Antiquities Market

This paper presents new research about the origins of engraved gems in the collection of Constantine Schmidt-Ciążyński (1818-1889), partially preserved in the National Museum in Krakow.  It is now possible to identify Prince Stanislas Poniatowski (1754-1833) as the former owner of one intaglio. The Prince’s gems were completely dispersed after his death (1833) at auction organised by Christie's in London in 1839. Only the descriptions in the catalogues and incomplete sets of impressions in Berlin (Antikensammlung) and Oxford (Beazley Archive) allow us to identify original gems from the collection. The Schmidt-Ciążyński intaglio which can securely be identified is presented here. In the absence of archive documents, it is extremely difficult to ascertain when and where Schmidt-Ciążyński could have bought this specimen. Nevertheless, an attempt was made to propose some possibilities. The discovery is important because it was thought that the collector did not buy any Poniatowski gems. Now this issue must be reconsidered.

The destruction and looting of cultural heritage in the Middle East by terrorist organizations is well-documented by social
media and the press. Its brutality and severity have drawn international criticism as the violent destruction of heritage is classified as a war crime. Efforts have been made to preserve objects against bombing and destruction, as archaeologists and other volunteers safeguard sites prior to assault. There is also precedent for prosecuting heritage destruction via national and international tribunals. In term of looting, black-market antiquities provide a revenue stream for ISIS; therefore, efforts must be made to stop this harmful trade. Governmental agencies have taken actions to prevent funding through antiquities. Public institutions have a role in safeguarding
looted works by providing asylum to them without fueling the black market. At the same time, private collectors must also not purchase any items from the black market. Through education and enforcement of legislation intended to protect cultural heritage, it may be possible to reduce the market for looted antiquities.

The famous "Seal of Nero, a Roman intaglio depicting Apollo, Marsyas and Olympus, was once in the collection of Lorenzo il Magnifico and is now in the National Museum of Naples. Two gems related to that "Seal of Nero" are published here for the first time: one, a severely damaged intaglio kept in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, is supposed to date from the third quarter of the first century BC. Another gem with a similar motif, a refined Renaissance cameo, recentlya ppeared in Oxfordshire and is now in a private collection in London. It is presumed that this perfectly preserved piece originally was in the possession of the Medici. The author considers a possible attribution of this work to the young Michelangelo Buonarroti and discusses a copy shown in a portrait painting by Botticelli now in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt on the Main. (summary by Matthias Barth)

This study is an attempt to make sense of family photographs that are circulating in antique markets in Turkey. The phenomenon of "dispossessed family photographs" is examined on the basis of the critical literature on photography mainly by Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes. Depending on this theoretical framework, this study examines the discourse of antique sellers/collectors about "dispossessed family photographs" and the field that these photographs are circulating in. The discourse of antique sellers/collectors suggests that, "dispossessed photographs" have an elusive quality both in the minds of people and in the antique domain. That is why the word "specter" is used to emphasize the "spectral quality" of "dispossessed family photographs" as the word evokes the indefinite, untraceable and hard to frame quality of such images. Also the term "specter" invokes the physical state of family photographs in the sense that they fade and get pale as if referring their mysterious ghost-like presence in the market.

The book is available to order from: https://reichert-verlag.de/schlagworte/altaegyptischer_stil_schlagwort/9783954902439_ancient_engraved_gems_in_the_national_museum_in_krakow-detail

This book is a catalogue raisonée of a rich collection of ancient engraved gems housed in the National Museum in Krakow. It offers a thorough insight into ancient glyptic art through the considerable range of almost 780 so far unpublished objects – cameos, intaglios, scarabs and finger rings of various styles, workmanship and cultural circles: Egyptian, Near Eastern, Minoan, Greek, Etruscan, Italic, Roman, Sassanian and early Christian, dated from the second millennium BC to the seventh century AD.

Many pieces in this cabinet are notable not only for their top quality in terms of craftsmanship and design, but also for the materials used and engravings involving complex iconography illustrating religious beliefs, political allegiances, needs and desires that ancient people wished to be fulfill, fears, dangers and terrors from which they sought protection and even their daily occupations. The collection provides with a fascinating gallery of portrait studies presenting Hellenistic rulers and their queens, Roman emperors and members of their families as well as some private individuals. Some specimens are exceptional and unparalleled like the onyx cameo portraying Drusus Maior, likely executed by the hand of Eutyches, son of famous Dioscurides (cover) or a tiny but remarkably cut emerald cameo with a laureate portrait bust of Livia Drusilla as goddess Venus. Some objects have been preserved in their original settings (gold, silver, bronze, iron rings), which contributes to the study of ancient gems’ chronology and indicate their users, while others have been later re-set into eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collectors’ rings and sometimes more elaborated mounts. There are also pieces discoloured due to contact with considerable heat, which may suggest them to have been burnt with other personal objects on the funeral pyres and later deposited in burials. Noteworthy is the number of Greek and Latin inscriptions appearing on intaglios and cameos forming this cabinet. They span from owners’ names to the subtle messages communicated between lovers and invocations to the God.

Each gem is thoroughly analysed, described and exhaustively commented as to the device it bears, chronology and possible workshop attribution. A vast number of parallel objects is referenced too. This combined with provenance study presented in the first part of the book enabled to establish where a number of intaglios and cameos were manufactured, including almost 140 objects most likely to origin from the most important Roman workshop located in Aquileia. It ought to be singled out that many gems in this volume once constituted a part of distinguished collections formed by such personalities as Tobias von Biehler, Alessandro Gregorio Capponi, Auguste le Carpentier, Alessandro Castellani, Comte de Caylus, Count Nikolai Nikitich Demidoff, Baron Albert de Hirsch, Jean François Leturcq, Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen, Dr. George Frederick Nott, Benedetto Pistrucci, James-Alexandre de Pourtalès (Comte de Pourtalès-Gorgier), Paul von Praun, Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky, Jacques Meffre Rouzan, Philipp von Stosch, Antonio Maria Zanetti and many more. They seemed lost for more than 130 years, but now have been brought back and are accessible to everyone. Consequently, the volume presents three intriguing stories of collectors whose donations contributed to the Krakow assemblage. They not only provide the reader with a sort of background for the objects discussed further, but also illustrate nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collecting practices and the art market for engraved gemstones, contributing to our knowledge of the history of scholarship and collecting. In summary, this book is intended to be useful not only for scholars interested in gems, but also those who study the history of the art market and collecting as well as all the enthusiasts of Classical art and archaeology.

This book chapter discusses antiquarian and proto-archaeological activity in Rome and the Roman Campagna in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The first part traces and discusses more generally early field activity in and around the city and especially along the first stretch of the via Appia, from the Porta Capena in the Servian Wall to Bovillae at the twelfth milestone, by excavators ranging from Francesco Bianchini (columbaria of the freedmen of Livia and Augustus), Francesco de’ Ficoroni (Vigna Moroni) and Alessandro Albani (Anzio) early in the eighteenth century, to Thomas Jenkins (Centocelle, Quadraro), Gavin Hamilton (Pantanello, Villa of the Settebassi), Robert Fagan (tomb of Claudia Semne, Campo Iemini) and Venceslao and Pietro Pezzoli (Statuario/Villa dei Quintili) in the second half of the century, to Antonio Nibby (villa of Maxentius) and others in the early nineteenth century. It also discusses in depth the cultural heritage legislation of the Papal State and its supervising body, papal and private collecting, restoration, export and the art and antiquities market. The second part focuses on the Frattocchie area between the eleventh and twelfth milestone of the Appia Antica, especially the site of Bovillae and its rediscovery, documentation and partial destruction over the course of the nineteenth century. Sketching briefly the early field investigations of Robert Fagan in the area, at Grotta Vascella and on other lands belonging to the Colonna family, it moves on to the discovery, identification and documentation of the remains of the ancient site of Bovillae by Giuseppe Tambroni, Luigi Poletti and their team in the 1820s. The chapter ends with a brief outline of the successive destruction of the unearthed ancient structures and sections of the ancient Roman road, and of the documentary work carried out by Luigi Canina and Pietro Rosa in the early 1850s.

This book reveals the evolving significance of cultural property to international security and accordingly proposes a new field of study. Over the past two centuries, abuse of antiquities and fine art has evolved from the spoils-of-war into a medium for conducting terrorism which strives to erase the cultural heritage of ‘the other’. In contrast to wartime destruction and plunder, which date back millennia, the growth of the art market over the past fifty years has created opportunities for novel abuses of cultural property. Since World War II, maturing international awareness has recognized the threat that armed conflict and looting pose to cultural property, but in parallel, art trafficking and the politics of cultural property have become tools for organized crime and emerging nations. The resulting unique intersection of issues in cultural property, foreign policy, and national security forms the basis for a new field—cultural security. After an assessment of topical security threats, which suggest the need for such a field, the book concludes by speculating on the “alternative power” of an emerging political economy of cultural property.

In 2003, the major auction houses ended sales of unprovenanced cylinder seals and cuneiform tablets, a move that at the time was interpreted as being in response to public anger over the looting of Iraqi museums and archaeological sites, and the associated restrictions placed on trade by UNSCR 1483. Ten years on from those events, these original conclusions do not appear so secure, though they cannot be discounted. Th is article will look at fi ve analyses to examine those conclusions, and demonstrate that there is a relationship between auction sales and their wider material and commercial contexts, but it is not a straightforward one.

On September 13, 2020 a quarter of a century had elapsed since the Swiss and Italian authorities raid in the Free Port of Geneva, on the warehouses of Giacomo Medici, later convicted of involvement in cases of trafficked antiquities. Since then, many other raids followed on properties of other notorious antiquities traffickers, thousands of antiquities were confiscated from them and their invaluable archives were discovered and seized. The research on these archives resulted in hundreds of notable repatriations so far, but mainly in the enrichment of our knowledge about the criminal way in which the so-called 'reputable' members of the international antiquities market have been acting since the 1970 UNESCO Convention, which they completely ignored in practice. Despite the numerous occasions on which these 'reputable' members were identified as involved, even today they continue to act in the same way, some without any (or known) legal sanctions. This chapter reviews the illicit associations of one of these 'prominent' members of the international antiquities market, the 'Royal-Athena Galleries' in New York, a gallery run by the antiquities dealer Jerome Eisenberg, who has repeatedly been found selling looted, smuggled and stolen antiquities. I then present seven antiquities, most of them identified in October 2019, one in March 2020, soon before the retirement of Jerome Eisenberg and the closure of 'Royal-Athena Galleries' on October 31, 2020. This piece lays out all the relevant evidence from the confiscated archives and combines everyone involved to illustrate the network that 'circulated' these seven objects. This case study also highlights all the problems that are ongoing in this research field, proving that essentially nothing has changed since 1995, or even 1970, and we indeed deserve the (illicit) antiquities market we still have.

Recent research has brought back to prominence a remarkable collection of glyptic objects housed in the National Museum in Krakow. It was assembled by Constantine Schmidt-Ciążyński (1818–1889) in the second half of the nineteenth century, but has been little known since that time and remains largely unpublished. This extensive collection (over 2,500 pieces) sheds light in a unique manner on the European gem trade and on gem collecting in the mid-to late-1800s. The gems were engraved in a variety of minerals; only one object is made from an artificial material, namely glass paste. The collection offers an opportunity to investigate the collector’s aims for his collection and the circumstances that shaped its special character. It seems very likely that the entire set was designed to have particular socio-cultural and educational functions.

Far too often antiquities purchased on the market without verifiable provenience information enter scholarship as authentic antiquities only to be later exposed as modern creations. When this occurs, the scholarly discourse surrounding these events tends to treat these fakes as singularities and focusses on the methods used to uncover them. Largely ignored during these discussions are the processes by which these fake antiquities were erroneously authenticated by scholars in the first place. It is this deficit in the scholarship that this thesis contributes towards.

Through a careful study of the Sheikh Ibada fakes, a group of sculptures once heralded as important examples of early ‘Coptic’ sculpture, this thesis explores the erroneous authentication of fake antiquities by scholars. It is demonstrated here that the methods by which scholars approached the Sheikh Ibada fakes, devoid of archaeologically recovered provenience, were highly problematic and led to the fakes being erroneously authenticated. There was a lack of what should be routine suspicion regarding the authenticity of antiquities acquired not from scientific excavation, but rather the antiquities trade. As a result, the Sheikh Ibada fakes were authenticated and entered scholarship as authentic antiquities.

In this paper, different issues of dealing with unprovenanced antiquities are discussed from the Assyriologist's point of view. How should one deal with unprovenanced artefacts? Should they be published at all? Is it satisfactory to publish only the artefacts? What is the importance of acquisition history, and to what extent should one trust the data provided by dealers and auction houses? Since the Old Babylonian (20 th –17 th centuries BCE) city of Dūr-Abī-ešuḫ was virtually unknown until the early 2000s, its unprovenanced archives offer an excellent opportunity to address these issues. One can observe the appearance of cuneiform tablets from these archives in the main European and American centres of antiquities trade, as well as the scarcity of data concerning their acquisition history. However, since the main bulk of tablets still await publication, these observations must be considered preliminary. In an Appendix a previously unknown tablet from Dūr-Abī-ešuḫ, housed in a German private collection, is published for the first time.

Even as cultural property faces immediate peril today in conflict zones like Syria and Mali, there is anecdotal evidence that some nations are awakening to the diplomatic and foreign policy benefits that can flow from the repatriation of cultural patrimony.

:Discussions about looted antiquities often focus on large, culturally and monetarily valuable items. Nevertheless, it is clear that mundane small finds, which sell for relatively small amounts, account for a large portion of the global market in antiquities. This article highlights two types of small artifacts—namely, cylinder seals and coins, presumed to come from Syria and Iraq and offered for sale by online vendors. We argue that the number of cylinder seals and coins sold on the Internet has increased steadily since 2011, reaching a peak in 2016–17. This shows that the trade in Iraqi and Syrian antiquities has shifted from big-ticket items sold in traditional brick-and-mortar shops to small items readily available on the Internet for modest prices. The continuing growth of the online market in antiquities is having a devastating effect on the archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria as increasing demand fuels further looting in the region.

"Sleepers" are artworks or collectibles that are undervalued because one or more characteristics go unrecognized. This article discusses 12 sleepers that have been sold at auction on the antiquity market since 2007 whose attribution as antiquities were originally overlooked, either accidentally or deliberately. The objects are presented in the context of a theoretical framework describing both the legal and economic incentives to perform due diligence and to reveal, or "awaken," a sleeper antiquity. The theory implies that sleepers may arise for several reasons, and the case studies are grouped accordingly. Most pressingly, the analysis identifies two ways in which sellers are disincentivized to be transparent about an object's identity: when they can exploit legal loopholes to deliberately misattribute an antiquity and mediate export and when they can hide disagreement about an object's authenticity to mediate its sale. Placing the case studies in the broader market context, we highlight particular areas that should be addressed by policy or regulatory reform. The analysis also has wider applications to other forms of art.

While the growth of the Internet market in pre-Columbian antiquities is of great concern to law enforcement and the countries of origin, we should also recognize that the Internet is a crucial tool in the fight to protect cultural materials. In particular, online databases that were once created for purely scholarly purposes, can be effectively used to track stolen, lost or exchanged artefacts. This chapter focuses on my own experience, for over a decade now, of managing a database that catalogues Zapotec urns, a coveted ceramic object among museums and collectors. From this vantage point I explore the double-edged sword located between the scholarly pursuit of knowledge and the requirements of the art market.

This paper provides the first systematic analysis of a particular norm at major antiquities auctions: selling items in groups. The analysis decomposes large auction lots of Near Eastern antiquities into their constituent items and examines the provenance of items individually. This provides insight into the known supply chain, or provenance, for thousands of items from a region in which archaeological looting has become a particular concern. The analysis shows that items sold in groups constitute a large source of revenue on the market, but are small and come with poor documentation, making them problematic in several ways. A variety of additional analyses show that the market does not price provenance in a way that generates incentives to improve these problematic aspects of the trade. The paper contributes to the understanding of the end market for Middle Eastern cultural heritage, and concludes with implications for public policy, law, and heritage preservation.

With Islamic State on the rampage, and other religiously motivated groups swearing allegiance to them in Syria, Tunisia, Nigeria, Yemen and Afghanistan, the threat to ancient heritage is greater than e&er, and the debate over whether or not to return antiquities, looted or legally e9ported, to the modern nation states where they were discovered is fiercer than ever and serious questions are being raised as to the wisdom of returning more,

Recent armed conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan and political violence in Egypt have revealed the strategic significance of cultural property. This paper assesses the role of historic sites and antiquities in foreign engagement. Over the past century, U.S. foreign policy has had successes and shortcomings in leveraging protection of cultural patrimony to strategic advantage. The contrast of successful policy on the protection of immovable cultural property, such as religious monuments, in armed conflict and missed opportunities for tactical intelligence on the trade in movable cultural property, such as antiquities trafficking, identifies potential for development of foreign policy.

The illicit antiquities market has become an area of concern for policymakers. It is fueled by a well-documented rise in looting at archaeological sites and a fear that the proceeds of such looting may be financing terrorism or rogue states. Efforts to craft effective policy responses are hindered by the lack of data and evidence on two fronts: the size of the market and the network structure of participants. In lieu of reliable evidence on these two fronts, the conversation has been dominated by speculation and hypotheses and has generated some widely accepted theories of how the illicit antiquities market operates. In this report, the authors compile evidence from numerous open sources to outline the major policy-relevant characteristics of that market and to propose the way forward for developing policies intended to disrupt illicit networks. The approach uses multiple methods and data sources, with the understanding that no single piece of evidence can provide a complete picture of the market and that only by cross-referencing and triangulating among various sources can salient market characteristics be illuminated.

The article deals with three different topics: 1. the uncontrolled and above all profitable art market, its destructive effect on cultural heritage; its connection to looters, collectors, and scientists, 2. the collector who has recently made an exhibit of his own collection, setting aside the unfortunate consequences of his own passion; a museum director who has forgotten all about his responsabilities, 3. the German public, beholden for a critical stand, and who up to now has ignored the Unidroit Convention on the protection of cultural goods.