Wednesday 12 January 2011

Not everybody loses sleep about these things

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Fabio Isman in Il Giornale dell'Arte 305, gennaio 2011 raises again the question of: "Un caso delicato turba il mercato d’arte internazionale delle antichità e toglie il sonno a qualche importante museo: quello delle fotografie sequestrate a Giacomo Medici e Gianfranco Becchina". Well, not everybody is losing sleep about the current location of the estimated million archaeological artefacts which suddenly surfaced (from underground?) on the market in Italy between 1970 and 1995 through the agency of «predatori dell’arte perduta». Some dealers of repute are apparently selling them quite openly; though somehow their reconstruction of their collecting history seems a bit lacking (see Looting Matters, 'Toxic Antiquities: Concern for Dealers').

This photo is published by Isman as an example of the sort of material recorded in the Symes archive in Rome. So one might ask where might one find this little naked boy if a collector interested in that sort of thing were to look for him. Where, oh where, would an afficionado of little statues of well-developed but modestly endowed naked boys find themselves an "Etruscan bronze nude athlete" just like this one? Maybe Mr Google knows?

See also: David Gill, 'La "Grande razzia": Photographic dossiers revisited'.

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