Sunday, November 8, 2009

By Reviewed by John French

"The Lost Chalice"

Vernon Silver

William Morrow, $26.99

Iread two books, "The Lost Chalice" and "Lords of the Sea," together because they relate to each other in one significant respect: Neither could have been written but for the remarkable achievements of the ancient Athenians in their flourishing prime from mid-6th century to mid-4th century B.C.E.

Otherwise, the two books are entirely different. This week, I report on "The Lost Chalice," a non-fiction book that uses the breathtakingly beautiful work of Athenian potter and vase painter Euphronios as a springboard for an intriguing 20th (and 21st) century detective story. Next week I will tell you about "Lords of the Sea," which recites ancient Athenian history from the perspective of the creation and ascendancy of the Athenian navy.

"The Lost Chalice" opens with a mini-mystery: Who was the man in the green LaCoste sweater who appeared at a rare antiquities auction at Sotheby's in New York on June 19, 1990, and stunned the established museum bidders with a winning bid of $742,500 for a Euphronios chalice -- a good $300,000 above the anticipated high bid?

Mystery remains at the book's conclusion: Is there another Euphronios chalice never previously catalogued and, if so, who has it?

In between these conundrums, Vernon Silver, a Bloomberg News senior editor who covers the illicit art trade, treats us to glimpses of the world of art and antiquities that are downright unsavory.

The sordid tale begins with the tomb robbers, known in Italy as the tombaroli. There have been tomb robbers as long as there have been tombs but nowhere has the practice been more widespread or more lucrative than in Italy. The reason is that the Etruscans, who dominated Italy before the Romans, had such a passion for Greek art that far more of it is to be unearthed today in Italy than in Greece.

The Etruscans put masterpieces, like the Euphronios vases, into their tombs and the tombaroli are still digging them up for sale. As recently as 2006, even though both Italian and international law provided clear prohibitions, the Italian police counted 216 new illicit digs.

Up the chain from the tombaroli are the middlemen. These range from the small-time Roman dealer, a friend of the tombaroli, to the jet-setting British or American contact, a confidante of curators at the great museums. Because the latter are drawn irresistibly to collecting antiquities, whether looted or not, the middleman's most important function is to provide the curator with the "provenance" (historical verification) for the piece. This can, for example, include inducing an antiquities dealer in Lebanon to attest falsely that the artifact was acquired by his father in the 1920s and has been in the family ever since.

Alas, the web of conscious involvement in all of this has -- in the past, if no more -- included prestigious institutions such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Even Oxford University was implicated. For years it offered an excellent scientific service that would, for a fee, establish the antiquity of any clay artifact and provide a certificate of its age. This did not, of course, demonstrate that the artifact's owner had acquired it legally, but the Oxford pedigree conveyed a sense of legitimacy. One Italian middleman ran many questionable items through Oxford, paying $400,000 in fees over the years.

A United Nations convention adopted in 1970 was intended to put a stop to the illicit trafficking in looted antiquities and, with the aid of Italian and American court decisions, it is beginning to do so. The magnificent Euphronios Krater (see illustration opposite page 184) that my wife and I observed at the Met in the 1980s has been returned to Rome, as have fine pieces from Boston, the Getty and elsewhere. But the looting continues and the unscrupulous buyer remains willing to pay.

In addition to all of the above, the pages of "The Lost Chalice" are sprinkled with some of the most colorful, if dubious, characters I have encountered outside the realm of fiction. The distinction between the art thief and the art connoisseur often becomes scandalously blurred. The book is a good and literate read.