Thursday 12 January 2023

Another Euphronios Krater?

Quite apart from any other matters, another mystery is emerging from the Vaican (Italy 24 Press News, 'Thirty crates of works of art hidden in the dome of St. Peter’s. Who was Don Michele Basso?" Jan 2023). Monsignor Michele Basso, an elderly canon of St. Peter’s, was recently found dead in his apartment close to the Vatican basilica. He was the owner of a large collection of important works of art that included ancient artefacts. The origins of these items and how they got into the ecclesiastical collector's hands are unclear. The collection is now stored, in a room under the Dome of the Basilica of St Peter.

Were those goods part of private collections inherited by Basso? Were they regular purchases made over time, or were they still bequests from convents, religious institutions, gifts received from benefactors or never cataloged ecclesiastical goods? There are canvases from the school of Mattia Preti, sketches by Pietro da Cortona, wooden tables by Guercino, Golzius, Pasqualotto, as well as seventeenth-century wooden sculptures and even a white marble sculpture inspired by Michelangelo’s Prisoners. Authentic canvases, however, also mixed with various fakes, made by very skilled forgers who worked in Rome.
Interestingly the material also contains some repoductions of famous pieces, "among the objects there are also several copies of Etruscan and Roman vases reproduced so well that they seem authentic".
In Rome towards the end of the 19th century it was almost a fashion to reproduce Roman or Etruscan artifacts in every little detail. It was a skill of some master craftsmen that gave birth to forgeries so extraordinary that they too have a thriving international market [...] [the Basso collection reportedly contains] a wonderful copy dating from the early twentieth century of the famous Euphronios Crater, the Etruscan original of which is kept in the Museum of Villa Giulia. After it was stolen by grave robbers in 1971, illegally exported to the USA and purchased by the New York Metropolitan, the crater had been at the center of a diplomatic tug of war with Italy. The copy in the hands of the Vatican risks calling everything into question because it would refute the date of the discovery of the original that the Metropolitan had to return. If the real crater was only found in 1971 in a clandestine excavation near Cerveteri, how is it possible that there is a copy made at the end of the twentieth century in the Vatican?
How secure is the dating of the manufacture of the copy of the Euphronios vase, and is it an exact copy? Is it possible that this copy is based on a second ancient version of the vase? (see 'Vatican, the death of don Michele Basso and the mystery of his (splendid) collection of works of art') Perhaps more to the question, were there not two modern fabrications f vases showing the Sarpendon story, one of which entered the Bass collection, and the other sold to the Met, posing as a dugup from 1971? The Met's vase was not securely "grounded", was it, and did it have a TL test dne?

1 comment:

David Knell said...

I have little doubt that the Euphronios Krater formerly in the Met is ancient. The real question is when the replica in Basso's collection was made. Despite the journalist's best efforts to sensationlise its discovery, the Italy24 account contradicts itself ("dating from the early twentieth century", "made at the end of the twentieth century") and there is no reason to assume the replica was made before the real Krater was stolen in 1971.

Copies of Etruscan and Roman vases were indeed all the rage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but excellent replicas have continued to be made up to the present day and Basso admits he only began to collect seriously "since the beginning of the nineties".

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More storm in a tea cup from Italy24

 
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