Cleveland Museum of Art returns statue linked to Bubon

Source:
Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art has agreed that the bronze figure acquired in 1986 will be returned to Türkiye. Scientific tests on soil samples appear to confirm that the figure was in fact found at Bubon and thus formed part of a series of imperial statues. For many years the headless statue was presented as a representation of the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

The Manhattan DA presented this account of the looting:

In the 1960s, individuals from a village near Bubon began plundering a Sebasteion, an ancient shrine with monumental bronze statues of Roman emperors and selling those looted antiquities to smugglers based in the coastal Turkish city of Izmir. Working with Switzerland-based trafficker George Zakos and New York-and-Paris-based trafficker Robert Hecht, they unlawfully removed the looted antiquities from Türkiye, transporting them to Switzerland or the United Kingdom, and then onward to the United States or other European destinations. Once the statues were in the United States, New York-based dealers such as Jerome Eisenberg’s Royal-Athena Galleries and the Merrin Gallery funneled the stolen Bubon bronzes into museum exhibitions and academic publications thereby laundering the pieces with newly crafted provenance. As the Bubon pieces graced the pages of exhibition catalogues and academic publications, the reputational value of the institutions who displayed the Bubon pieces increased and the financial value of the statues grew.

George Zakos was linked to the Lydian silver treasure that was returned to Türkiye by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Zakos also handled the Sion Treasure that was acquired by Dumbarton Oaks, and three terracotta antefixes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that appear to come from the Panionion on Mykale in Türkiye (1992.36.1; 1992.36.2; 1992.36.3).

The research of Dr Elizabeth Marlowe on the Bubon material is acknowledged by the Manhattan DA. 

Press release:

Cleveland Museum of Art: Cleveland Museum of Art and District Attorney of New York Reach Agreement on Draped Male Figure (the Philosopher) (February 14, 2025).

Manhattan DA: Manhattan DA’s Office Announces Repatriation of Marcus Aurelius Statue to the People of Türkiye (February 14, 2025)

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Francavilla Marittima and the links to Switzerland

Fragment of plate
formerly in the Michael C. Carlos Museum

In 1979 the J. Paul Getty Museum acquired ‘a large collection of fragments of Corinthian pottery (79.AE.110) and Italian imitations of Corinthian wares (79.AE.111)’. A similar batch of material was purchased by the Archäeologische Institut der Universität Bern. As a result of research by Vera Uhlman several joins between the two collections (‘primarily from alabastra and pyxides’) were established, and a ‘set of fragments of Corinthian vases and local Italic imitations of Corinthian pottery’ were exchanged (83.AE.276). In addition, a number of plastic vases had been acquired in 1978 from ‘a private collection in Switzerland’ (78.AE.271) that were ‘part of the contents of an ancient favissa said to have been discovered in Lucania’. The combined number of fragments was in the region of 3,500. 

The fragmentary pieces appear to have come from a sanctuary at Francavilla Marittima inland from the Greek colony of Sybaris. Subsequently this cache of material was returned to Italy in 2011. 

Two more fragments linked directly to Francavilla Marittima have been returned to Italy from the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University (2005.026.001). The fragment of a Wild Goat style plate joined two other fragments: one found at the Timpone della Motta sanctuary, and another in the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. The Carlos Museum fragment had formed part of the collection of Peter Sharrer and had been acquired at a sale of fragments at Sotheby’s (New York) in June 2005: the fragment is reported to have been in a private New York collection since 1976. 

Fragments formerly
in the Bothmer collection
and given to the
Michael C. Carlos Museum;
now on loan to the museum

The second set of Carlos Museum fragments consisted of a Laconian cup (2006.042.001A and B; now on loan to the museum) that had been acquired from Dietrich von Bothmer. Bothmer had acquired his fragments from Hans Jucker, professor of classical archaeology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. The Bothmer fragments joined fragments found at the Timpone della Motta sanctuary. 

It is perhaps significant that a fragment of a Laconian cup attributed to the Boreads painter formed part of Bothmer’s collection (New York MMA 2011.604.9.10): it ‘joins fragments at the Archaeological Collection, University of Zurich (Inv. 5942), formerly in the Ines and Hans Jucker-Scherrer Collection (by 1960s)’. 

Given that Bothmer clearly obtained material from Francavilla Marittima for his collection, which other pieces may also come from that source and perhaps join fragments derived from excavations there? 

James Cuno has noted that it was Sharrer who sold a collection of pottery fragments to Harvard University Art Museums. Are there any potential fragments from Francavilla Marittima residing in that location?

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Bothmer and Francavilla Marittima

Source:
Michael C. Carlos Museum

The Michael C. Carlos Museum has handed over ownership of two Laconian cup fragments that had been donated by Dietrich von Bothmer in 2006 [press release]. The fragments were acquired from Ines Jucker in 1985. The pieces fit excavated fragments from Francavilla Marittima.

Fragments of a Wild Goat plate (acquired in 2005) have already been repatriated from the Carlos. Several thousand fragments from the same site have been returned from the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Institute of Archaeology in Bern. 

In November 2024 the Carlos announced that it had returned fragments from two Attic red-figured kraters to Italy in December 2023 [press release]. What other Bothmer fragments should be returned to Italy? 

Mittica, G. 2018. Francavilla Marittima: Un patrimonio ricontestualizzato. Vibo Valentia: Adhoc Edizioni.

Gill, D. W. J. 2024. "The Michael C. Carlos Museum Returns Antiquities." Journal of Art Crime 31: 3–9.

Gill, D. W. J., and C. Tsirogiannis. 2024. "Fragmented pots and Dietrich von Bothmer." Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 69: 535–94. [Open Access]

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Further Returns to Türkiye

Septimius Severus. Source: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

It has been announced that the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen will be returning the bronze head of Septimius Severus to Türkiye ("The Glyptotek returns Roman bronze portrait to Türkiye", press release, November 26, 2024). It forms part of a series of imperial bronze statues from the sebasteion at Bubon: the press release notes Bubon returns from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fordham Museum of Art, Worcester Art Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Shelby White Collection. The head was acquired from Robert Hecht.

This will put increased pressure on the Cleveland Museum of Art over the claims relating to the bronze "Marcus Aurelius" that has been linked in The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art to Bubon (A. P. Kozloff, "Bubon: a re-assessment of the provenance," Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74 [1987] 130-43).

The announcement from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek includes 48 architectural terracottas linked to Düver, and also acquired from Hecht. This will put pressure on other museums in Europe, North America and beyond to return the Düver terracottas that they acquired.

Details of previous returns from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek can be found in David W. J. Gill, "The Returns from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen," in Artwashing the Past: Context Matters (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), 27–31.

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Part of the Cycladic Corpus of Figures?

(2024)

When you go to a museum to see an exhibition of ancient artifacts you expect them to be … ancient. You have been enticed into the show to see a carefully selected group of objects that are supposed to inform you about the past … and you are left wondering if they are indeed just modern interpretations.

Individuals working on the reconstruction of the Minoan Palace at Knossos on Crete are known to have worked on making elaborate forgeries. One of the most fascinating accounts of a death-bed confession is provided by Sir Leonard Woolley in his wonderfully named autobiography, As I Seem To Remember. These workmen understood what Sir Arthur Evans, the excavator, thought was ‘minoanizing’ and therefore could include details that made museum curators think that they were buying genuine objects from Crete that could then be presented in their public galleries to inform visitors about prehistoric Crete. One of these, the marble “Fitzwilliam Goddess” was acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in 1926 and inspired generations of Cambridge students to study the prehistoric cultures of the Aegean. The statue even graced the frontispiece of the first volume of the Cambridge Ancient History. 

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has just opened a new long-term—25 years—exhibition of Cycladicizing marble figures and other objects derived from the collection formed by the North American collector Leonard Stern. Not a single piece comes from a recorded archaeological context, and there is no certainty that all the figures can in fact dated to the third millennium BCE. The presence of forgeries among Cycladic figures is well known, and there is growing evidence that this can be traced back to at least the 1930s — and even before the First World War. This makes due diligence doubly important, not only to root out pieces that have been removed illicitly from archaeological contexts in recent decades—one figure in the collection has been identified in the photographic archive of a well-known Swiss-based handler of recently-surfaced material—but also to ensure that the figure did not pass through routes to the market that are now recognised as suspicious. 

Source: Becchina archive
Courtesy: Christos Tsirogiannis

Figures from the Stern collection feature in the standard works on Cycladic figures such as Pat Getz-Gentle’s Personal Styles in Early Cycladic Sculpture, but this does not necessarily mean that they are ancient. Indeed, her earlier work, Sculptors of the Cyclades, included, by her own later admission, a number of figures that she considered to be of modern creation. 

This is not a problem confined to the Stern collection. Figures in the Goulandris collection displayed in the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens equally lacks recorded and secure findspots. 

Archaeologists would seek to understand Cycladic figures that are derived from secure archaeological contexts, whether it be from graves on the island of Naxos, or in stratified deposits from Phylakopi on Melos. Can we allow these insecure pieces to enter the corpus of knowledge, thereby potentially corrupting it?

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Archaeological Context Makes Sense

Amphora illustrated in
 the Schinoussa archive
Source: Christos Tsirogiannis

Archaeological contexts matter. 

This may sound like stating the obvious. But walk into a museum that displays, say, Greek or Roman archaeological material and you may start to ask questions that the object in itself cannot answer. Take an Athenian black-figured amphora. The label will probably tell us that it was made in Athens but we probably want to know where it was found. It is fairly large, and not the sort of object that is found in the cemeteries of ancient Athens. It is fairly complete and so has probably been protected in some sort of tomb cut out of the rock: an Etruscan tomb in central Italy is certainly a possibility. Was it found on its own? Was it part of a set of Athenian ceramic sympotic equipment, that is to say part of the wine-drinking apparatus. We may want to ask why the Etruscans buried their dead with imported Athenian pottery: was it about the iconography? But was the amphora necessarily found in (modern) Tuscany? Could it come from one of the Greek colonial settings in southern Italy or Sicily? 

The museum label may tell us that modern scholarship has attributed it to a named (anonymous) pot-painter. But does that assume that such ‘artists’ were recognised in antiquity? Did symposiasts choose to drink wine out of cups decorated by ‘named’ individuals? Or would you want to be buried with a pot decorated by ‘Elbows Out’ or some other similarly named painter? 

Even the date assigned to be pot may be problematic. If the archaeological context is unknown, how do we know the date? Is it similar to another piece? Does that other piece have a secure archaeological context? No? So how do we obtain a date? Do we have to depend on a chronology based on supposed stylistic developments? How does this chronological framework link to known historical events, such as the Persian destruction levels at Athens? 

The Crosby Garrett helmet
displayed next to
the helmet from Ribchester
© David Gill

But the lack of secure archaeological contexts may hamper our knowledge of Roman objects. Take the Roman bronze cavalry helmet said to have been found at Crosby Garrett in Cumbria (north-west England) and then sold at auction in London. While we might assume that this was part of the equipment of a Roman cavalryman on the northern frontier of Britannia, it could be that the helmet was found, say, on the Danube frontier, but that at some point (in recent years) it was decided to say that it was found elsewhere. Archaeological investigations at the alleged findspot in Cumbria have yet to find conclusive evidence that the helmet was indeed found there. 

Lack of context can sometimes mean that scholars misinterpret objects. Take, for example, a fragmentary Greek marble funerary stele that was displayed in an exhibition in a high profile North American museum. It was suggested that the iconography pointed to a findspot in western Türkiye (Ionia). Yet the error of this assumption was confirmed when the lower part of the same stele was found in a rural cemetery in eastern Attica, Greece. 

Top part: stele fragment formerly in
New York private collection (and now repatriated)
Bottom part: excavated in a rural cemetery in eastern Attica

Archaeological context matters. Without it, archaeologists can struggle to make sense of the objects.

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Another Bubon Head Returns to Türkiye

Source: Manhattan DA

A bearded head from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (inv. 1971.51.2) has been returned to Türkiye [press release]. The head was included in Cornelius Vermeule's list of figures associated with Bubon (F). Mario A. del Chiaro dated it to the late third century CE, and noted that it came from Türkiye ("Western Asia Minor"). The press release added this information:

Bearded Head of a Man, dating to the 3rd century C.E., was looted from Bubon in 1966 and smuggled out by Turkish traffickers for Robert Hecht. The Bearded Head of a Man was ultimately sold by New York-based dealer Matthias Komor to a private collector, who donated the piece to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, where it was seized by the ATU.

The press release noted that this was one of three Bubon associated pieces that were being returned to Türkiye. One was the Koutoulakis head in the J. Paul Getty Museum but the third is not identified. One possibility is that the third piece was one of two that passed through a Manhattan gallery in 2006 (Vermeule O and P).

These latest returns will place further pressure on the Cleveland Museum of Art to come to an amicable agreement over the statue once described as Marcus Aurelius (Vermeule D).

Reference

Del Chiaro, M. A. 1974. "New Acquisitions of Roman Sculpture at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art." AJA 78: 68–70, pl. 20.

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