THE PREDATORS OF THE TIME

Stolen art is still a fairly recurring theme today. In this documentary by Adolfo Conti, made thanks to an international co-production, the links between museums and private collections are confronted with this phenomenon.

The predators of the time. Documentary available in streaming on RaiPlay.

While the fighting troops destroy to win, the victors, after the end of the war, generally take advantage of the victory to seize what has not been irretrievably lost. Art has always been the symbol of triumph, the most coveted prey. (Sergio Romano, Art in war)

The conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple that allowed Titus to bring to Rome the most revered Jewish liturgical object, the chandelier the Menorah. Doge Enrico Dandolo during the fourth crusade brought to Venice the great quadriga that decorated the hippodrome of Constantinople. Lord Elgin took advantage of English power in the Mediterranean to purchase the Parthenon marbles at a ridiculous price. Mussolini moved one of the obelisks of the holy city of Axum to Italy. The Duke of Wellington, winner of the Battle of Waterloo, collected more than 80 Spanish paintings obtained after the Napoleonic wars. These are just a few examples that confirmed how art is the symbol of a people's cultural identity. Cultural heritage is a link with the past, present and future; it is the backbone of a country, the memory of its history, the untouchable roots of the testimony of a people. Since the dawn of time, works of art have been stolen, becoming war spoils, a symbol of power, but also a symbol of the conquest of the identity of the defeated people.

Greece, given its priceless artistic and cultural heritage, is one of the most sought after prey. The extraordinary story of the myrtle and gold-plated funeral wreath intertwined with organized crime and illicit trafficking of antiquities that ended up illegally in the hands of the curator of the US Paul Getty Museum. Letters, notes and memorials unearthed by the Los Angeles Times reveal complicity, omissions and ambiguities in grabbing a unique treasure of illegally stolen masterpieces. Griffins attacking a doe and Lekanis, the ceremonial basin, together with the golden crown are just some of the antiques on the list of illegal purchases by Paul Getty and his heirs.

The seizure of the Geneva warehouses in 1995 by Giacomo Medici, an Italian antiques dealer, the result of clandestine excavations, is just one of the countless confirmations of the advanced level to which the illicit traffic of works of art had reached. A story that overlaps with that of the Berlin Museums, owners of some works of dubious origin connected to the Medici Sequestro and with the story of the Euphronius Crater stolen in Cerveteri, presented on the market as the property of a Lebanese collector, was bought in 1971 from the Metropolitan Museum of New York for one million dollars.

The seizure of the "grave robbers bank" paved the way for a series of investigations that brought to light the secrets of the hidden world of the art market linked to the most influential names of the legitimate streets of collecting and museum institutions connected around a single pole, Robert Hecht.

In 2005, a trial opens in Rome which sees Marion True as the protagonist, at the time curator of antiquities for the Getty Museum. The process acquires notoriety worldwide: stolen art is the richest illegal trade in the world after drugs and weapons.

The following year, the Getty Museum began a rigorous policy of purchasing works of art, aimed at eliminating any gray area in the art market. Negotiations began at the same time for the return of the works belonging to the Italian and Greek heritage.

“Since 1996, museums and collectors from all over the world have returned more than 100 works to Italy and Greece and around 30,000 artifacts have been confiscated from traffickers. In November 2007, a Greek Court recognized the crimes attributed to Marion True in the case of the Golden Crown as prescribed. In October 2010, the trial in Rome against Marion True ended for the prescription of the offenses of imputation. In December 2011, Giacomo Mediti was definitively sentenced by the Court of Cassation to 8 years and 10 million euros in compensation for damages to the Italian State. In January 2012, the judges of Rome issued a statute of limitations also for the crimes against Robert Hecht who died in Paris in 2012 ".

The Golden Crown