The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities-- From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the...
by PublicAffairs

	The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities-- From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the...
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Book Description

<div>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 <i>tombaroli</i>—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 <i>London Sunday Times</i> and author of two previous exposés 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, <i>The Medici Conspiracy</i> 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.

Reader Reviews

This book is fascinating and important reading for anyone interested in the intersections of the art world, commerce and crime. The Medici Conspiracy is not the most deftly written, and at times seems more like a very, very, very long newspaper story than a book. Yet in the end the sheer force of the information it compiles, with detail and comprehension of the larger picture, leads to confidence in its conclusion: It is impossible to build, in modern times, a great collection of quality antiquities without relying chiefly on, and feeding and sustaining, unlawful traffic in looted items. The archeological countries also are at fault: If you leave hugely valuable items in the ground, and don't invest in excavating them under secure, academically and legally sound conditions, it is inevitable that illicit looters will do it for you.