle. After trying to negotiate its return, the Goodman brothers and Lili Gutmann filed suit.
Though Searle and his lawyers declined to comment, their line of defense can be surmised from bits and pieces in their legal filings plus hints from those close to their side of the controversy. The pastel had previously been shown in two Degas exhibitions and listed in catalogs dating to 1946. So neither Searle or the Art Institute had reason to suspect it had been stolen.
Moreover, they argue, the wartime role of Wendland, the art dealer, was widely exposed in a book, "The Rape of Europa," by Lynn Nicholas, published in 1994, seven years after Searle bought "Landscape with Smokestacks."
In their federal court complaint, though, the plaintiffs allege that they received documents from Searle showing that Wendland acquired "Landscapes with Smokestacks" during the occupation of France.
Searle's attorneys, the Chicago firm of Sidley & Austin, said they would have no comment on any aspect of the case.
"If you were spending that kind of money for a painting, wouldn't you ask a few questions about where it was during World War II?" Nick Goodman said. "We're going to take depositions of several Art Institute employees. We want to know their role in possibly advising Searle to make the purchase."
A spokeswoman for the museum declined to comment on any possible role of its the staff in the work's acquisition.
Nick Goodman also notes that his family's lawsuit could set a precedent. Previous skirmishes over contested works of art have pitted one museum against another institution. This case seems to mark the first time one family has sued another family over artworks allegedly stolen during World War II.
"We're not the only family who suffered these kinds of losses," Nick Goodman said. "We've now met a number of them. Sure, we can't bring back my grandparents and other Holocaust victims. But we can try to see that their heirs get something back to remember them by."

© 1997 Chicago Tribune

The Mendi Bible, a gift to John Quincey Adams from former African Slaves, and a valuable 1521 family bible were recently recovered by the FBI and Quincy police (Massachusetts). The bibles were two of four books stolen from the Adams National Historic Site in Quincy, Mass, on November 11, 1996. The remaining two books, a rare 1775 book on the study of fish and a 1772 Bible that belonged to John Quincey Adams' wife, are still missing. According to reports in Boston and New Hampshire newspapers, the two Bibles were turned over to the FBI on January 10 after their discovery at an athletic club in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The books had been wrapped in towels, stuffed in a knapsack, and left abandoned in a locker for about three weeks before they were placed in the gym's lost and found. Since the other two books remain missing, the FBI made no comment about the theft, other than to state the Bibles had been recovered undamaged and no arrests have been made. The theft was extensively publicized to make it difficult for the thieves to sell the books and to induce the thieves to turn over the books because of their unsalability.

Plimpton MS 275:
Henry VII (?), Grant to Christopher Brown, concerning an estate at Casterton Parva, county Rutland; 14 August 1504 (?). Parchment, 37 x 48 cm., with seal, large initial letter and floreate border in gold and colors.
Belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps, his n.29763; Phillipps sale, Sotheby's,24 April 1911, n.1016 to Tregaskis.
See S.de Ricci, Census of Medieval and Renaissance
Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (New York, 1935-37), p.1803.

I would appreciate having this information added to any appropriate lists you may know of or hearing from anyone who may have seen the document recently.

Thank you.
Jean Ashton, Director
Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Columbia University
ashton@columbia.edu, (212)854-2231,32; FAX (212)854-1365

REWARD:
A FIVE MILLION DOLLAR Reward is offered for the safe recovery of all stolen items in good condition. The recovery of an individual object will result in a portion of the reward, based upon the object's market value.

On March 18, 1990, the Gardner Museum was robbed by two unknown white males dressed in police uniforms and identifying themselves a Boston police officers. The unknown subjects gained entrance into the museum by advising on-duty security personnel that they were responding to a call of a disturbance within the compound. Security, contrary to museum regulations, allowed the unknown subjects into the facility.
Upon gaining entry, the two unknown subjects abducted the on duty security personnel, securing both guards with duct tape and handcuffs in separate remote areas of the museum's basement. The unknown subjects brandished no weapons, nor were any weapons seen during this heist. Other than a "panic" button located behind the guards' watch desk area, the museum alarm system was internally only. Since the panic button was not activated, no actual police notification was made during the robbery. The video surveillance film was seized by the unknown subjects prior to their departure.
While in the museum from the hours of 1:24 a.m. to 2:45 a.m., the unknown subjects seized the following works of art, the values of which have been estimated as high as 300 million dollars.

(DUTCH ROOM GALLERY)
1.VERMEER, THE CONCERT; Oil on canvas, 72.5 x 64.7 cm.
2.REMBRANDT, A LADY AND GENTLEMAN IN BLACK; Oil on canvas, 131.6 x 109 cm. Inscribed at the foot, REMBRANDT. FT: 1633.
3.REMBRANDT, THE STORM ON THE SEA OF GALILEE, Oil on canvas, 161.7 x 129.8. cm. Inscribed on the rudder, REMBRANDT. FT: 1633
4.REMBRANDT, SELF PORTRAIT, Etching, 1 3/4" x 2", (Postage Stamp size)
5.GOVAERT FLINCK, LANDSCAPE WITH AN OBELISK , Oil on an oak panel, 54.5 x 71 cm. Inscribed faintly at the foot on the right; R. 16.8 (until recently this was attributed to Rembrandt).
6.CHINESE BRONZE BEAKER OR "KU", Chinese, SHANG DYNASTY, 1200-1100 BC; height of 10 ", diameter of 6 1/8", with a weight of 2 pounds, 7 ounces.
(SHORT GALLERY)
7.DEGAS, "Sortie du Pesage" - 32,5cm x 40,5cm .
8.DEGAS, CORTEGE AUX ENVIRONS DE FLORENCE, pencil and wash on paper, 16 x 21 cm. (This and the above were originally in a single frame.)
9.DEGAS, THREE MOUNTED JOCKEYS; Black ink, white, flesh and rose washes, probably oil pigments, applied with a brush on medium brown paper, 30.5 x 24 cm.
10.DEGAS, PROGRAM FOR AN ARTISTIC SOIREE; Charcoal on white paper, 24.1 x 30.9 cm.
11.DEGAS, PROGRAM FOR AN ARTISTIC SOIREE; a less finished version of the above, charcoal on buff paper, 23.4 x 30 cm. (This and the above were originally in a single frame.)
(BLUE ROOM GALLERY)
12.MANET, CHEZ TORTONI; Oil on canvas, 26 x 34 cm.
All logical leads have been followed through to conclusion with no positive investigative results. Numerous interviews have been conducted, many accompanied by polygraph examination, with no substantial positive information developed. All forensic evidence recovered by the Boston Police Department and the F.B.I. from the crime scene has been submitted to the F.B.I. Laboratory Division for analysis and storage. Appropriate computer entries and notifications regarding the theft and description of the unknown subjects have been made.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
UNKNOWN SUBJECTS - described as follows on 3/18/90
Unknown Subject Number OneRACE:WhiteSEX: MaleAGE:Late 20's to mid 30'sHEIGHT: 5'7" to 5'10"WEIGHT:UnknownBUILD:MediumEYES:DarkHAIR:Black, short croppedCOMPLEXION:Fair to mediumFACIAL STRUCTURE:NarrowFACIAL HAIR:Wearing a dark, shiny mustache, appearing to be falseGLASSES: Wearing square-shaped, gold framed glassesCLOTHING:Fully ornamented dark blue police uniform and hat, and dark shoes, with patch on left shoulder, possibly with wording "Boston Police."EQUIPMENT:Carrying a square black radio (with 5" to 6" antenna) on beltACCENT: Possibly Boston Unknown Subject Number Two RACE:WhiteSEX: MaleAGE: Early to mid 30'sHEIGHT:6'0" to 6'1"WEIGHT:180 to 200 poundsBUILD:Fairly broad shoulders, lanky from the waist downEYES: DarkHAIR: Black, medium length, puffy with additional length in back, rounded off just over the collarCOMPLEXION:Fair to mediumFACIAL HAIR:Black shiny mustache appearing to be falseFACIAL STRUCTURE:RoundGLASSES:NoneCLOTHING:Same as Unknown Subject Number OneEQUIPMENT:Same as Unknown Subject Number One
Persons with information regarding the Gardner Museum theft should contact the Boston F.B.I. office at 617/ 742 - 5533 . Callers will be assured confidentiality by use of a code name.

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) Masked gunmen burst into a museum in eastern Ukraine and stole two paintings by European masters worth an estimated $800,000, police said Friday.
The paintings, "Still Life With Lobster," by Klari Peters, a 17th-century Dutch artist, and "Fight With Turks," by Eugene Delacroix, the 19th-century French painter, were considered the gems of the collection at the Fine Arts Museum in Poltava, southeast of Kiev.
Three masked men held workers at gunpoint Tuesday and took the paintings off the wall while the museum was open during the middle of the day, said Vitaly Yastreba, a Poltava police spokesman.
The thieves disappeared into a waiting car, which was later found abandoned along with the frames from the stolen paintings, the spokesman said.
Peters's painting is estimated to be worth $300,000 and Delacroix's about $500,000.
Investigators believe the theft could have been commissioned by an art dealer who intends to sell the paintings abroad.
(21 Mar 1997 14:09 EST)

THE Spencer-Churchill family has retrieved Renoir's Study for the Apple Gatherers from a leading American collector after accusing a London dealer of selling it to him without permission.
A lawyer representing Jeanne Spencer-Churchill, whose millionaire husband is a cousin of the Duke of Marlborough, picked up the painting at the weekend from the Connecticut home of Richard Thune, a noted collector of 18th and 19th-century French paintings.
The undated oil of two women picking apples in a field, valued at up to $2 million (£1.26 million), is now being shipped back to London by Sotheby's. Mrs Spencer-Churchill, 42, herself an accomplished artist, inherited the painting from her grandfather, Paul Maze, who was Sir Winston Churchill's painting tutor.
Mr Maze's father was a close friend of Renoir and other famous French artists such as Monet, Manet and Braque. He had bought the oil in the 1920s from the artist's son, Jean Renoir, the film director.
Mrs Spencer-Churchill's husband, Robert, the only son of the late Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill, inherited a fortune as a child from his rich American grandmother, Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan. The couple have two sons ­ Jack, 13, and Ivor, 11.
The Renoir hung for a time on a wall of the Spencer-Churchills' home in London and, from 1991 until 1994, was put on show at the Leeds City Art Gallery. Mrs Spencer-Churchill then offered to lend the painting to the Museum of Wales in Cardiff and sought the help of William Joll, a family friend and former director of Agnew's art gallery.
According to a High Court writ, Mr Joll told the family that he had arranged for the painting to be taken to the Lefevre Gallery in Mayfair to be viewed by officials from the Museum of Wales. The museum decided not to take up the offer and Mr Joll is said to have moved it to another, unnamed London gallery.
Mrs Spencer-Churchill only learnt that the painting was missing when she called the Museum of Wales to check on it while moving house in January. In court papers, she says she believes that Mr Joll sold the painting to Mr Thune for the bargain price of $250,000 without informing her.
Mr Thune agreed to return the painting to the family because of the threat of further legal action in the American courts. But he was said yesterday to be distressed by the case and seeking reimbursement of the purchase price from Mr Joll.