Something is missing from a great show of ancient bronzes...

Picture: Amazon

Jens M. Daenher & Kenneth Lapatin (eds) Power and Pathos: Bronze sculpture of the Hellenistic World J. Paul Getty Museum 2015 £42.91

I'm sorry I won't be able to see this show, currently at the Getty, but the wonderful catalogue is some consolation. This is what an exhibition catalogue should be: erudite essays, comprehensive entries for all exhibits, proper detail on condition and provenance, and great illustrations. I find these sculptures thrilling. Even if you know nothing of their context, they are immensely powerful works of art. But there is an extra frisson from sensing a connection with an ancient civilization far removed from ours, but feels so accessible through these universal masterpieces. If I have one criticism of the catalogue it's that this sense of wonder is dulled by a sometimes ponderous writing style. Oh, to see the exhibition in the flesh!

Most ancient bronzes have been melted down for scrap, but the precious survivals reveal them as a pinnacle of art history. Power and Pathos brings together some of the greatest. Some were discovered in the renaissance, and some may even have been handed down the generations from antiquity. A surprising number have been found quite recently, and the exhibition is an opportunity to assess them in the context of more familiar sculptures. But one of the greatest recent discoveries is missing. 

Picture: Cleveland Museum of Art 

The Apollo Sauroktonos only emerged in 2004 when it was bought by Cleveland Museum of Art. They say it may be a sole surviving bronze by Praxiteles, one of the greatest ancient sculptors. The catalogue gives short shrift to the idea it's by Praxiteles himself; there's just not enough evidence for that claim. But it's not actually in the exhibition, so we lose the chance to compare it with the canon of ancient bronzes. Sculptures have been brought from all over Europe for this show, but the Apollo Sauroktonos hasn't made it from Cleveland to Los Angeles. 

 

It's a controversial sculpture. It was bought from a dealer that has broken the law in the US and Egypt, and its provenance is vague. Most suspicious of all is Cleveland's own secrecy; it refused to allow an academic access to its files on the sculpture. But technical evidence indicates that it was excavated a long time ago, and no specific claims have been made for restitution. That didn't stop the Greek government leaning on the Louvre and demanding its exclusion from an exhibition on Praxiteles. I don't know if specific threats were made over the Power and Pathos exhibition, but the chilling effect of Greece's threat to the Louvre may have been sufficient. 

 

Looting of antiquities is an especially pernicious crime. It is so much more than property theft; it permanently deprives humanity of irrecoverable evidence of our history. Context is vitally important. But our rightful outrage at looting shouldn't stop us asking: does stigmatisation of antiquities without provenance stop looting? And what should we do with all the antiquities that lack provenance? Should they be hidden from view, never sold or loaned?

 

The debate has been distorted by moral and political grandstanding. Countries demanding restitution are not innocent victims heroically seeking to protect art and history. Italy wants to hoard everything found on its territory, but fails to protect and display what it has. Greece has made no claim for the Cleveland sculpture, yet it uses its power to stop its exhibition. Antiquities without provenance are being treated as 'dirty', as if the objects themselves have bad juju. Superstitious thinking doesn't stop looting. It stops scholarship.

That said, the Cleveland Museum of Art has behaved despicably. If the sculpture is clean, why are they so secretive? My request for information was simply ignored, and scholarly requests for access have been denied. That's not the behaviour of a serious scholarly institution with nothing to hide. Maybe they deserve to be called out and ostracised, their requests for loans boycotted. That seems like cutting off our nose to spite our face, but if peer institutions think the acquisition was unethical they should come out and say so. Instead everything is done in secret. Greece acts behind the scenes, threatening to deny loans if anyone borrows the Apollo. Other museums are too timid to criticise either the Greek government or the Cleveland curators. And the Cleveland Museum of Art keeps its lips sealed. Whatever your views on the antiquities trade, secrecy won't do anything to advance the debate.

Restitution after World War I



 

Picture: Getty

I just read a book on the collection of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna that makes a cryptic reference to the return of 80 Venetian paintings to Italy in 1919. It clearly still rankles - "Italy's juristically controversial claim to the paintings led to their being returned" writes Renate Trnek in The Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna: An overview of the collection (Vienna: Bohlau n.d.) p. 10. 

I was already aware that panels from Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece (above) were returned from Berlin under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, so I did some more digging in the original peace treaties. The Reparations articles contain specific requirements for transfer of works of art, and in the case of Austria the open-ended requirement to submit to future demands to be determined by expert committee. 

It's remarkable that in 1919 the victors demanded that an African skull be repatriated ... to Britain! Also notable that the great Rubens St Ildefonso altar had to be returned to Belgium. It's still at the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna, so I assume it was never returned. 

There was no equivalent treaty after World War II; the allies simply arrogated jurisdiction over the Third Reich's territory. However, the paintings from the Berlin museum that weren't destroyed by fire or in the Soviet zone were transported to Washington D.C. where they were shown in the brand-new (and largely empty) National Gallery of Art. I understand that there was some debate at the time about keeping them, but they were swiftly repatriated to Germany. I suspect that World War I was the last major war where the peace treaties contained significant provision for the movement of cultural property as part of war damages. 

The Versailles Treaty required:

• Return to France of objects looted in the Franco-Prussian War.

• Return to the King of Hedjaz of a Koran taken from Medina by the Turks and given to Kaiser Wilhelm.

• Return to Britain of the skull of Sultan Mkwawa removed from German East Africa.

• Provision of books and manuscripts to Louvain to compensate for the burning of the library.

• Transfer of panels by Van Eyck from the Ghent Altarpiece.

• Transfer of panels by Bouts from the Last Supper Triptych in Louvain, from the Alte Pinakothek and the Berlin Museum.

The Treaty of San-Germain-en-Laye with Austria was even more demanding. In particular, Article 195 bound Austria to accept the determinations of a Committee of three jurists to be appointed by the Reparation Commission to investigate the conditions under which objects were removed from the Italian provinces to Austria. It also permitted submission of claims from Belgium, Poland and Czecho-Slovakia, and bound all parties to accept decisions taken by the Committee. A number of specific objects and collections were identified for return, including:

• Medici crown jewels to be returned to Tuscany.

• An Andrea del Sarto and four Correggio drawings, paintings by Rosa and Dosso Dossi and various bronzes to Modena.

• Twelfth century objects made in Palermo for the Norman kings to be returned to Palermo.

• Manuscripts and documents removed in 1718 to be returned to Naples.

• Rubens Triptych of St Ildephonse and other objects to Belgium (this is still in the Kunsthistorisches).
 
• The gold cup of King Ladislas IV to be returned to Poland.

• Various documents and manuscripts to be returned to Czecho-Slovakia.

I'm now interested to learn more about details of what was actually moved after the War - what did Germany send to Louvain, and what did the Committee require Austria to relinquish?   More information and references gratefully received.