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The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities--From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums
PublicAffairs
May 2006
379 pages
ISBN: 1586484028
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Historical
A true-life thriller completely exposes the network behind
the illegal trade in ancient artifacts--and features a rich
cast of rogues and some of the world's most prestigious art
institutions The story begins, as stories do in all good
thrillers, with a botched robbery and a police chase. Eight
Apuleian vases of the fourth century B.C. are discovered in
the swimming pool of a German-based art smuggler. More
valuable than the recovery of the vases, however, is the
discovery of the smuggler's card index detailing his deals
and dealers. It reveals the existence of a web of
tombaroli-tomb raiders-who steal classical artifacts,
and a network of dealers and smugglers who spirit them out
of Italy and into the hands of wealthy collectors and
museums. Peter Watson, a former investigative
journalist for the London Sunday Times and author of
two previous exposes of art world scandals, names the key
figures in this network that has depleted Europe's classical
artifacts. Among the loot are the irreplaceable and highly
collectable vases of Euphronius, the equivalent in their
field of the sculpture of Bernini or the painting of
Michelangelo. The narrative leads to the doors of some major
institutions: Sothebys, the Getty Museum in L.A., the Museum
of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York among them. Filled with great characters
and human drama, The Medici Conspiracy
authoritatively exposes another shameful round in one of the
oldest games in the world: theft, smuggling and duplicitous
dealing, all in the name of art.
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