Each chapter reads like a journalistic article, thoroughly well Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini have compiled a narrative thatĪnalyses the art market and its main players in all their multi-faceted, devastating Looted Antiquities From Italy’s Tomb Raiders to the World’s Greatest Museums, I suggest you get online and purchase a copy Interested in this story and has not yet read the Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of It was only when one of the tombaroli caught wind of the sale, realised he’d been slighted, and turned whistle-blower by allerting the appropriate authorities that the subsequent Carabinieri investigation unfolded. The vase sold for an extravagant US$1 million, the first time such a price was paid for an antiquity. Here it underwent a number of unsuccessful sales before a scholar, who proposed himself as an intermediary for selling to the New York museum, generously took care of “the problem”. The monstrous trail of ficticious provenance documentation grew tenfold as the Euphronios krater journeyed from Cerveteri to America via an extensive array of dealers and restorers to mega-rich collectors and red-handed museum officials. Having done the deed the tombaroili then got in touch with an important American merchant, the result of their exchange being 125 million lire – no questions asked. Statement, ‘To call an artifact is like referring to the SistineĬeiling as a painting.’ A significant find? Uh, yes. Todeschini and Watson quote art historian Hovers in the following grandiloquent Last important piece before this one had been unearthed as long ago as 1840’. The greatest masters in Greek vase painting. Let me digress: Euphronios is one of two or three of Liquid, was “thrown” by the potter Euxitheos and then decorated exquisitely by The krater, large enough to hold seven galleons of When the tombaroli (tomb robbers) pulled the The illegal excavation of an Etruscan tomb in the area of Greppe Sant’Angelo in Here marks the moment when the vase first set foot on the road to salvation. This epic scene majestically drapes the surface of the infamous Euphronios krater, stolen in the 70’s from one of Cerveteri’s necropolis’ and reappearing years later on the squeaky-clean shelf of a New York museum. The XVI canto of Homer’s Iliad describes a touching episode of the Trojan War: the death of Sarpedon, son of Zeus and the king of the Lycians.
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