David W. J. Gill

Material consequences of contemporary classical collecting

The nature of contemporary classical collecting is explored by studying seven celebrated new collections and exhibitions. The concept of provenance is defined in terms of an objects origins, or findspot, and its modern story, or history. The several hundred objects in these collections are analyzed in terms of their findspot and history since unearthing. These show that the dismaying picture previously demonstrated for Cycladic antiquities applies to classical objects across the board : the overwhelming majority have no declared or credible findspots and simply surface as orphans without history. Some of the many material aspects of this central fact are explored.

From Boston to Rome: Reflections on Returning Antiquities

The return of 13 classical antiquities from Bostons Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) to Italy provides a glimpse into a major museums acquisition patterns from 1971 to 1999. Evidence emerging during the trial of Marion True and Robert E. Hecht Jr. in Rome is allowing the Italian authorities to identify antiquities that have been removed from their archaeological contexts by illicit digging. Key dealers and galleries are identified, and with them other objects that have followed the same route. The fabrication of old collections to hide the recent surfacing of antiquities is also explored. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The authors are grateful to the following for their assistance during the writing of this paper: Malcolm Bell, Ann Copeland (La Trobe University), Tracey Cullen, Colin Hope (Monash University), Andrew Jamieson (University of Melbourne), Ian MacPhee (La Trobe University), Jessica Powers (San Antonio Museum of Art), Sonia Puttock (University of Queensland), Peter Watson, and Karol Wight (The J. Paul Getty Museum).

Expressions of wealth: Greek art and society

In the 2nd century AD Pausanias (i.2.4-15.1) walked through the agora at Athens describing some of the statues and naming the artists; at least 35 of the statues were of bronze, yet not a single one survives intact today (Mattusch 1982: 8-9). Thinking only of the extant marble sculpture does an injustice to the civic art of Athens. This problem is commonplace; almost any classical site has numerous stone bases for bronze statues which have long gone into the melting-pot. Yet so often in modern scholarship stone sculpture is given a privileged position. Although modern histories of Greek art pay much attention to the marble sculpture of the Parthenon, ancient authorities were not so impressed; Pausanias (i.24.5-7) provides the briefest of descriptions to the marble sculpted pediments and omits to mention the frieze. For many scholars today the frieze has become an example of what ‘unlimited money can do’ (Ashmole 1972: 116), yet, as R. Osborne has recently pointed out, it merely helped the viewer to process to the east end of the temple where he or she would have been confronted by the great chryselephantine cult-statue of Athena: ‘this is what the temple was built to display, this is the object towards which worship is directed, and this is what the procession was all about’ (Osborne 1987: 101). And this is what Pausanias describes in detail, the great work of art and expression of Athens’ wealth which no longer survives.

The Trade in Looted Antiquities and the Return of Cultural Property: A British Parliamentary Inquiry

The British parliamentary report on Cultural Property: Return and Illicit Trade was published in 2000. Three key areas were addressed: the illicit excavation and looting of antiquities, the identification of works of art looted by Nazis, and the return of cultural property now residing in British collections. The evidence presented by interested parties—including law enforcement agencies and dealers in antiquities—to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee is assessed against the analysis of collecting patterns for antiquities. The lack of self regulation by those involved in the antiquities market supports the view that the British Government needs to adopt more stringent legislation to combat the destruction of archaeological sites by looting.

Euesperides: the Rescue of an Excavation

There was a time when the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was prosperous enough to support a venture which called itself the Ashmolean Expedition to Cyrenaica. The form this exercise took was the excavation over three seasons between 1952 and 1954 of parts of the site of the Greek city of Euesperides situated on the outskirts of Benghazi (Fig. 1 ). Euesperides does not figure large in history. We first hear of it in 515 in connection with the revolt of Barca from the Persians: a punitive expedition was sent by the satrap in Egypt and it marched as far west as Euesperides. Euesperides played a part in the downfall of the Battiads, the ruling house of Cyrene. Arcesilas IV tried to create a safe haven against the day when his regime might be overthrown, and in 462 in effect refounded the city with a new body of settlers attracted from all over Greece.

Collecting for Cambridge: John Hubert Marshall on Crete

In 1901 excavations were conducted under the auspices of the Cretan Exploration Fund at Praisos and Kato Zakro in eastern Crete. One of the members of the party was John Hubert Marshall, formerly of Kings College, Cambridge. During his journey to and from the excavations, and described in the correspondence of Robert Carr Bosanquet, Marshall seems to have acquired antiquities from a number of sites which were purchased by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge later in the year. This material included antiquities from Palaikastro which was to be become the scene of major excavations by the British School at Athens. Marshall was awarded a Craven Studentship at the British School at Athens in 1901, but in February 1902 was appointed Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India. It was Marshalls experience of excavation on Crete which was to influence the development of archaeological fieldwork in India.

Laconian lead figurines: mineral extraction and exhange in the Archaic Mediterranean

More than 100,000 lead figurines are reported to have been found in the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta. It has been suggested that these mass-produced votives were obtained from locally mined lead. Lead votives in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, were selected as representative of each ‘layer’ from the British excavations of the early twentieth century. Lead isotope analysis of the votives was conducted in the Oxford Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art and demonstrated that the lead was apparently derived from Lavrion as a by-product of silver extraction. There is a possibility that Attic silver, as well as lead, could have been used in Archaic Laconia.

The Director, the Dealer, the Goddess, and Her Champions: The Acquisition of the Fitzwilliam Goddess

This paper investigates the way that this object came to be accepted as genuine and throws light on the creation of Minoan forgeries in the 1920s during the completion of Evanss reconstructions at Knossos

Polaroids from the Medici Dossier: Continued Sightings on the Market

The 1995 raids on the Geneva Freeport premises of Giacomo Medici have had a profound impact on the collecting of and dealing in antiquities.1 The set of Polaroids seized during the raids (“the Medici Dossier”) has allowed objects that had passed through the hands of Medici to be identified. Fractured, salt-encrusted and mud-covered objects were shown as they appeared to have emerged from the ground and before they passed into the hands of expert conservators who prepared them for sale. The unravelling of the story has become known as the “Medici Conspiracy.”2 The photographic evidence has brought about the voluntary return of objects from a range of prominent North American museums: Boston’s Museum of Fine Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Princeton University Art Museum.3 To these may be added a selection of objects from the Royal-Athena Galleries in New York, and items from the Shelby White (and the late Leon Levy) collection.4

“A Fracture in Time”: A Cup Attributed to the Euaion Painter from the Bothmer Collection

In February 2013 Christos Tsirogiannis linked a fragmentary Athenian red-figured cup from the collection formed by Dietrich von Bothmer, former chairman of Greek and Roman Art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, to a tondo in the Villa Giulia, Rome. The Rome fragment was attributed to the Euaion painter. Bothmer had acquired several fragments attributed to this same painter, and some had been donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as to the J. Paul Getty Museum. Other fragments from this hand were acquired by the San Antonio Museum of Art and the Princeton University Art Museum. In January 2012 it was announced that some fragments from the Bothmer collection would be returned to Italy, because they fitted vases that had already been repatriated from North American collections. The Euaion painter fragments are considered against the phenomenon of collecting and donating fractured pots.