Kanakaria Mosaics

Kanakaria Mosaics

In the wake of the Turkish invasion of North Cyprus in 1974, there was widespread looting of Byzantine sites across the region. Among the most notorious sites that was looted was the Church of the Panagia Kanakaria in Lythrankomi. Between August and October 1976, looters removed four remarkable Byzantine mosaics from the apse of the church and smuggled them off the island.

In July 1988, a group of interested buyers met in Amsterdam, where a photograph of the mosaics was presented to them. The group included the American art dealers Peg Goldberg and Robert Fitzgerald, as well as the Dutch antiquities dealer/smuggler Michael van Rijn and a Californian attorney named Ronald Faulk

After the meeting, Faulk traveled to Munich to meet Aydin Dikmen, a Turkish dealer who was offering the mosaics for sale. Dikmen provided documentation that purportedly supported the claim that the mosaics had been legally exported from Turkish-controlled Cyprus. Subsequently, Goldberg, van Rijn, and Fitzgerald agreed to acquire the mosaics from Dikmen for USD $1,080,000.

Goldberg shipped the works to Indiana and attempted to sell them to New York and Geneva-based art dealer Geza von Habsburg. Von Habsburg subsequently offered the mosaics to the J. Paul Getty Museum's antiquities curator Marion True. True declined to acquire the mosaics, and, suspecting they had been looted, informed Byzantine art experts about the presence of the works in the United States.

In 1989, the Republic of Cyprus and the Autocephalous Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus learned the mosaics were in Indiana. After unsuccessfully attempting to buy them from Goldberg for her purchase price, the Church filed a claim in district court for their return.

The claim was upheld and their repatriation was ordered by the United States District Court of Indiana. The works were returned to Cyprus in 1991, and are now kept in the Byzantine Museum of the Archbishop Makarios III Foundation.

4

Visual Work – paintings, frescos, mosaics

J. Paul Getty Museum

Cyprus

Jason Felch

VG