Euphronios Krater

Euphronios Krater

This ancient krater – depicting the death of Sarpedon in a dramatic scene by the master Greek vase painter Euphronios – was illegally excavated in December 1971 from the Greppe Sant'Angelo zone of the Etruscan cemetery located in the ruins of Cerveteri, Italy.

Antiquities dealer Giacomo Medici acquired it from looters for USD $88,000 and illicitly transported it to Lugano, Switzerland. New York dealer Robert Hecht purchased the vessel from Medici for USD $350,000 and had it painstakingly restored from fragments by Fritz Bürki in Zurich.

In 1973, Hecht sold the restored krater to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for USD $1,000,000, personally carrying it to the United States. At the time, it was the highest price ever paid for an ancient work of art, and was celebrated by Met director Tom Hoving and his curator Dietrich von Bothmer as a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition.

But questions soon surfaced about the vase's origins and legal status.

Hecht claimed he had purchased the vase from Dikran Sirafian, a Lebanese man whose family had obtained it well before a 1939 Italian law prohibited the unauthorized export of antiquities. But the New York Times investigated claims the vase had actually been found by looters north of Rome.

The vase was soon dubbed the Met's "Hot Pot." But the evidence was not sufficient to convince the museum to surrender the vase, and it remained on display at the museum for decades, shrouded in a mix of controversy and awe over its beauty.

Decades later, while conducting a search of Hecht’s apartment in Paris on February 16, 2001, Italy's Carabinieri investigators found a handwritten diary that detailed Hecht's purchase of the vase in 1971 from Medici and its subsequent sale to the Met. The new evidence, first revealed publicly by the Los Angeles Times, linked the vase to a convicted antiquities trafficker whom Italy had been investigating for years.

After lengthy negotiations, the Met agreed to return the krater on February 3, 2006 along with twenty other Italian objects tied to Hecht, Medici and other Italian antiquities traffickers.

The return marked a turning point for American museums, who after years of denial were forced to acknowledge that some of their most prized ancient objects had been illegally acquired.

Upon its return to Italy on January 18, 2008, the Euphronios Krater was displayed in the exhibition “Nostoi: Capolavori Ritrovati,” after which it was transferred to Villa Giulia in Rome, where it remains on display today.

1

Vessel

Greek

Metropolitan Museum of Art

1972.11.10

Italy

https://traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia/case-studies/euphronios-sarpedon-krater/

Casey Bennett

Vanessa Rousseau

VG