Tuesday 27 May 2014

A Paestan krater and the Medici Dossier

Dr Christos Tsirogiannis has published an essay (Journal of Art Crime, 2014) on the Paestan bell-krater attributed to Python presently in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 1989.11.4). The krater, illustrated in the MMA's Art of the Classical World (no. 184), was purchased from the Bothmer Purchase Fund.

Tsirogiannis notes that the krater appears in 5 Polaroid images from the Medici Dossier. The choice of background is more than significant. He observes that the krater surfaced through Sotheby's in New York in June 1989. This raises a question about the quantity of material that was consigned to New York from Medici. (Were the issues raised by Peter Watson's Sotheby's: Inside Story applicable beyond London?)

Will the Met be contacting the Italian authorities now that this new evidence has come to light?

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